First week of Firsties

Well the first full week is in the books!  We have been working really hard learning all of the procedures and rules of first grade.  I am so proud of all of my little firsties!!!  We spent a lot of time this week building our stamina (the time your child can work independently) for read to self.  This is one very small component of our reading program in first grade.  Reading is at the heart of everything we do in first grade.  Before we can fully get started, the students must learn all the procedures for our literacy block.  One aspect of our reading program is our reading rotations or guided reading/centers.  After our whole group mini-lessons, the students break up into small groups.  During these small groups the students will go to the following centers: read to self, read to someone, listen to reading, computers, work on words, Promethean Board, and guided reading.  Read to Self is one rotation where the students will go to read good fit books by themselves.  These books are ones that are at your child's independent reading level.  This 10-12 minute rotation is a time where your child will be practicing their reading fluency.  While your child is reading to him or herself, I will be working on reading with a small group of students.  

The students learned this week that some of the time, they will be asked to go read to someone.  When this is one of the rotations, the students will choose someone in their reading group to read with.  The students sit EEKK (elbow to elbow, knee to knee, book in the middle so they both can see)!  This week, the kids learned how to choose a book to read with our partner and how to read together.  The first way I teach the kids to do read to self is called I read, you read.  This is where partner 1 reads a sentence from their book and partner 2 reads the sentence after partner 1.  We talk a lot about how our books fit our needs and it is important to follow along and read with our reading finger so that our partner can see the words we are reading. 

We have also learned about our math rotations and we have math centers in full swing.  During math, the students will rotate through four different stations:  guided practice with Mrs. Hogan, Math Fluency, Math Games, and Computer Math.  Guided math practice gives the student more practice with the skill we learned during the mini-lesson.  We also review daily the concepts that have been taught previously throughout the year.  Fluency is where the students will practice their math facts.  Math games will be a center set up with games that review previously taught skills.  Computer math will allow the students to work on Xtramath (you'll learn more about this later), or StarfallMORE math.  This will also be the time that one student plays a math game on the Promethean Board.  WHEW!  The kids have been so busy and I'm so thrilled with the progress they have made.  Enjoy your weekend and see you next week!