You are probably hearing your child talk about things like Number Bonds and Ten Frames. We wanted to let you know what we are working on in math so you can have a good understanding of the vocabulary. We have know entered the part of the school year where we really start dissecting numbers. We want to understand all the different ways we can represent a different number. We will be making a number anchor chart like the ones below each week as we explore a new number. We concentrate on one number a week. Last week was the number 6 and next week is the number 10. We want the students to know many different ways to represent the number. We also want them to be very confident with their number sense before entering First Grade.
As you can see in our charts we ask the children to come up with as many different ways as possible that they can make a number. We introduce many different math concepts during this unit. The students are expected to be able to identify the number, make the number, read the number word, use the number in a ten frame, use the number in a number bond and understand basic addition concepts up through the number 10. Some of the children have found additional ways to make six and we added those to our chart.
In Writing Workshop we are starting our unit on writing Personal Narratives (a true story about yourself). This is the anchor chart we use to help the student generate ideas for writing their personal narratives. This is a fun unit of study for the students! We are working on putting spaces between our words, having a beginning, middle and end, using details in our pictures to help tell the story, using punctuation at the end of the sentences and using a capital letter at the beginning of the sentence. It is a lot for the students to keep in mind while writing. We are not worried about words being spelled correctly at this point. We are looking for them to sound out the words they want to write and put down a letter for each sound they hear.
This is another place working on those popcorn words becomes so important! Knowing those words helps to move the story along, and if they know them it makes their writing process so much easier for them. Please keep working on those words. We do keep a word wall and add other relevant vocabulary cards to the wall to help them spell bigger words (family words, winter words, days of the week, color words and number words). Please encourage your child to write at home. The more they write, the better they will get and the easier it will become. Encourage lots of detail in their pictures. We look for each story to have characters and setting with detail. We also look for the story to stay on topic and the story to go in chronological order (sequenced correctly in time). We just started this unit so we will have lots more to share in a few weeks. Thanks for all of your support. We hope the blog helps you foster meaningful conversations about the skills they are learning at school when they are at home. We also hope this helps you understand a little more about what our goals our for each unit we introduce.
