Ms. Soulas' Classroom 2019-2020

Here are some highlights from the short week... This week in Reader's Workshop, we introduced Partner Reading! Partner reading allows for more time to practice strategies, build fluency, check for understanding, hear their own voice and time to share in this learning community. It also increases reading involvement, attention and collaboration. They practiced the three different ways to read to a partner: Echo read (take turns reading the same thing) See-Saw read (take turns reading different things) Choral read (read the same thing at the same time) When you are reading with your first grader at home, I encourage you to practice these different ways of reading together! In writing this week, we focused on sentence structure. We talked about how to make a complete sentence (subject and predicate) and how to make a STRONG complete sentence. To support our sentence structure and strengthening, we did a "sentence extension" activity. Students made paper fans and...

The first grade readers are developing their strong reading habits and using their strong strategies for solving tricky words in their books. As we continue to build our reading stamina, we will also add strategies to our tool belts so when we get stuck on a word, we know what to do! In writing this week, we wrapped up our Small Moment Narrative writing unit! It is amazing to see how the first grader's stories have come to life. They practiced each part of the writing process (think, plan, write, revise) and worked hard to make their writing stronger! I am so proud of their growth and they were beaming with pride when finishing their check-ins! Our mathematicians have continued to study the commutative property. This week we practiced our "short cut" where the larger addend becomes a structure from which to count on. They have been working through story problems and playing cooperative games to help build on and support these strategies. Here's an example of a pr...

Here are some highlights from the week... Out first week of "Walk to Word Study" was a success! The kiddos have impressed me with their smooth transitions and focus during that time. Check in with your first grader about the spelling patterns that they are studying! When we get to tricky words in our JUST RIGHT books, we work to solve them! Sometimes we can have some bad habits when solving words, but when we know what they are, we can drop them and pick up good habits instead!  We focused on dropping those bad reading habits and picking up good habits. Some bad reading habits that we want to drop are: The Freeze The Tell Me The Mumble When we come to a tricky word, sometimes we freeze up, we ask someone to tell us what it is, mumble through the word, or we just guess. Instead we want to pick up good habits. Some good reading habits that we want to pick up are: Check the picture Look at ALL the parts of a word Flip the sound When you are reading at home, ma...

Here are some highlights from the week... We started the week with Run for the Arts - and wow, we have some speedy first graders! Just like the first graders having been practicing their reading and writing stamina, they got a chance to show off their running stamina as well! Thanks to all of the volunteers that spent the morning at Stephenson cheering on the runners and punching their cards for each lap they ran.  In math, we have been building our fluency and number sense by using number bonds. Number bonds are a tool that help us understand the relationship between numbers and how they break apart. Through number bonds, students start making connections between addition and subtraction as well. We also spent a lot of time this week discussing and proving that numbers are even or odd. I encourage you to practice number bonds at home - you can ask your first grader to show all the ways to make 9 using number bonds.  Here are some examples: In readers workshop, we pract...