Mrs. Borges' 1st Grade Class

We’ve been talking about the states of matter: solids, liquids, and gasses.  We wondered what would make Candy Corn dissolve.  The children worked together and made I wonder statements about what they thought would happen.  We dropped the Candy Corn into 4 different liquids and watched what happened.  Vinegar was the one the children thought would dissolve the Candy Corn the fastest because of the smell. Ask your child which one actually dissolved fastest.  We made many observations throughout the experiment and the children were really surprised to watch the candy corn dissolve slowly.  There was one liquid that didn’t dissolve any Candy Corn.  Ask your child which liquid that was.

The children had a great time! We enjoyed watching solids, liquids, and gasses work together and get our minds wondering about how things work.

Have you heard of Fred?  The children were given the task to save Fred (the gummy word) who fell off the boat (the cup) and got stuck under the boat.  The goal was to save him by getting him into the life-preserver (the peach ring) without using hands or letting him fall back into the sea (the table).  They were only allowed to use two paperclips.

The REAL goal of this lesson is to work on critical thinking and communication.  Your children had to communicate their thinking to their partners and they had to try many different ways to get Fred into the life-preserver.  It was a great team building activity and an important lesson to help the children learn about how there can be more than one way to get a right answer.  In this lesson, the “right” answer was to save Fred, but was achieved by the children in many different ways!

I know everyone is SO thankful that Hurricane Florence stayed away from us! I hope that you were able to enjoy some reading with your sweet children over the Hurricane days.  With that being said, it is now time to get back into the swing of things!

Open House is going to be Tuesday, September 18 at 6:00 P.M.  If you aren’t able to make it, please let me know and I will get you the information that I cover at Open House.  Also, if you aren’t able to make it and have any questions, please ask and I will do my very best to answer you.  I am using the questions from the Getting to Know Your Child survey to guide my presentation.  I promise to get you as much information as possible in the least amount of time.

Each week I will be sending a newsletter home.  Each week, I will have it in your child’s Daily Folder (which you will get tomorrow night).  This should give you a glimpse into our classroom each week, so you can know what objectives we are learning. Click the link for the newsletter:  September 17 2018

The newsletter contains a section for sight words.  These are words for you to practice with your child each week.  Not only should he/she know how to spell them, but also write them.  At home, practice finding the words in books and then have your child write the words in a sentence.  Once your child can read it, locate it in a book, and write it correctly without help then you know he/she has mastered it and you can move onto the next word.  You may find at the beginning that your child has mastered a lot, which is GREAT! Keep practicing the writing piece to ensure mastery.

I look forward to meeting many of you tomorrow night!

We had a GREAT first week of school together! We are working on learning the rules, routines, and procedures of our classroom and our building.  We are REALLY working on our HALL behavior.  Ask your child what the HALL behavior is. They worked diligently on it all week and I was very impressed!

Here is what we are learning in class:

READING:  We are working on making connections to the story.  When you are reading at home with your child, you can ask them “What does this story remind you of?”  “Have you ever felt like this character?” “Has something like this ever happened to you?”   These are  great conversation starters to get your child to understand how the character is feeling in the story.  This week we read about characters and how they felt at school.  There were SO many great connections!

WRITING: We are working on writing a complete sentence with capitalization, punctuation, and spacing. You can help your child at home by asking him or her to write a thank you note, letter, or write a sentence about a special request they have at the grocery store. 🙂

MATH: We are working on counting to 120.   The students worked in groups to create a number grid puzzle from 1-120.  You can help your child work on this skill at home by having him/her practice counting.  Instead of starting at 1, try having him/her start counting at 21, 30, or 50. This is good practice for them because this shows they really understand how to count, not just memorize 1-120.  If they are having trouble, let them have items to help them count such as little cubes, pennies, etc.  I also included 2 websites they can play at home to help them practice this skill.

SOCIAL STUDIES:  We learned about the American flag and why it is such an important symbol for our country. We were able to learn about the American flag using our NEW CHROMEBOOKS! The kids were VERY excited to learn how to use them.

Even though our homework doesn’t begin until October, read with your child each night.  It is the best way to help them learn.  Rereading books is always a great strategy to help them become more fluent.

                              Two friends sharing interesting facts about sharks. 

The first day of school is HERE! Since we didn’t get to have Meet and Greet, I wanted to share some pictures of our room.  Grab your sweet first grader and take a look at these pictures together.

This is the back of our room.  There are many different places for your child to sit.  I use a flexible seating model, so your child gets to choose where he/she sits each day.  If he/she prefers chairs, I have those too. 🙂

You may also be wondering why my walls are so empty!! I like to build my classroom WITH my students.  As the days go on, the walls will be filled with their work, our work, anchor charts, and things we create together.

This is the front of the room.  This is where all of the guided reading will take place.  All of the whole group instruction will take place on this nice, BIG, rug! 

I saved my FAVORITE spot for last! This is our classroom library.  It is FULL of books! I am hoping your child loves it as much as me.

I hope that each child received his/her letter from me! I am looking forward to meeting your child tomorrow, and meeting you on September 11.  Please contact me if there are any questions or concerns!

Welcome to first grade! I am very excited to meet each one of your children. Since Meet and Greet is cancelled, I wanted to give you a website for you to view some pictures of our classroom, learn about me, and get as connected as we can.   Please check back on the blog as the days, weeks, and months progress to catch up on what we are doing in our room. I’m excited to partner with you to create the best year possible for your child!