First Grade News: Week of January 29
This week in Writing Workshop, students learned about including introductions in their information books. They studied different information texts in our classroom to see how different authors chose to start their books. They noticed that introductions can start with a question, an action, a story, or a big idea. On Thursday, each first grader shared a chapter of their book with a small group.
With the conclusion of our unit on length, first grade mathematicians finished their first math book this week! We will begin book two next week. We will also be going on our field trip to the National Museum of Mathematics next Thursday!
In Social Studies, we continued our mapping unit. This week we studied different maps to see what they have in common, such as compass roses and map keys. First graders practiced reading maps.
First grade scientists planted herbs this week! They listed all of the things plants need to grow: soil, water, and sunlight. Since we don’t have that much sunlight in the winter, we got grow lights to help mimic the sun in our classroom. First graders are responsible for watering their plants every day!
In Hebrew, we continued learning about Tu Bishvat. The first graders created two beautiful trees on our bulletin board. Each student described in writing what the tree has using different parts of the tree (leaves – alim, flowers – prachim, fruits – perot) and their colors. Feel free to take a look at our bulletin board at our beautiful trees. We also enjoyed reading stories about trees like, “What to do with a leave?” and the “Giving Tree”. We celebrated Tu bishvat together and the first graders enjoined doing all kinds of fun activities with their buddies during the school fair. In addition, we had lots of fun starting practicing aleph-bet yoga.
In yahadut this week, we learned two new prayers from the Amidah. The first prayer called boneh yerushalayim. We saw pictures of how the city looked in the past and how it looks today. We spoke about the importance of the city of Jerusalem and what makes her a holy city. The second prayer is matzmiach keren yeshuah. We listened to Louis Armstrong song – “What a wonderful world” and made a list of all the wonderful things in the world. We discussed what we can do to make the world a better place.
In Parasha, we read the story of Parashat Yitro where te Israelites go to Mount Sinai and receive the Ten Commandments. We discussed the significance of each commandment and each student made a special Ten Commandments packet with illustrations for each of the commandments.