First Grade Spanish

We had another week that seemed to fly by! We want to thank Ibrahim’s dad for reading Jumanji to us yesterday. The children were certainly excited to hear this story as many have also seen the movie. Yes, we are all excited and counting down the days until our winter break begins!! But, we will do a lot of work before then. Next week we will wrap up our math unit on word problems and take our assessment. We are looking forward to our Pajama day and Polar Express party on Thursday. As a reminder, children can wear pajamas and bring a blanket and a small stuffie as well. Our week ends with a Community Circle in Village Plaza on Friday. Don’t forget Friday, December 20 is also an early dismissal at 11:30 for all. There is no ECP.

Sight words are the building blocks of reading success. They’re the frequently used words that form the foundation of early reading. They’re those tricky little words like ‘the’, ‘and’, ‘is’ and ‘see’ that don't always follow typical phonics rules and are often not easy to illustrate. Instead of sounding them out, children need to recognize sight words instantly – like familiar faces in a crowd.

Fun fact: There are more than 200 sight words in the English language. The first 100 high-frequency sight words make up more than 50 percent of early reading texts. The sooner your child masters these sight words, the more confidence they’ll have and the faster they’ll progress toward reading fluency.

Every student has a small rainbow and once they complete a color coded word list, that color is added to their rainbow. We have tested quite a few students on their red, orange, and even yellow rainbow words! Fun fact: there are about 220 sight words that make up about 75% of the words used in most texts. So it's pretty evident that sight words are essential to learn and will undoubtedly increase reading fluency and comprehension. So keep practicing!! Please help your child study these words so they can be tested. Also, please continue to listen to your child read every night.

We hope you all have a nice, warm weekend!

Ms. Hartness & Ms. Vicky

This week:

• Math- We continued our story problem unit and used a number line to help us find a missing addend in an equation.

• Reading/Phonics/Writing- We finished up one-on-one Dibels testing and the Reading and Math MAP testing. We also read about arctic animals and water and us (Water’s Big Job, Trash in the Ocean, Saving Water).

• Social Studies- Our study on historic figures continues: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark with Sacagawea (exploration), Theodore Roosevelt (National Parks and the environment), George Washington Carver, and Ruby Bridges.

Next week:

• Math- We will wrap up our story problem unit and take the assessment.

• Reading/Phonics- we will work on rhyme recognition, onset fluency, blending, isolating final sounds, segmenting onset-rime, adding initial phonemes, deleting initial phonemes, substituting phonemes.

• Writing- We will begin our writing unit on Topic Books.

• Social Studies- Our historic figures study continues: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark with Sacagawea (exploration), Theodore Roosevelt (National Parks and the environment), George Washington Carver, and Ruby Bridges.

• Please label all students' belongings.

• Please send a healthy snack and water bottle every day, and make sure the water bottle is filled with water.

• We are a nut free community

• We encourage Velcro shoes unless your child is proficient in tying shoelaces.

• Add a change of clothes for your student.

• Please remember to include all four English/Spanish teachers in your email correspondence so we all receive your information.

• Read at home every night for 20 minutes.