The 100th Day is February 3

Amazingly we are almost at our 100th day of school! Next Wednesday, February 3 is our 100th day and we will be doing lots of fun things related to the number 100 throughout the day. There is nothing that students need to bring in to school (some students have asked about needing to bring in 100 of something as they may have done in Kindergarten or pre-school) but there will be plenty of fun activity that day. In first grade each of the four teachers runs a station where students do an activity related to the number 100. The students rotate between the four classrooms so that they all get to do each activity during the day! This is always lots of fun. Since the day will have a different schedule than usual, if you volunteer in our room on Wednesdays please plan not to come next week. Things on Wednesday will not be "business as usual." Stay tuned for photos!

Weather

Our class has finished our social studies unit on mapping and we are moving on to a science unit focused on weather. We started by reading this book today and discussing weather words like humidity, clouds, wind, temperature, fog, rain, snow, and forecast. We have also begun looking up and marking the day's forecasted temperature on a big thermometer in class. You could try discussing the forecast and weather words with your child at home now too!

Nonfiction Text Features

During this trimester we have shifted our focus during readers' workshop to be mainly focused on nonfiction as opposed to fiction texts. We have been learning about the difference between informational nonfiction and narrative nonfiction (nonfiction that sounds like a story -- biographies are a good example of this) and lately we have been learning about nonfiction text features. When reading at home you might try going on a nonfiction text feature hunt looking for things like the table of contents, glossary, index, headings, labels, captions, photographs, text boxes, and more! The photos below show us working on a text feature hunt with last Friday's Scholastic News Magazine about children's nonfiction author/photographer Nic Bishop. Look for his books at the library. They are great!

Opinion Writing

This trimester first graders have been working on opinion writing. We started by learning the difference between fact and opinion then did some writing about our own opinions on different topics. Our class is now learning to listen to a book, determine the author's opinion, and write about that opinion with supporting details from the text! Big stuff! This week we read a book called Goats are Great, used a graphic organizer to write down the opinion and supporting details from the text, then wrote our own pieces using the graphic organizer!

New Superintendent of Schools Search

As you may know our current superintendent of schools will be retiring at the end of this school year and the search for a new superintendent is currently underway. Next week there will be a meet and greet/Q&A session with the two finalists for the position and I wanted to pass that information along. 

On January 19th the community will have the opportunity to meet the finalists under consideration for the new Superintendent of Schools in the Colchester School District. The information is as follows:

Parent/Community
Meet & Greet Finalist Candidates for Superintendent

January 19, 2016
6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Colchester High School
Rooms 105-107 & 117-119*
*Candidates will spend 30 minutes in each room.

The King of -ing

This week in word study we have been focusing on the ending -ing. On Tuesday we were all "The King of -ing" and made crowns covered with -ing words to practice!

New Year!

Today was our first day of school in 2016. We read a book about New Year's Eve and one about New Year's Resolutions and worked on a fun activity called 2015: My Year in Review. We also discussed New Year's Resolutions as personal goals for getting better at something or doing something helpful. You might want to ask your child what their resolution might be!

This morning we started a new math unit on measurement and our year in review page had a section asking kids to record their height in inches. We took that as a fun opportunity to learn to use measuring tapes for finding each other's height!