First Grade Home to School Connection
Week of September 5th
Open House
I look forward to meeting families at open house on
the 15th. You will get to see your child’s classroom and will learn
about your child’s year of learning in first grade. If you have any questions,
please feel to email me at anytime. Please check this site each week to keep yourself up to date with
classroom happenings.
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Right now the children are learning some sight words, and there
are lots of ways you can help your child become a skilled reader.
Skilled readers glance at
a page of printed matter and get meaning almost instantly. They can do this because they recognize the
words and the meanings so rapidly that the words do not seem to come between
them and the meaning at all.
*Sight words are words that we know at sight. As soon as we see them, we know what they
are. We memorize them, just as children
memorize McDonald's, pizza and Barbie.
*Sight words are service words.
If children don't know them "by sight", they spend a lot of
time struggling with their reading.
Helping with Sight Words
The words on the Dolch 220 Basic Sight Vocabulary list make up
65-70% of the running words in early readers and children's picture books. We
also include Fundation sight words on our list.
*Our sight vocabulary continues to grow throughout our lives. As adult readers, we rarely find words in our
recreational reading that we don't know; however, we often find new words in
our instructional reading.
As children begin learning sight words, let them work with a few
new words at a time so they don't become discouraged. It is very important that children see this
as a game and that you call attention to words they know with "one
look" rather than calling attention to the words they don't know. (SRA
DOLCH READING PROGRAM)
Sight Words a
all am an and are
at can come
did do for get
go have here I is
in it
like look me
my on out
put said see
the that to up
was went what
when who why where
you your with
(Partial List to begin with, more to follow)
Check out the Kindergarten
Word Wall Page on m on m website. Your child should also know how to spell
these words so that will assist in both reading and writing. We will be working on the Trick Word Wall
Words all year. These are the FUNdations
words.
ESSENTIAL Question: What are
the letter names, their sounds and how do you write them?
Please check out the first Fundations unit on my
website. It is the last one at the bottom.
It explains what we are doing. It
is a review from Kindergarten.
Charts and writing paper is also
available for you online to use at home.
I will not be sending this home.
It is your responsibility to run it off.
If you are unable to, please email me and I will send it home. I really want to do my part in helping the
environment and not over whelm you with papers.
Math Connects:
Trimester Math Essential Questions
●What are the next ____numbers after ____?
●How many are in this set? How can you write the numeral?
●What number comes before ______?
●What number comes after______?
●Explain with pictures, words, or equations: What is a turnaround fact?
●How does a turnaround fact help you learn math facts?
●Use manipulatives to show a number sentence for:
--Addition
--Subtraction
●What is a fact family?
●What does an equal sign mean?
Writing
Essential
Question: What is a complete sentence? What elements does it need (capital, spacing,
neatness and punctuation mark) to be a complete sentence?
We are
working on writing a complete sentence.
They should contain all of the above.
Please reinforce this at home.
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Reminders: ***Bring
a labeled Water Bottle Daily it is still warm and children get thirsty.
Students may bring their water bottles to gym. PLEASE label with their name.
***ORDER
Books online at Scholastic. Check out
the link on our webpage.
***PLEASE
send in money for Scholastic/Science News.
***HOMEWORK
will begin next week. Please check your child’s folder daily. Completed work does not have to be returned
until Friday.