​  This Month in Grade 1 – April

Hello Again!  We would love to have some feedback on whether you like the month at a glance, or you prefer the week at a glance.  If you have a comment either way, please let us know. 

Date to Remember:

April 3 – Report cards went home.  Please sign the insert and send it back along with the envelope.

April 6 – Jump Rope for heart presentation

April 10 – No School for students – Student Led conferences    (Remember to bring your child with you) 

There will be stations set up for your child to share with you as well as a chance to talk with me about any concerns you may have. 

April 10 – 13 – The book fair is open in the library

April 14 & 17 – No school for students (Good Friday and Easter Monday)

April 20 – Sock Hop - $2

April 21 – Violin students at Music Festival 9:45 FHS

April 27 – Hot Lunch orders for May are due.  Mmmmmm

April 28 – Professional Learning Day for teachers – No school for students

Literacy  

Oral Language – Students have really been enjoying the brown bag biographies

Goals we are working on:

I can express my thoughts and feelings and talk about things that have happened to me.

I can ask and answer questions to get more information. 

I can listen to other people when they tell their thoughts and opinions

Writing (all month) – We are just finishing fiction writing and we return to personal narratives.  (students are still welcome to write fiction in Daily 5 writing though if they want to).

Focus is still on a good beginning, middle and end of the story as well as supporting details in the middle.  Still focusing on students’ personal writing goals as well, including: uppercase letters in the correct places only, punctuation, adding descriptive words, stretching out unknown words, etc.

We will also do some demand writing this month where we give students a topic and we brainstorm some ideas around it together.  Then they all write about that topic that day (can be fact or fiction).

Weekly goals:

Week 1 - April 3 – 7

Words of the week: house, our, new now, some

Word family: IGHT  (bright, light, sight, night, etc)

Week 2 and Week 3– April 10 – 21

Words of the week: could, would, they, back, talk

Word family: ACK (back, sack, tack, pack, etc.)

Review of sound teams (ee, ow, a_e, etc.) and letter blends (ch,

 th, br, spr, etc)

Poetry

Week 4 – April 24 – 28

            Words of the Week: before, one, asked, right, has, name

            Word family review: IGHT

            Review adjectives (describing words)

            Poetry

Math

We will continue our unit on numbers to 100 for the first of the month.  Counting forward by 2’s to 20, 5’s and 10’s to 100.  Skip count with coins.  (grab a handful of dimes, nickels, and pennies (if you have any still around) and work on skip counting. Practice writing numerals with no reversals.  Counting on and counting back from a variety of numbers to 100 (count from 56 – 70 or from 99 – 79)

We will still continue to work on mental math strategies as well this month.  New strategy: Using addition to solve subtraction (19-14=___ is the same as 14+ ___ = 19  Count on from 14 to 19 to get the answer).

Towards the end of the month we will introduce measurement as well. 

Compare shapes by their attributes (number of flat faces, edges, corners, roll/doesn’t roll, etc)

Sort 2D shapes and 3D objects by their attributes and explain the sorting rule.  (these shapes all have a circle face – cone, cylinder)

Compare 2D shapes to parts of 3D objects.

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