First Grade News!

Greetings Families!

I am excited to share our fifth newsletter of the year! This bi-weekly publication will be a key resource for staying connected and informed about our classroom. Thank you to everyone who sent in treats, donated items and helped with our Halloween Party! They had a wonderful time! I loved getting all of the pictures and videos that were sent my way. Thank you all again!

Grading Scale

• + = Meets
• ✔️ = Making Progress
• ➖ = Not Making Adequate Progress

Last week we focused on words with -nk.

What they are: These are chunks where the vowel, the letter 'n', and the letter 'k' are combined. The tricky part is the 'n' sound is often hard to hear clearly; it blends with the vowel and the 'k' to make a single, unique unit sound.

-ink (as in pink or sink)

-ank (as in bank or tank)

-onk (as in honk or bonk)

-unk (as in junk or trunk)

How to help at home: Encourage your child to read this chunk as one sound rather than three separate sounds. For the word bank, they should say /b/ followed by /ank/, not /b/ /a/ /n/ /k/. Use words in sentences or play rhyming games using these word families (e.g., sank, tank, yank).

This week your student was introduced to a new syllable type; the silent e syllable. This syllable type was our first introduction to long vowel sounds. Our learning target this week has focused on the pattern of a-e (the long a sound) in words such as make, shape, snake, pale and wade.

The Pattern: This rule applies to words that follow the structure Vowel-Consonant-E (like cake).

What it does:

The letter 'e' at the end of the word is silent (it doesn't make a sound).

The silent 'e' reaches back over the consonant and forces the vowel 'a' to say its long sound (its name).

Example:

Start with a short vowel word: can (the /a/ sounds like in apple).

Add a silent 'e' to the end: cane (the /a/ now says its name, /ā/, like in acorn).

How to help at home: Give your child a CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) word like cap or man, and then have them add an 'e' to see how the word and the vowel sound magically change (cape or mane). This visual demonstration is very powerful! Understanding these patterns makes reading much more predictable and less frustrating for new readers.

I have also attached a copy of current and future "heart words". These are words that first graders need to recognize quickly and spell correctly in their every day writing. Extra reading and spelling of these words at home would be very beneficial. We have covered the first page and added a few from the second page.

This entire topic revolves around the goal of achieving fluency (getting the right answer quickly) with addition and subtraction problems where the total is 10 or less. It combines both skill practice and solving basic word problems using these strategic methods:

Count on to Add

Doubles

Near Doubles

Facts with 5 on a Ten Frame

Add in Any Order

Count Back to Subtract

Think Addition to Subtract

We are wrapping up this topic next week! I have attached extra practice pages that cover all of the strategies they have learned.

This week, we are strengthening a super important skill for both reading and writing: learning the difference between a fact and an opinion. This is a key building block for informative writing, which is writing meant to teach others!

• A Fact is what's Real: A fact is something that can be proven true. You can look it up in a book, count it, or observe it. (Example: "There are four seasons in a year.")

• An Opinion is what you Feel: An opinion is what someone thinks or feels. You cannot prove it to be true or false. Look for "feeling" words! (Example: "Fall is the best season.")

We are starting an exciting new reading unit called "Being a Good Community Member." This unit is an exciting shift into social studies and civics! The goal is to help your first grader understand that a community is a place where everyone helps and supports each other.

We are currently focusing on Biographies—which are simply books that tell the life story of a person who has made a difference! The main text that guided our lessons this week is the Big Book titled "People Who Made Contributions." This book is a collection of short biographies that tell the true stories of various real-life heroes who have positively impacted our world. The most important goal this week is teaching your child how to understand and organize what they read. Using this book, we focus on:

• Determining Text Importance: Sorting the essential information from the interesting background details. This helps them summarize later!

• Recognizing Main Ideas and Details: Identifying the big concept of a section and finding the facts that support it.

• Using Context Clues: Becoming "word detectives" by using the words they do know to figure out the meaning of tricky, unfamiliar words.

• Comparing and Contrasting: Actively thinking about how two people, events, or ideas in the book are alike and different.