January News from Room 35

 Dear Room 35 Families,

   HAPPY NEW YEAR!  Welcome back to school.  I hope that you all had a delightful holiday vacation and this new year brings happiness, health, and peace in your lives. Thank you parents for your kind donations in adopting our classroom.  The funds will certainly facilitate the purchase of literature books for our reading groups.  I am blessed to be working with such supportive families.

     Can you believe that half of our first grade year is almost at an end?  January will be an exciting month in our room with new learning themes, skills, and activities.  I missed the Pugsters during vacation. 

 Here are our January themes, concepts, and highlights. 

Math

Reading

*Counting money, nickels, dimes, pennies and coin exchange. *Solving addition and subtractions problems by skip counting using a number line. * Telling time, hour and half-hour. * Solve addition and subtraction number stories. * Using standard units for measuring length. Making timelines. * Finding sums with missing addends. * Calculating values of pennies, nickels, and dimes. * Order and compare numbers to 22. * Review using thermometers to tell temperatures to the nearest two degrees. * Continue working on number sense (comparing numbers, frames and arrows, ordering numbers, counting forward and back, counting by 2s, 5s, 10s, using a number line.

Week 1 - Owl Unit  *  Students will be learning about nocturnal animals, hibernation, and and owls.  We will be reading fiction and nonfiction books about these topics.  Our literature study will include the book, OWL AT HOME by Arnold Lobel. Weeks 2 and 3- Hibernating animals - bears. *  Students will be reading fiction and nonfiction books about bears.  This will be their first research project.  Students will question, research to answer their questions, and create a project about their topic.  Our literature circles will be reading LITTLE BEAR and POLAR BEARS PAST BEDTIME (Magic Tree House), and BALTO.

          Social Studies topics will include famous Americans.  Our first focus of study will be significant contributions Americans have made in our country.  In January, will will learn about Martin Luther King, Jr.  We will continue working on geography skills.

         Science - we will conclude our study of magnets with Mrs. Cregier.  Our new unit will be about liquids and solids.

        Phonics, Word Study, Spelling - We will continue to work on long vowels, blends, dipthongs, digraphs,and double vowel sounds.  Students will have weekly word work to take home.  The words will include the word patterns we are studying as well as the Dolch sight words that they should practice reading and writing.

    Reading - The following reading process skills will be reviewed and reinforced. 

  * Setting a purpose for reading - asking questions before, during, and after reading. Making a prediction.

  * Sequencing the events of a story, beginning, middle, and end.

  * Strategies to decode unknown words

  * Making inferences

  * Visualization

  * Summarization and retell

  * Story elements (characters, setting, events, problem, and conclusion)

  * Cause and effect

  * Making inferences

  * Connecting the reading text to self, other texts, or the world.

  * Reading for enjoyment, developing fluency, and reading to learn.

  Students will be working with identifying the main idea and details that support the main idea in texts.  In writer's workshop, they will practice making main idea and details graphic organizers.  The graphic organizers will be used as their guide in writing a report and other written publications.

  Writer's Workshop - we will continue to work on our application of the writing process.  Students will be refining skills in the areas of sentence structure, punctuation, capitals, and composition.  We will continue to identify common and proper nouns and verbs.  We will learn about descriptive language using our senses to help us write more interesting writing pieces. We will journey through diverse literature genres.  Students will also be writing poems. This month, they will begin learning how to graphically organize information to be used in their written research projects. 

                   HAPPY JANUARY BIRTHDAYS

    There are no January birthdays this month.  For any of our Room 35 families who celebrate a birthday this month, we give you our wishes for a happy day .