Red Ribbon Week Next Week

2016 Red Ribbon Week

YOLO.  Be Drug Free! #YouOnlyLifeOnce

OCTOBER 24 – OCTOBER 28

Parents: We want students to enjoy celebrating drug prevention week.  It is important that all dress days are appropriate to wear to school and will not cause a distraction in the classroom.  Shorts or skirts above the knee may not be worn.

Monday, October 24: Don’t Make Yourself A Target!

-Wear a Camo Shirt!

Tuesday, October 25: Wherever You Go, Just Say No!

-Wear a Tacky Tourist Top!

Wednesday, October 26: Our School is Drug Free!

-Wear a red shirt!

Thursday, October 27: Don’t be a zero, be a super hero! Say no to drugs!

-Wear your favorite Super Hero Shirt!

Friday, October 28: I can be ANYTHING!

-Book Character Day!

-Please make sure your student has the book of what character they are!

Thanksgiving Feast Costumes

Dear Parents,

We have our thanksgiving feast coming up November 18^th! 

We have a fellow parent in first grade willing to make and embroider all of first grades Thanksgiving costumes. Our parent is willing to pay for some of the cost. It would be wonderful if we could donate to help them with the cost. 

Please donate $1 so we can help make this years thanksgiving costumes look AWESOME!

Please return October 28^th!!

Mrs. Minnerick 

Annual Spelling Bee

Parents,

First Grade will be having our Annual Spelling Bee on Friday, November 11^th. 

Every student in each class will participate. The top 3 students from each class will advance to compete for grade level winners.

The list of words is below. Please study with your child to help them prepare. This will be a fun learning experience and prepare them for the years to come!

Thank you,

Mrs. Minnerick

Math: Expanded Form

In Math, students are learning to recognize and create numbers in standard form, model form, word form, and expanded form for numbers up to 120.



Why is place value important?

• Place value is important because it helps you understand the meaning of a number. If people just used numbers randomly, no one would know which numbers people meant. You need place value to understand the order of numbers as well. If someone offered you 30 dollars or 99 dollars, you would need to know that 99 is more than 30 if you wanted the greater amount of money.

In the above candy corn image the top number, "34" is represented in standard form.

The middle representation shows each number paired with their place values.

The bottom representation shows the number in expanded form.

Your child can create this diagram on a white board, and write numbers in expanded form from 1-120. This activity, and more, can also be purchased here, on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Videos for Kids:

Expanded Form for 1st and 2nd Grade Math

Place Value Grouping Video

Online Number Line

Interactive Counting 

What Do 2-Digit Numbers Mean?

Reading Strategy of the Week: Stretchy Snake

Our Reading Strategy of the week for the October 17 - 21 Newsletter is Stretchy Snake.

Help your child to stretch out words to hear every sound. This will help them with spelling too. We want them to hear the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words.

Here is a video example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6aW8EudNXA

Writing: Non-Fiction

Next week, students will begin learning to write their own non-fiction, informative texts.Students will learn to write informational texts that teach others interesting and important information and ideas about a topic.

You can help your child with this by reading non-fiction books at home. This will help familiarize your child with the organization of non-fiction, informative texts, and help them learn about topics they may want to write about. They will feel more confident about coming up with ideas to write about, and having ideas they want to share and communicate to the world. Let your child have fun and get excited for choosing books about topics that really interest them. Engage their natural curiosity and wonder.

Try and choose books that include a table of contents, a glossary, bold words, pictures, and diagrams.

National Geographic offers great options. We would love some donations to use in our class, too! :) If you  need help choosing a good level for your child, please read my post on choosing good-fit books, or email me.

Questions you can ask your child:
- Ask your child to use the table of contents to find information in the book. 
- Ask them to use the glossary to learn what new words mean. 
- Ask them why some words are bold. 
- Ask your child why they think the author wrote this book.
- Ask them to explain what a diagram is teaching them. 
- Ask them what they know about a topic, prior to reading a book, what they wonder, or have questions about the topic, and what they learned after reading it. This is also called a "KWL" chart (see example below. Your child is familiar with this way of thinking.

Help your child to notice facts, and even jot down notes about their favorite facts, or their opinions on what they have read.

This is the Kindergarten checklist for informative writing, from which we are growing from.

Students are also learning to re-read what they write, pointing to the words as they go. We want them to notice when something doesn't make sense. We want them to capitalize the beginning of sentences, and use appropriate punctuation at the end of sentences. We want them to spell words to the best of their abilities, saying a word out loud and stretching it out to hear each sound in the word. We want them to use their word wall, or a dictionary as a resource for looking up and spelling words. I highly suggest getting a picture dictionary for your child to use at home.

You can read more about non-fiction text features on my post about Making and Confirming Predictions.

Learning Videos for Kids:
What is Editing?

Reading: Poetry

We are learning all about poetry. 

Read poetry often. This will develop your child's eye and ear for poetry. We want them to understand what poetry is, why people write it, and how to create it themselves.

Questions to Ask:

- What do you notice about this poem? Do you see a pattern?

- Why do you think the author wrote this poem?

- Do you like this poem? Why or why not?

- Would you like to write a poem like this?

Reading Poetry Strategies:

- Visualize the poem. See it in your mind like a movie. 

- Reread the poem to make it smoother and understand it better.

- Read the poem out loud with expression to develop fluency and for fun.

Use poetry vocabulary, such as alliteration, rhythm, rhyme, and repetition.

Math: Identifying US Coins and their Values

We are learning to identify all the US coins, their values, and the cent symbol.

Essential Questions: 

How do I identify a penny? Its brown and is a small coin.

How do I identify a nickel? It is a silver/grey color.

How do I identify a dime? It is a silver/grey color and the smallest coin.

How do I identify a quarter? It is the biggest size coin and is a silver/grey color. 

Help your child to remember how to identify coins and their values through poetry (we are studying poetry in reading this week, too!) Read the poems together for fun.

At home, you can give your child coins and have them identify them and sort them by name. Ask them to describe what the front and back of each coin looks like. 

You can also have them count nickels by fives, dimes by tens, pennies by ones, and quarters by twenty five.

You can download this for free here: Visual Coin Chart

Help your child to understand how many pennies equal the value of one nickel, and so forth.

Video Links for Kids:

Learning Coins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vy7pnqRbZQ

Learning Money- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7hwaeaDk-I


Educational Resource:
http://www.beaconlearningcenter.com/Weblessons/coinsforcandy/money001.htm