Ms. Soulas' Classroom 2019-2020

Here are some highlights for the week... A HUGE shout out to Carrie (Eleanor's mom), Matt (Eleanor's dad) and Kim (Grant's mom) for organizing/facilitating our class auction art project! The first graders used paint markers to design and decorate wooden chips.The unique wooden chips will come together to form a beautiful collage with all the first grade designs. Can't wait to see the final masterpiece at the auction! We had some serious publishing happening this week! The first graders planned, wrote, revised and edited their writing, and ultimately put it on our fancy publishing paper using sharpies! It was an extensive process and I truly appreciate all the adult support as the first graders diligently worked on making their writing stronger! We will be submitting the book order forms and they should arrive in a couple weeks :) The week ended with Grandparents/Special Friends' Day! It was truly special to see and meet all of the guests in Room 112, and the f...

Here are some highlights from the week... In reading, we are continuing to practice strategies for decoding tricky words. Our main focus has been identifying when there is a tricky word and solving it right away. The first graders are working hard to build their stamina - reading longer and stronger! Here are some strategies to reinforce when your first grader is reading at home: Check the picture Look at all of the parts of the word Try it 2 ways (flip the sound) Check-it and do a double check (does it look right? sound right? make sense?) Get a running start Context (use the words around the word to figure it out) This week we learned "how to" make our How-To writing even stronger, with an introduction! To create a strong introduction for our how-to books we need to include 3 parts: hook, telling your topic, listing the materials. Here's an example from one of our first grade writers: First, we start by asking a question "have you ever wondered how to ...

Here are some highlights... We started our new writing unit - How-To writing! The first graders get to be writers and teachers in this unit. They are practicing sequencing and structuring informational writing. We are already learning so many things from our How-To authors: How to draw a beaver, how to ride a bike, how to pick out glasses, and so much more! In math, we are continuing to build our number sense and understanding of number relationships. We learned a game called "missing addends." This is a game you can play at home! There there are 2 "card keepers" who each have a card with a number on it (1-10), but they do not see their own number card. It is the audience's job to figure out the sum of the 2 cards and tell the card keepers. Once they know the sum, the card keepers try to figure out what number is on their card based on the number on the other card. The first graders were really excited about figuring out the missing addends! This week, we ...