March 30-April 3

Greetings Team Peake!

I hope you all enjoyed the beautiful weekend! We had a wonderful week in first grade last week with many highlights including: The Spring Book Fair, our Hero Parade and an exciting Fun Friday with Mrs. Juline! The children have loved learning about American History and studying how individuals and events can impact the way we live our lives today. The children were inventors this week as they created their own invention that would make the world a better place. I was very proud of their enthusiasm for this in class project and look forward to fostering their creativity even more throughout the school year.

I enjoyed meeting with you and your child for Spring Conferences! The children loved taking "charge" of their conferences and creating goals for the next nine weeks. I look forward to helping them reach their goals.

We began "decoding" two syllable words that include open, closed and magic 'e' syllables. The children have LOVED this process of syllabication where they are finding the vowels and consonants in words, identifying their syllable type and dividing the word appropriately. This process not only allows for the children to become better spellers, but helps them improve in their reading as well.

Many of you have asked me how you can assist your child in their spelling. The "green words" we have gone over throughout the year are our spelling rules that your child should be implementing in their everyday writing. Please refer to previous posts which include our spelling rules to see which rules your child should know.

Red Words require the most practice! Some fun ways to practice spelling (that we use often in the classroom) are writing our words in shaving cream, play dough, magnets, chalk etc.) I am finding that some of the Red Words we are studying are harder to memorize than others. For example: 

said, they, were, would, should, could. was

Next week, our new red words are: number, about, friend

Click here to see a list of 100 words your child should be able to read/write upon the completion of first grade.

Next week's green words will include the two "vowel teams" (ea, ee)
ex: seat, sleep, team, beach, sheet

In math, we have been working on adding and subtracting multiples of tens mentally, using a number line and by creating diagrams.

Next week, we will be discovering the many different shapes in our world and their attributes.

We are continuing to write opinion pieces and edit our papers for mistakes.

Important Updates and Reminders:

• Please make sure to let the Front Office know of any plans to change your child's dismissal if you are unable to write a note. It can be difficult to manage these changes throughout the day while I am with your child. 
• Please make sure your child arrives to school by 7:50 so that they can complete their unpacking procedures with ease and have a great start to their day!
• Please remember to send in a nutritional snack with your child each day.
• Please make sure your child reads at least 20 minutes a night in addition to their regular homework.

CONGRATULATIONS to our newest Star Student, Pace Lilenfeld! Pace is a hard working, caring and open-minded friend to his classmates and we are looking forward to learning more about what makes him so special this upcoming week. Way to go, Pace!