Happy April

Hi everyone! I hope everyone enjoyed their spring break, and spent some much needed family time! 

Last week, we enjoyed our field trip to The Georgia Aquarium. It was so much fun, and the kids learned so much about aquatic animals and their habitats. 

As we wrap up the last five weeks of school, I asked that you continue to read with your child every night for twenty minutes.

Spring Break

Can you believe it's already the last 9 weeks of school? This year has flown by! as we head into spring break, I wanted remind you of a few important dates to put into your calendar 

Georgia Aquarium April 13th (field trip) 

Art Day on April 27^th (Largest event of the year)

MMA Parents Night out Spirit night on April 27^th

Chick Fil A Spirit Night on May 10^th

 Field day on May 18^th

What We're Learning

What We're Learning 

Social Studies: We are starting to learn about Lewis and Clark. We are discussing the Louisiana Purchase, Sacagawea, and much more!
Writing: We are continuing our Opinion Writing, focusing on how to create convincing and true reasons to support our opinion, rather than just stating "I like it." We are also learning about how to create a captivating introduction and conclusion that state our opinion. 
Reading: We just finished learning about the central message of a story (also known as the lesson the author wants you to learn from the story). We are moving on to comparing and contrasting characters and their adventures in a story.
Math: We are still adding and subtracting! We have gone through adding and subtracting a double digit with a single digit with both no regrouping AND regrouping. In 1st grade, we refer to regrouping as "making a new group of 10." We learned how to add and subtract a double digit with a double digit WITHOUT regrouping before break, so over the next two weeks, we will be focusing on double digit +/- a double digit with regrouping. We will also be reviewing all of the strategies and concepts that have been taught over the last 4 weeks to review and make these ideas concrete to the students!

Quarter 3 Math Parent Video!

Here is the math quarter 3 parent video :) Enjoy!!!

What we're learning about this nine weeks :) 

Social Studies/Science- 

We are finishing up our unit on Theodore Roosevelt and the important contributions he made to the United States. Once we wrap that up, we will switch gears and jump in to Light and Shadows for our science unit. We will tie the shadows in with Groundhog's Day, so that could be a fun topic to discuss with your children at home, as well!

Writing-

 Our 3rd quarter will be all about Opinion writing. We will focus on how state our opinion, provide a reason and evidence or examples to support that reason, and then we will learn how to restate our opinion to conclude our writing. A great way to support your writer with this unit at home is to talk about their thoughts- discuss their opinion when given two options. Ex: Would you rather eat chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream? Focus on their reason why, and delve deeper than just simply stating "I like it," or "it tastes good."

Reading- 

In reading, we have been learning about how to predict what will happen in the story before reading, retell the events of a story after reading, and then summarize what was read at the end. These are all great topics to ask your child questions about as you read each night. While doing this, don't forget to continue focusing on story elements, also! (i.e. characters, settings, beginning/middle/end)!

Math- 

We started the quarter learning about expanded form of a number (i.e. thinking of 53 as 5 groups of 10 and 3 extra ones, written as 50+3), moved into comparing numbers (understanding that the bigger number is "greater" and the smaller number is "less"), and are now going to move into adding and subtracting double digit numbers within 100. We will be focusing on this concept for the next 4 weeks, so if your child seems to be confused at first, we will be working for a long time to ensure they understand! Due to the new common core, if you have any questions about strategies or reasoning behind why we teach it the way we do, please do not hesitate to reach out and ask for help!

Welcome back! I hope you all had a wonderful winter break and Happy New Year! I am so excited to back into the grove! This video will give you an idea of what we are learning in math this quarter.