Friday News for the Week of October 22-26

Happy Friday!

We had a great time on our field trip yesterday! Thank you to the Parent Helpers and to the parents who came!

This Week:

Reading - We focused on Setting! Setting is the time and place of a story. We read a variety of books, from books set at night, to books set at winter to get the whole picture about setting. On Friday, the students wrote in their journals a time and place for the book Snowy Day.

Here’s some pictures of the students doing Read to Someone, Word Work, Listen to Reading, and Book Shopping

Math: The students are rocking through subtraction. They learned how to do vertical subtraction and learned the trick to subtracting zero and all. They also are mastering the vocabulary for subtraction too like “difference” and “subtraction number sentence.” Good work everyone!

Writing - This week we picked one of our stories and we got ready to publish it! We edited it for spelling and punctuation, we made sure there was a beginning and an end, and we went through a checklist with a friend. Next week we will publish and read the stories!

Bible - The students are learning the exciting story about Joseph. He was Jacob’s favorite son and was given a colorful robe. His brothers were jealous of him so sold him off as a slave to Egypt. It seems like lots of bad things are going to happen to Joseph but God’s watching over him and going to do something amazing through his life!

Science - This week we looked at how different kinds of animals eat their food. We wrote in our wonder journals and made a quilt of all the animals!

Next Week:

Thursday and Friday there are Parent Teacher Conferences!

Please confirm your times and try to arrive at least 5 minutes before. I’m looking forward to sharing with you about how much your child has grown already in 1st grade!

Spelling Words: back, neck, kick, pick, sick, rock, sock, duck, have, or

Bible Memory Verse: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” Deuteronomy 6:5

Upcoming Events:

11/12 - NO SCHOOL OCSI holiday

11/17 - Holiday Market

11/20 - Harvest Festival for 1st and 2nd grade AND Pie Day!

11/21-25 Thanksgiving Break, no school!

11/30 - Half day - school dismissed at 12:30 for Christmas Program that evening from 6-7pm in Uruma

Halloween Fun!

Friday News for the Week of Oct 15-19

Happy Friday!

We had another great week in 1st grade!

We finally took a whole group photo! Look at this lovely class!

This Week:

Reading: This week we focused on “Characters.” We learned that characters are the people, animals, and things in a story that think, feel, and act in a story. We read some fun Curious George stories to point out the characters. We also started full on Daily 5 sessions this week. The students practiced Word Work, Read to Someone, Book Shopping, and Listen to Reading. Next week they will get to choose which of the 4 activities they will get to do and they will rotate throughout the week to improve their reading skills while I will be meeting in small groups with students.

Writing: This week we talked about letting the reader know who is talking in a story. We learned about how to add dialogue into our story which was so fun! We also learned how to tell our stories in Itsy Bitsy Steps kind of like the Itsy Bitsy Spider! We sang the song and tried to think of little steps that we could write about in our story. Next week the students will pick a story to start to revise and publish.

Math: We started SUBTRACTION this week. It was a little tricky to switch our brains into taking away instead of adding, but all the students got it pretty quick. We are learning some new vocabulary that goes with subtraction and soon we will learn the relationship between addition and subtraction.

Bible: We followed Jacob as he ran away from home because his brother, Esau, was angry at him. Jacob ran away to his mother Rebekah’s hometown. On his way he had a dream where he saw some angels and God promised that he would take care of him. Later he married two sister, Rachel and Leah, and had many sons. God blessed him and increased his family and wealth. Later he wanted to return home but his uncle Laban wouldn’t let him. So he escaped in the night with his family. Laban caught up to him and instead of hurting Jacob, blessed him because God told him not to hurt Jacob. After that Jacob wrestled with God himself! Jacob went and reunited with his brother Esau. God has some great things in store for Jacob’s story through the Bible!

Science - This week we started a brand new science unit about animals. Each lesson was paired with a picture book that we read together. The students did some activities to search for what kind of body parts animals have and how it helps them live. Is that body part needed to live? or does it just make their life easier?

Here's some pictures from the Computer Lab today!

For Fun Friday we played outside today!

Next Week:

Spelling Words: add puff egg well will doll kiss miss you live

Bible Memory Verse: “Shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God.” Psalm 100:1-2

Thursday is our field trip! Please make sure your child packs a home lunch for that day. Please let me know if you need any more information!

Church Halloween Events:

Coming up there are some fun Halloween alternative at churches!

Harvest Carnival is tomorrow

Trunk or Treat at Keystone

Upcoming Events:

10/25 - Field Trip to Kurashiki Dam

11/1 - evening Parent Teacher Conferences

11/2: Parent-Teacher Conferences - no classes -

11/20 - Harvest Festival for 1st and 2nd grade AND Pie Day!

11/21-25 Thanksgiving Break, no school!

11/30 - Half day - school dismissed at 12:30 Christmas Program that evening from 6-7pm in Uruma

Friday News for the Week of October 9-12

Happy Friday! We finally (almost) had a full week of school! It was great to be back in school after a long week of typhoons!

Here’s what we learned this week:

Reading - We learned what questions were and so we learned to ask questions while reading a story.
Mrs. Hewitt read the “If you give a…” books to the students and she taught the students to ask lots
of questions to the story. We asked questions like: “Why did that happen?” Where did the character go?
How did the character do that? and so on! I hope the students grow up to ask LOTS of questions while
they read.

Writing - We are cruising through narrative writing and we learned to develop our writing by writing
tiny seed stories instead of big watermelon stories. Sometimes students write a story about a big
event such as a school day or a trip. We encouraged them to think of a tiny seed, one little details or
little tiny part of story and write about it. Today the students learned how to unfreeze their characters
by making them move and speak. They are turning into quite the writers!

Math: We finished chapter 1 about adding to 10. Students all did well on the math review and test.
I’m excited to start Chapter 2 with subtraction next week!

Bible: We continued to learn how God keeps his promises with the birth of Isaac and his life.
Isaac married Rebekah who was from Abraham’s hometown and who agreed to marry Isaac
even though she had never met him before! Isaac and Rebekah had twin boys named Esau and Jacob.
Esau was the oldest but Jacob tricked his brother into giving him the birthright and the blessing! Eek!
We are going to see how God is going to watch over Jacob’s life and keep his promises to Jacob.
We made some finger puppets and told the story!

Social Studies: Today we finished up the Me on the Map unit and we learned about our continent Asia and
our planet Earth. Next week we’ll move into science!

The field trip permission form was sent out on Thursday! Please return it sometime next week.
Let me know if you have any questions, please!

Next Week:

Spelling Words (Review): cat man had has God hop not mom bed get let yes sun cut bug us did big him fix

Bible Memory Verse: “Shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs.” Psalm 100:1-2

Upcoming Events:

10/25 - Field Trip to Kurashiki Dam

11/1 - evening Parent Teacher Conferences

11/2: Parent-Teacher Conferences - no classes -

11/20 - Harvest Festival for 1st and 2nd grade AND Pie Day!

11/21-25 Thanksgiving Break, no school!

11/30 - Half day - school dismissed at 12:30 Christmas Program that evening from 6-7pm in Uruma