Week 26 - February 25 - March 1

Thank you so much for taking the time to read our weekly news. Last week we had an exciting time celebrating! It was such an exciting week! First grade enjoyed sharing their learning with KG students and our CAC community has enjoyed reading our review writing. The students also had the opportunity to share what they had been doing in music.

The students were also very enthusiastic and excited about the Lego creativity celebration. Look at some of their creations below.

 

 

Reading to KG

Telling KG how we are the boss of our reading.

Music Informance

From the Curriculum Corner

Readers Workshop

Dramatizing Characters

Essential Questions:

- How do you bring characters to life?
- What is the role of the director?

This week we begin our new unit, Dramatizing Characters. Students will be learning that knowing characters with greater intimacy will help bring characters and stories to life through drama and storytelling. This week students will be learning how to step into a character's shoes, thinking about the characters feelings. We will also be working in our partnerships with twin books to discuss important parts and do some deep thinking as you act out these parts.

Writers Workshop

From Scenes to Series: Writing Fiction

Essential Question:

- How can I use what I have learnt from other authors to help me?
- When I want to tell my story to other people, what steps can I take to revise my first draft to make it better?

This week we begin our new unit, From Scenes to Series. Students will be making reading-writing connections, studying mentor authors whose work they admire, and trying out craft moves to lift the level of their own work. Writers will strive to write stronger and longer books and partnerships will work together to ask critical question and encourage each other to elaborate during the exciting parts of the story.

This week students will become serious fiction writers and do some serious pretending. Writers will imagine pretend characters and make up adventures. Students will develop a "can do" attitude, taking charge of their writing and giving themselves reminders.
Writers will learn about how to write exciting endings for their character's adventures as this keeps their readers satisfied and happy. Students will continue to use all they know about spelling and punctuation to make their writing easy to read.

HELP NEEDED

If you are a family that eats cereal for breakfast, please save the boxes. We are needing cereal boxes for our writing unit. Please start saving them now and send them to school when it is convenient for you.

Math

Essential Question:

- What are efficient ways to count?
- How does counting by tens and ones help you count larger numbers?
- What is place value?
- How does a digit's position affect it's place value?
- How can numbers be expressed and compared?
- In what way can numbers be composed and decomposed?

This week our first grade mathematicians will begin learning a new tool called tape diagrams. Students will use tape diagrams to represent problems pictorially. Through out this week students will continue developing their skills of adding single-digit numbers to double-digit numbers.
Students will recognize and make use of part-whole relationships within tape diagrams when solving a variety of problems.

Parent Tips Topic E

Social Studies

Essential Question: 

-How do families grow and change over time?

In Social Studies, first graders will be coming to the end of our family units. Last week we enjoyed learning about games children played long ago and making comparisons to today. This week we will reflect on our learning about how families have changed over time.

Leap Frog

Doing tricks with a hoop

Marbles

Knuckle Bones

CIRCLE SOLUTIONS:

1C This week 1C will be discussing conflict. People see things differently and want different things. We will discuss how to manage conflict and strategies to use when involved in a disagreement.

1M  This week we will work on building resilience. How does it feel to be successful, and how to react to feelings of fear, frustration and/or anxiety that challenging tasks can bring.

1S  This week we will contine focusing on cooperation and fairness, students will learn about what 'ingredients' we need in 1S to make our classroom a place that is fair and enables all students to work with each other in a supportive and cooperative way. Students will have fun identifying situations that are 'fair' or 'unfair' and then in small groups create their own recipe for a fair and cooperative classroom.

Interesting Reading

We have noticed some of our first grade students aren't always honest in their responses. It is common for children from a young age to experiment with the truth. "Teaching children about the importance of honesty early and teaching them how to resolve situations so they don't need to rely on will ensure they will be honest -- most of the time," says Victoria Talwar, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at McGill University in Montreal. 

Below is an interesting article with practical advice on how to help our children to be honest.

Age by age guide to being honest

After School Activities

There are no after school activities this week. Sign up for session 3 begins on March 4

Going home arrangements

A reminder that if your child's going home arrangements change please do not rely on emailing the classroom teacher to send a message to your child. Teachers are teaching and cannot always check emails. Please always send an email to the ES office as well.

Important Dates to Remember:

A Friendly reminder that ASA session 2 is over, so students should be going home at their regular time 3:05 starting this Sunday, February 25th.

March 4 - 10: ASA session 3 sign up
March 7: Early release day (Students dismissed at 11:30)
March 8: CAC holiday
March 14: Parent / Teacher conferences (No school for students)
March 18: ASA session 3 begins


If you have any other questions or concerns about this week, please don't hesitate to contact your classroom teacher.

Your Partners in Learning,

Taryn Carr (tcarr@cacegypt.org)
Gaby Morales (gmorales@cacegypt.org)

Charlie Saunders (csaunders@cacegypt.org)