Weekly Wrap-Up

It was a jam-packed week here in first grade. The N.E.D. assembly on Monday morning pushed the spelling test to the afternoon, which was unfortunate since we also had a math unit assessment.  I was really proud of how the kids handled and performed on this difficult afternoon.  You should be very proud as well.  Tuesday saw us at DeBucks corn maze and pumpkin patch.  This was a wonderful experience for the class and the chaperones.  A big shout out to Dana, Ryan and Ruth for volunteering because we could not have done it without you!  I hope you all enjoyed the pumpkins at home. Also please take advantage of our fabulous new healthy snack sign up sheet Kelly created for us.  

Let’s see what we were up to this week, onto the highlights…

Math:

We began the week assessing what was retained from unit two.  I looked over the results and the class is on a very good path with their math instruction.  After we finished up with the assessment on Monday, we dove into unit three on Tuesday.  If you looked over your unit three family letter (which I highly recommend since it is a fabulous resource) that I sent home on Tuesday, you saw that we have started work with number stories.  We also worked more with solving addition and subtraction stories that have an unknown number.  On Friday we played a little catch-up on some work we missed over the week. 

Writing:

We had a writing assessment on Monday that was sandwiched between our spelling test and math unit assessment.  I do not like to overload students with so many assessments, but we were up against a deadline.  We also spent time focusing on the setting of a story and how we can incorporate that into the beginning portion of our writing.  I used a graphic organizer to help the kids organize their thoughts from our trip to DeBucks.  I will be looking to utilize graphic organizers more in the classroom as they are a wonderful tool and are emphasized heavily with the Common Core State Standards. 

Phonics:

We focused a lot on vowels and consonants in phonics this week.  This involved several different center activities that the kids completed independently to practice the concepts.

These were the major highlights, but by no means all that we did.   It was a jam-packed week and the class performed brilliantly.  Until next week….all told.