With an awesome start in August, we are now in the flow of things and students have been working hard! This picture is of their expository writing essays. I wanted to display them in my classroom to show everyone who walks in what an amazing job students are doing!
In ELA, we started the first week and a half of school learning our language routines, providing an introduction to the key instructional routines and procedures that we will use throughout the year, reviewing foundational skills taught in first grade (phonemic awareness, phonics, and high-frequency words), and modeling key instructional routines and procedures for collaborative conversations, close reading of text, citing text evidence, and the writing process. It also helped me to determine instructional and grouping needs for the students. We are now working in a unit called Friends and Family. In the unit, the weeks cover the topics how friends help each other, how families around the world are the same and different, how a pet can be an important friend, how we care for animals, and what happens when families work together. Within each of those weeks, we cover oral vocabulary, word work, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency, writing, and grammar. We just completed week 2. Next week, we will start on week 3, which covers asking and answering questions, determining character, setting, and events, writing narrative text, letter punctuation, intonation in fluency, and our story genre in Fiction. In writing, we just completed our expository essays. Now, we will be focusing on writing friendly letters through modeling, prewriting, drafting, revising, proofreading/editing, then publishing/submitting and evaluating. In math, our unit is called Figuring the Facts. This unit works toward the establishment of classroom norms around mathematical inquiry and discourse. The mathematical focus rests on the development of number sense, operations, and fact fluency to 20. Important mathematical models including the number rack, and the number line are introduced during the unit, and students are expected to become proficient at using strategies that emerge from these models. Next week, we will start “module 4”, which is our last week in this unit. We will cover fluency with addition facts to twenty. Each day next week will focus exclusively on developing fluency with addition facts to 20 and students will use this skill in story problem contexts. The number rack, bead string, and the number line are used to support the development of strategies, helpful for recalling the number facts. The following categories of addition facts are emphasized in this module: Add Zero, Count On, Add Tens, Add Nine, Make Ten, Doubles, Doubles Plus or Minus One, and Leftovers. This week, all students at Katherine Finchy were asked to take both math and Literacy benchmark tests in Imagine. If your child has not completed one or both tests, please continue to work on them daily. Check the document in Class Story to see if your child has completed one or the other. I was also able to conduct fluency testing and small groups have hit the ground running. I cannot wait to see how much the students grow over the next couple of months! Check back at the end of September for an update on what your child is learning then in our virtual classroom.
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May 2021
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Learning with Mrs. Patel
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