August 29, 2014
News From the Big Top
Mrs. Cornali
acornali@uscsd.k12.pa.us
Streams Elementary
412-833-1600x6058
WELCOME TO FIRST GRADE! We had SUCH a great first week of school!
Everyone seemed to adjust to the classroom routine with ease. We have
had quite a busy week and are very much looking forward to the nice,
long weekend. Enjoy the time with your families 
Included in your Back to School folder, you should have received a letter
from Miss Carrie Schade. Miss Schade will be completing her student
teaching experience here in our classroom through the first week of
November. How nice it will be for your child to have 2 teachers to kick off
the school year!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MASON!!
8/25
Weekly Words
SIGHT WORDS: a, I, the, and, like, look, you
This week, we reviewed several of the words that were taught during
your child’s kindergarten year. We will continue to review kindergarten
sight words through next week before introducing our new sight words.
Please refer to the sight word cards and letter that were sent home
earlier this week. It is important that they continue to practice these
words at home to reinforce what they are learning here in the
classroom.
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READING/LANGUAGE ARTS:
WORD BUILDING: We jumped right into the curriculum this week! We
learned about the short a vowel sound through the use of decodable text,
word building lessons and writing activities. An extra set of word building
cards will be sent home for practice each Monday. These are the same
cards/lessons/words that we will be using here in the classroom for that
week. We gave practice to using our listening ears to HEAR the sounds in
words during our daily Phonemic Awareness activities.
POETRY: We learned the poem, Crabby Max to reinforce the short a vowel
sound. During Center Time, your child made a Crabby Max puppet. Ask
them to share their poem with you  We practiced the poem together,
highlighted the short a words and completed challenge activities for even
MORE practice with short a. When we were through, we added the poem
to our Poetry Folder, which is kept inside our desk at school. Each week, we
will learn a new poem to reinforce the skill being taught and follow this
same routine.
CENTERS: During center time, we reviewed our sight words by building
them with play-doh and magnetic letters, made our poetry puppets, read
decodable text using our whisper phones, listened to a story on cd and
interviewed our friends to learn more about them.
STORY BIT: We read the story, The Kissing Hand on the very first day of
school. In this story, Chester the raccoon is a bit apprehensive about
coming to school for the first time. His mom gives him a little kiss in the palm
of hand that he may hold close to him for comfort. We painted our hands
and placed a little heart inside as a momento from the story. Story bits will
come home once or twice a month with your child. Please know that they
are not mandatory homework….just a fun comprehension activity to
complete with your child. It’s a great way to encourage listening and
recalling information to share with others. Please be sure to keep the “bit”
inside the “kit” and return to school when complete  After reading the
story, we went on a school tour led by Chester the raccoon. We used our
i-pads and QR codes to find secret messages throughout the building
telling us where to go next.
HANDWRITING:
We reviewed how to properly grip our pencil, use proper spacing in
between our letters and form our capital letters correctly. We began our
work in our Handwriting Without Tears booklet by learning about pencil
grip, Frog Jump Capitals and Starting Corner Capitals.
MATH:
Together, we reviewed what our MATH WORKSHOP looked like in the
kindergarten classroom. After taking a few days to “investigate” and
“explore” with our math tools, we came up with a class chart on we think
Math Workshop SHOULD look like. We did a very nice job working
cooperatively during this time. Next week, we will begin our Unit 1
lessons—Addition, Subtraction and the Number System.
SOCIAL STUDIES:
This week, we spent a great deal of time getting to know the classroom,
our classmates and the daily routine. We began our IB-PYP Unit of Inquiry--We Belong. Our central idea for this unit is We are all members of many
communities and responsibilities come with membership in each group.
We learned the terms responsibility and citizen. We also briefly introduced
(during the teachable moments) a few of our IB-Learner Profile words:
principled, risk-taker and open-minded. Together, we compiled a list of
ESSENTIAL AGREEMENTS (rules that we agree on). We decided together
that there need to be consequences if we should break our agreement.
Next week, an Essential Agreement sign off sheet will be sent home for
you to review and sign with your child. We learned what SELF CONTROL
should look like by participating in a silly bubble activity. Your child has
their very own bubbles in their backpack today. Be sure to ask them what
SELF CONTROL looks like  Finally, we took time to share our HELPING
HANDS from the summer time. It was so nice to see what KIND friends we
have in Room 217.
Notes from Ringmaster Cornali
*No School on Monday 9/1. Happy Labor Day!
*Picture Day is on Tuesday, September 23rd.
*Open House on Thursday 9/11.
*Scholastic Book Orders due 9/12.