First Grade News
December 2015
Dear Parents,
We hope everyone had a restful Thanksgiving holiday. We enjoyed meeting
and talking with you at conferences. December will be a busy month, but
we look forward to the next few weeks of uninterrupted instruction.
READING
Did you know that reading at home on a daily basis is one of the most
effective ways to improve your child’s reading? We hope everyone is
reading for at least 15 minutes each night.
This month, students will be asked to describe characters, setting, and
major events of a story using key details and to compare/contrast the
experiences of the characters. We will review common root words and their
endings (i.e. look, looks, looked, looking). We will continue to practice
using strategies that help us determine the meaning of words we hear and
see when reading and the students will also be expected to identify reallife connections between words and their meanings.
MATH
Our first graders will begin the month by focusing on specific addition
strategies such as counting on and near doubles to find the sum in
addition equations. They will then move on to subtraction strategies such
as counting back, decomposing a number leading to a ten and using a ten
frame to model the number ten in different ways. Throughout December,
students will be provided with numerous opportunities to explore the
relationship between addition and subtraction (8 + 3 = 11 and 11 – 8 = 3)
and use their knowledge to help them solve problems. They’ll continue to
work on word problems and describing their strategies for solving put
together, take apart, and addend unknown problems.
SOCIAL STUDIES
We will continue to explore ways that people live, work and play in the
community. We will also identify differences between past and present time
by classifying important events as past or present. Students will compare
people and objects of today and long ago while reading informational texts
and examining photographs from the school and community.
SCIENCE
In science, we will be experimenting with objects to learn how they move.
We will be looking at the ways pushing and pulling change the motion of an
object. By using a variety of objects, we will identify the types of
movement needed to move objects from one location to another. We will
also begin exploring magnets to gather information on how they affect some
objects. Students will be working with magnets to identify what happens
when they are placed near different objects. They will be predicting,
testing, and describing the effects of magnets.
WRITING
For the past four weeks, the students have been writing personal
narratives. We have been working on adding more details to their writing
and editing and revising their work. We will be starting writing to inform
this week. They will be writing the steps for how to play a game or sport
and how to do a job. During this month, they will also begin opinion
writing. The children will write about the best things in Germantown,
giving reasons to support their opinions.
IMPORTANT DATES
December 4
December 24- Jan. 3
January 4, 2016.
Make-up Pictures
Winter Break!!
Students return to school on