Activities for Sept. 27- Oct. 1

Reading: This week begins lesson 8. You may go to www.storytown.com first grade to find multiple activities pertaining to lesson 8. You will also find the story that we will be reading. It would be wonderful if you would have your child practice reading this story. We will look at the details of the story and use graphic organizers to test our comprehension of what we have read. Also, this week I am going to stress reading with expression

Vocabulary: applauded, chatty, gather, duty, envy, resent
Our high frequency words for the week are don’t, her, lie, Mr., new, says, and water.

Spelling:
then
them
his
that
path
with
ten
get
said
was

Phonics: Our focus this week will be the digraph th and initial blends with s. Look for these words while reading each night.

Sight Words: Hopefully you have read the note about the change in how we do sight words. Practice reading all the words that are not highlighted. Please leave the list in the sheet protector. Do not highlight the words that they read for you. I will do that as they read them for me each week. As soon as they master all the words on that sheet, they will receive their next set of words. They will also move their card to the next “club” level. The students are so excited about the change. This seems to really motivate them to practice their words. It is so important that parents spend some time each afternoon reviewing these words with their child. If there is a parent that would like to volunteer going over sight words with children at the same day and time each week it would be greatly appreciated. Unfortunately, some children don’t receive any assistance at home.

Handwriting: I am sure you have noticed that I stress neat and legible handwriting. Practicing at home would be very helpful. You can go to www.handwritingworksheets.com and design your own.

Math: We will continue to analyze graphs and review counting by 2, 5, and 10. As always we will add and subtract. Please review their math minute each night. I am so amazed at how quickly children are learning new skills.

Science: For the next two weeks we will learn about the characteristics of living and non-livings things. We will study all of the main animal groups. Look for information about a special project to be done at home. Each child will be assigned an animal to research and display their information and pictures on poster board.

Reminders: “Bucket-filling” week. Refer to the note sent home by Sharon Bowen.

Activities for Sept. 20-24

Reading: Lesson 7 This week we will continue to work on sequence of events and main idea. Please continue to read daily with your child and color a leaf for each night that they read to you. We will begin taking AR tests this week as well. I will send home a summary report of their scores every two weeks. Our high frequency words are day, eat, first, said, time, and was.

Phonics: Short vowel e and beginning and ending sounds

Grammar: exclamations

Spelling:
set
get
sent
all
ten
tell
make
let
of
call

Sight Words: Review these words each night. There are 1,000 words in all to learn. We can't waste time having to repeat the same words week to week.


Writing: Sentences about events. What might happen if you never grew up?

Math: This week our focus will be on using a calendar. We will continue to work on more/less, before/after, between, addition fact pairs, and patterns.

Social Studies: We will continue to study map skills. We will also study major points of interest in the United states such as the Rocky Mountains, Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, and the Redwoods. To get ready for our upcoming fieldtrip, we are going to discuss community helpers. Start talking to child about what they think they want to be when they grow up. Give them some ideas about what that person does. They will have a writing lesson about this later in the week. Also look for information to come home about the letter that students will write to a friend or family member. You will need to provide an address for them to use.

Reminders:
Slushy day is Wednesday, Sept. 22. Please send $1.00 for your child.

Don’t forget about our fieldtrip on Friday. Students will need to bring a sack lunch for the ride on the Bama Belle. Drinks will be provided. We will leave from school to enjoy breakfast at IHOP. Parents may join us at the fire station downtown for the remainder of our journey. It’s going to be a wonderful day and I am looking forward to this great experience for the children.

A special thanks to the parents that have already come for our conference. I look forward to meeting with the rest!

Activities for Sept. 13-17

Reading: This week brings us to lesson 6. We will read stories that relate to our maps and globes unit. We will be able to classify and categorize information after our reading is done. Our high frequency words are of, some, how, and make. Our new vocabulary words are commotion, muffle, overflowing, locate, search, and symbol. Please continue to read daily and color the leaves in your folder. Our Scholastic News has arrived and we are excited to start reading from it. We will also read the story of The Three Little Pigs and put the story in sequential order. We will also learn our contractions.

Phonics: Variant vowel ô/a (all) Look for this particular sound in words in your library book.

Spelling: Test this Friday. Study each night.
all
call
fall
wall
ball
not
top
tall
much
thank


Writing: We will write about places this week. We will tell something special about that place and use our descriptive words to inform others what it looks like. We will make sure that we begin sentences with capital letters and end our sentences with periods.

Math: We will begin a geometry unit this week. It is important that we know what a quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, and octagon looks like. We need to be able to label the sides, angles and vertex of a figure. We will also order shapes by size. Please continue to drill math facts at home. Review their Math Minute that comes home each day.

Social Studies: We begin a unit on map and globe skills. Over the next two weeks we will learn how to read a compass rose, map key, and recognize map symbols. We will also use coordinate points to locate places on a map. We will learn about significant places in the United States during this time as well. If you have any old maps around the house, could you please donate them to our class?

Reminders: I have already enjoyed meeting with several parents to discuss their child’s progress. If you have not scheduled an appointment yet, please do so by Wednesday, Sept. 15. I must speak with each parent in person or by phone.

Friday we will enjoy a lesson in TaekwonDo. I may live to regret this!

If you have not paid for the “All Around Town” fieldtrip yet, please do so as soon as possible. If you need another form just let me know.

If you sold items for the fundraiser please return your order forms by Tuesday.
Please remind children that all toys should remain at home. I also ask that students not wear silly bands or bracelets. These become distractions in the classroom.

Activities for Sept. 6-10

Reading: This week begins lesson 5. We will be reading about jobs that people have. We will think about the characters from each story as we also recognize the story structure. Please continue to read each night and color a leaf for each book read. Our high frequency words this week are find, much, and thank. Our new vocabulary is horrible, invigorated, and presented.

Phonics: We will work with words that have the short o vowel sound. We will also recognize the inflections –ed and –ing.

Spelling: Test on Friday. Study!
top
lot
hop
back
hot
pick
not
oh
dot
yes

Writing: We will be writing our own book this week titled Children, Children, What do you……..? Each table will be responsible to write about the things they see, while the other tables write about the things they hear, smell, taste, and touch. This will be compiled into one book that the children can bring home for one night to share with the family.

Sight words:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Math: This week we will be learning our ordinal numbers. We will learn how to identify and write them. We will also concentrate on our addition facts as well. Tuesday we will have fun with a watermelon. We will guess how many seeds are inside. We will then slice and eat the sweet, juicy watermelon counting the seeds as we go. A prize will be awarded to the person that came the closest to the correct number. Afterwards we will go outside to have a seed spitting contest. I wonder who can spit a seed the farthest?

Science: We will continue to study our five senses. This week we will concentrate on our senses of smell, taste, and touch. Friday will be the culmination of our unit. We will have a popcorn party. We will read The Popcorn Book then microwave some hot, buttery popcorn. We will guess how many seeds won’t pop then count to find out if we were close to the number. We will talk about how the kernel changed its form and use descriptive words as we write about its texture, smell, and taste.

Activities for August 23-27

Reading: This week we will read about Big Rig trucks and the people that drive them. We will summarize our stories by choosing good beginning, middle, and ending sentences. We will also classify and categorize information from the stories as well. A fall DIBELS report is coming home today for you to review. We will begin working in our reading groups this week. If you have any questions about how you can help your child improve, please set up a conference time with me.

Phonics: This week’s highlighted vowel sound is short i. It would be wonderful if your child could identify words with the short vowel i when they are reading to you at home.

Spelling: Lesson 3 Review daily. We will locate these words in various texts and we will practice writing and using them in sentences. Test on Friday. Please practice writing them at home in all lower case letters and writing letters in the correct direction. b,d,and s seem to be a problem with several.
in
did
pin
had
pig
sat
big
no
dig
too

Writing: This week we will write about the things that we can do and the things that we want to learn to do. We will pick out the naming part of the sentence. We will continue to make sure that we are beginning the sentences with capital letters and ending with the correct punctuation. The children will then illustrate their stories. I am especially enjoying reading the letters that they write to me. It really makes your day when one tells you that they love you or that you are beautiful. I could just take a bite out of their sweet faces!

Math: We will work with picture and bar graphs this week. This should be a lot of fun as we graph everything from our birthday to the color of M&M’s in a pack. We will also start to work with story problems and decide what is the best way to find the answer.

Social Studies: Our unit of study about transportation and communication past and present continues. This week we will discuss everything from cable cars to rockets. I love to watch their faces as I tell them about things from the past. They are so interested and they think it is all so cool.

Reminders: Don’t forget to send a snack with your child daily. Some children are purchasing desserts when they really need to eat more of their lunch. I really think that it would be best if they just purchased a dessert on Fridays. Getting hiped up on sugary sweets and still having class work to do doesn’t always work well together. I think that I will try that this week and see how it goes.

Activities for August 16-20

Phonics: We will continue to work with the short vowel a.

Reading: We will begin lesson 2 of Storytown. We will continue to work on retelling and making predictions about the stories we read. Hopefully we will be able to check out library books soon. Please listen to your child read each night. They need to color a backpack on the August sheet in the take home folder for each book that they read to you at home. Students will take the DIBELS test on Friday at 8:30. This will determine reading groups. Please practice reading before then.

Sight words: We reviewed our sight words from where we left off at the end of kindergarten. Your child's individual words will go home in their take home folder.

Spelling: Lesson 2
Can you use them in a sentence?
hat bag
had at
sad can
sat help
bat now

Writing: We will write about what our lives would be like without things such as microwaves, televisions, telephones, etc. We will work on our word order and beginning our sentences with capital letters and ending our sentences with periods.

Math: Students are doing well on the minute math sheets. Please review over this paper each night with your child. As you can see it repeats some of the same skills but gradually adds on a new one. We will also work in our numbers booklet this week. Students will need to know their address and phone number. Please start practicing this now. For safety reasons, they should know this important information. Also, continue to work with your child each day on addition and subtraction facts.

Social Studies: We completed our farm unit. Students should be able to tell you something about each animal we studied and about how a farm runs from planting to harvesting. We will begin a new unit on the past and present. We will investigate the various forms of transportation and communication from many years ago to today. I have a feeling that they are going to make me feel very old when I talk about black and white TV’s, eight tracks, and phonographs!

Reminders: If you would like to donate extra snacks and juices for those children that don’t bring any, it would be very much appreciated. It breaks my heart to see a child left out.

Please send lunch money or checks in a sealed envelope with your child’s name, teacher, and amount clearly labeled.

Again this year, teachers will not be receiving an allocation from the state to purchase items for their classrooms. It would be appreciated if you could make a donation to Mrs. Miller’s class. We can always show you an account for every dollar spent. I ordered Scholastic News for each child that we should be receiving soon.

Please collect all BoxTops for our class. TPS collected more than any school in the state last year.

Contact me at mlee@tcss.net

Pictures from Mrs. Miller

Hey Everyone! Mrs. Lee has kept me posted on the beginning of the year, and it sounds like we are off to a good start! She LOVES our class just like I do, and it sounds like there is lots of fun to go around!!

My family is doing great and adjusting to being at home. I don't know what we did without Morgan...Neal Thomas is a super big brother!! Mr. Kelley and I feel so very blessed! Here are a few pictures of our family! I hope to go and visit the school soon just to say HEY to your sweet children!

Morgan Virginia Miller

Neal Thomas meeting Morgan for the first time! He checked her out...from head to toe!

Leaving the hospital!

HOME! Now the real fun can begin!!