Friday News for Week of January 25-29

Happy Friday!

This Week:

During Reading we looked at:

• How to use I and Me
• Long o words
• Different words to use other than “said” like “screamed, whispered, answered, barked, etc.” 
• We also finished up our How to Writing on Friday.

Math: We jumped into our new shiny Math Journal 2’s! We started with learning about math facts on dice, learned how to fill in number boxes, and learned about Fact Family. The students all did wonderful learning about the new things!

Bible: We learned the story of Samson this week. He was a special man and was very strong because of his long hair. Through his life, he helped the Israelites fight against their enemies the Philistines. But one day, he gave in and told Delilah his secret. She cut his hair and he was weak and captured by the Philistines. At the end of his life, after his hair grew back, he prayed one more time for God to give him strength and he was able to defeat a lot of the Philistines. We learned this week especially that, “It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.” Psalm 18:32

We even made Samson hair today as our craft

Social Studies: We started learning about the Post Office. Students learned what happens at a post office and we watched a video showing both an American post office and a Japanese post office. Next week, we will learn our address and practice addressing an envelope.

Next Week:

Spelling Words: by my ride bike like time nine dive find kind them would

Bible Memory: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;” Proverbs 3:5

Scholastic Book Order:

If you would like to order books from a form like this today, you can order in 2 ways: You can order in 2 ways:

1. Order by marking on the back of the paper the quantity (how many) and which book you want while adding up the total. Send that back to school with the money in US$ Dollars.

2. OR Order by Credit Card online.

Here is the website: http://world-schools.scholastic.co.uk/okinawa-christian-school-intl

You can now browse books online as well.

Or look back on this page for a detailed walk through on how to order: http://footprintsthrough1stgrade.blogspot.jp/2015/09/friday-news-for-week-of-august-31-sept.html

Valentine Grams: I sent the Valentine Gram forms home today. Sorry it is late notice, but the deadline to return it is Wednesday, Feb 3rd. You do not have to order and Valentine Grams, only if you would like to.

On Feburary 12th, if your child would like to, we’ll have a small Valentine exchanging party. It doesn’t have to be as much as the Christmas party, but if everyone wants to write a note or give a card with a candy, we will exchange Valentines in our class.

Upcoming Events:

Feb 5 - Progress Reports Sent Out

Feb 5 - Lower Elementary Spelling Bee

Feb 19 - Picture Retake Day for any students who are absent or want to redo their picture.

March 5th - BAZAAR! 1st grade got Lumpia! We are so excited! Please look at the form your child brought home today!

March 7th - No School - OCSI Holiday

March 18th - 3rd Quarter Ends!

March 21st - No School

March 25th - No School Good Friday

Friday News for Jan 19-23

Happy Friday!

This Week:

Reading: For reading, we focused on fluency and reading words with expression. We did a fun exercise where we read some numbers using ! ? . and , in between so we had to read it use our voice to go up or down. Try it!

1 2 3?

45.

6789.

10?

11, 12, 13, 14, and 15.

16!

17!

18?

Writing: We continued to write “How to…” writings.

Grammar: We were learning about pronouns.

Spelling Bee: We had our class spelling bee on Thursday and I am happy to announce that Leyna Alcantara, Hirohisa Fukuda, and Shuma Toyomoto will be going on to compete on Feb 5th against the 1st and 2nd graders. Good job to everyone on studying the Spelling Bee words!

Math: We finished up Unit 5 this week as we continued practicing the function machine, and math facts. We took our Unit 5 test today and everyone did great!

Bible: We have started learning about the cycle of the judges. After the Israelites settle down in Canaan, they start a cycle of forgetting about God and worshipping other idols, where then God allows their enemies to come and attack them, then they cry out to God for help, and God picks a judge to save them from their enemies where they then have peace. We learned that the first judge was Othniel. In today’s story, Gideon fought against the Midianites with only 300 men and God helped them win with them using a torch, jar, and horn.

Fun Friday today we made our own cars!

Next Week:

Spelling Words: go no so  boat  coat  rode  home  hope  old  told  give  said

Bible Memory: “It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.” Psalm 18:32

Upcoming Events:

Feb 5 - Progress Reports Sent Out

Feb 5 - Lower Elementary Spelling Bee

Feb 19 - Picture Retake Day for any students who are absent or want to redo their picture.

March 5th - BAZAAR! We had a meeting today and 1st grade got Lumpia! We are so excited! Stay tuned for more information for how to help with Bazaar.

March 7th - No School - OCSI Holiday

March 18th - 3rd Quarter Ends!

March 21st - No School

March 25th - No School Good Friday

Spelling Bee Rules and Homework Checklist

Hi everyone!

We will be doing our class spelling bee's this week and I wanted to clarify on some tricky rules.

1. You may NOT retrace or take back letters once spoken them. You can NOT change the sequence of letters from when you first speak them. For example, if you are spelling the word "Teacher" and you say "T-E-C, I mean, T-E-A... and finish the word, you will be out.

2. You DO NOT HAVE to 1. Say the word before and after you spell it. 2. Say the capitalization or hyphen or other punctuation in a word. If you want to, you can, but you will not be disqualified if you do not. For example, "Ping-Pong" can be spelled "pingpong" and it will still be correct.

Good luck everyone!

Keep practicing at home and use that Spelling City website for extra practice and games.
If you need another copy of the paper, please let me know!


Here's the HomeWork Checklist for this week. :)

Friday News for Week of January 11-15

Happy Spirit Week! We had a lot of fun dressing up this week as various characters and themes. Here’s some photos:

Kite Day

Animal Day

Career or Decades Day

Character Day

This week:

In reading we focused on 2 strategies: Flip the sound and Read just right level books. For flip the sounds, if we are reading a word and it doesn’t sound right, we can flip the vowel sound to the other sound such as the long sound for a. This is a good strategy for reading even when you get older! We also said that the students should try to find one book that is hard and challenging, 4 books that are just right, and 1 easy book to put in their reading folders.

We also practiced the Spelling Bee words all week!

In Writing we have begun procedural writing where we write “How to ______” today, we all wrote together, “How to go down a slide.”

Math: We focused on math facts and learning good tricks. We reviewed adding doubles and adding doubles plus 1 like 7+8 (7+7+1). We also reviewed adding the 8’s and 9’s. On Friday we did “What’s my rule?” Function Machine. This helps students to think of the rule for adding such as by 2’s or 5’s or positive or negative.

Bible: We finished our unit on Joshua and going into the Promised Land. We had fun acting out the story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho. It’s amazing how God made the walls of the city come down! We also learned how just God is by the story of the battle of Ai. One person had disobeyed God and so the Israelites lost the battle. Even though God loves us very much, he still expects us to follow and obey him!

Next Week:

Spelling Words: Continue studying Spelling Bee words

Bible Memory: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” Psalm 8:1

Monday, January 18th - No School!

January 22nd - Bazaar Meeting 3:15 - If you are interested in what the Bazaar is like, or want to help out our class, you are welcome to attend the Bazaar meeting next week after school!

February 5th - Lower Elementary Spelling Bee - Next week, we will do a Spelling Bee in class. The top 3 winners will go on to compete in the Lower Elementary Spelling Bee on February 5th at 8:30am. Keep studying the words everyone!

Homework Checklist and other notes

Report Card:

I forgot to mention that the 2nd quarter Report Card went home on Friday. Please sign the blue envelope that says "2nd Quarter" and return only the envelope. You can keep everything else!

Have a great Tuesday!

Friday News for January 5-8

We had a great week at school after a nice 2 week break!

So glad to be back in the classroom!

This Week: 

Reading: This week went back to the basics of Read to Self, Read to Someone, and Word work and practiced building stamina again. We also looked closely at characters, because of Character Parade next week. We also did a lot of practice with long a words.

Math: On Monday we graphed how many students stayed up until midnight on New Year’s Eve and how many students flew on an airplane during break. We continued to use base 10 blocks to work with place value and even adding large number together. We also worked a lot with number stories this week. We wrote our own number stories today and the students did great!

Bible: After our “Christmas Story” break, we have gone back to the story of Joshua and the Israelites. In our story, God is ready to lead the Israelites back into Canaan their home land, but there is now a lot of other people living in Canaan. The first city the Israelites must take is Jericho. Joshua sent two spies secretly to Jericho who affirmed that God will help them win over Jericho. To get to Jericho, the Israelites had to walk through the Jordan River and once again, God parted the waters so they could walk by on dry ground. WOW!

Next Week:

Spelling Words: Study the Spelling BEE Words! Practice the spelling bee words at home. Practice saying it and spelling it outloud.

Bible Memory: “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:9

Kite Day is January 11th. 1st and 2nd graders have a regular school day but will go outside from 10:00-10:45 to fly kites on the soccer field. Parents, you are welcome to come and have fun with us during that time!

Jan 11-15 - OCSI School Spirit Week!!

Monday - Jan 11: Noah’s Ark Day: Dress like Noah or an animal!

Tuesday - Jan 12: Career Day: Dress up as what you want to be when you grow up! Or Decades Day: Dress from long time ago.

Wednesday - Jan 13: Character Day: Dress up as a book character! (K-2 will parade around the school from 9:15-10:00am)

Thursday - Jan 14: Red and White Day: Wear OCSI colors!

Friday - Jan 15: Class matching Day: Wear your Friendship Friday T-shirt!

Spelling Bee:

Make sure you are studying your spelling words!
I have put all the spelling bee words onto a website called Spellingcity where the students can play games to practice for the Spelling bee. The link is here: http://www.spellingcity.com/msturnerocsi/ and also on the top tab. The 100 words are in 5 different groups - all are the first grade words!

Click game:

And then Free Activities:

Enjoy!