Dear Parents,               April 28, 2014

I hope all had a blessed Easter and enjoyable break!

Our reading strategy this week is questioning.  Reading the title, looking at the pictures and stopping to ask oneself questions, are strategies good readers use.  The comprehension skill that will help us with understanding a story is compare and contrast.  Understanding how events, characters, etc. are the same and how they are different leads us to a better understanding of the story.  Our phonics focus this week is on the vowel pairs, oi, oy as in boy or oil and aw, au as in saw or sauce.  We are also learning the suffixes –ful, -ly, and –y and our grammar focus is on using describing words.  This week, our spelling words will be common sight words that are used in our writing and are often misspelled. Monday night will be the usual Rainbow Write but Tuesday and Wednesday will be writing 6 complete sentences each day with these words. The words are posted to spellingcity.com under the list “Sight Words”.  Don’t forget to practice!

In Math we will begin our new unit on Geometry!! We will begin by focusing on attributes and an introduction to a number of shapes!

In Science we will be closing our chapter on seasons by observing our “Spring” and “Winter” plants one final time. Which one do you think grew the most?? 🙂

In Social Studies we will be continuing on with our study of “My Country, My Heroes” which will include reading about George Washington and other important figures in our history, learning about Christopher Columbus, and learning a new skill: how to read a diagram!

In Religion we will be spending our time learning about the Mother of our Church- Mary and reviewing the significance of Easter. In addition first grade is responsible for the May Crowning, which will take place on Friday around 9:30 (after our school mass) in the church. Most of your children have speaking parts and will have a packet coming home on Monday to practice. We will have a beautiful procession in with flowers and finish with the crowning of Mary. I hope to see you all there!

Announcements for the week:

• Please remind your student to bring their library book on Tuesday so that they may check out another one.
• On Friday, we will have our school mass at 8:30am. Please join us if your schedule allows. This mass will be followed by our May Crowning. See the information under religion for more details.
• Friday is a full day!

Have a fantastic week!

Ms. Manning