Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on March 17, 2014
Luck o’ the Irish? There’s just 13 weeks to go! We’ll start this one by flexing our map skills as we explore directionality and landforms related to the Emerald Isle, share Irish folk tales and music, and more. For some fun sharing of Irish culture, check out: http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/1Kids/2Index.html
Monday we will also take our quizzes from last Friday. I was unexpectedly sick and absolutely down for the count! We’ll still have a new set of quizzes this Friday.
This week we will learn about the Author’s Message in a text. This is usually the author’s purpose in writing the text. By thinking about it, readers in turn think about the big ideas behind what they are reading and come to understand events and character choices more deeply. Here’s a terrific explanation of what, how, and why: http://thepicturebookteachersedition.blogspot.com/2012/03/importance-of-authors-purpose.html
In writing we will continue to work on Main Event writing in small groups and 1-on-1. We will also review and practice how to write pieces that are informative (main idea and supporting details) and that state an opinion.
Our exploration of geometry continues this week with introductory lessons in 3-D objects. What is important is that students learn to identify them by the number and nature of their surfaces, including those on a cube, cone, cylinder, sphere, and prism. Here is a link to a terrific site for printing, cutting, and pasting together 3-D shapes: http://www.senteacher.org/Worksheet/12/3D.html By going through the process, students come to see in a hands-on way the unique properties of shapes. I encourage you to use them, and to compare/contrast them: How many total faces does a (cube, e.g.) have? How many faces are curved? Flat? How is one shape like another? Can you group several of them together by like properties?
And here is a fun site for practicing these and other first grade skills: http://www.starfall.com/
