As the spring flowers begin to blossom, so do the writers in first grade. Our prewriting skills include considering what we want to say and how we want to say it. Once we identify our topic we are working on supporting it with descriptive sentences that include nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. During our drafting process we check to make sure our thoughts are organized and in the right order. When editing our writing we check for complete sentences, punctuation, capitalization, and neatness. We are also sharing our work with our classmates so they can offer suggestions to improve our writing samples.
During the first couple of weeks in April our phonics will focus on working with the new suffix ending –es. The students will learn to add the suffix to base words with closed syllables. Towards the end of the month, we will be adding two new suffix endings to words, ed and ing.
Our Language Arts centers have become a bit more challenging. They include reading stories and answering comprehension questions, writing letters that include a header and closing, and using more detailed graphic organizers when responding to a story.
In math the children shall learn the value of a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, half-dollar and dollar. They will also learn how to count a mixed group of coins by skip counting. Finally, the students will make change using coin manipulatives. Later, they will measure length, liquid capacity, and weight, using both metric units and customary units. They will also learn how to measure temperature. Some books to read together to develop these concepts are Me and the Measure of Things, by Joan Sweeney and Measuring Penny, by Loreen Leedy.
In Social Studies you will find us discussing Earth Day and why it is important. Our Time for Kids series will include such topics as Becoming An Earth Day Hero, current events, and poetry month. The TFK minibook introduces the children to Jack Prelutsky, our country’s first Children’s Poet Laureate. Highlighted in the minibook are some poems from his latest collection of poetry, My Dog May Be a Genius.
Milissa Cafarella
Pam Meehan