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!
