First Grade News: Week of January 15th

First grade writers have been working hard on their information books. This week they looked closely at their writing to discover how they can make it even better. We looked at a checklist of all the things they’ve learned so far, and first graders identified things they are doing really well and things they can work on. We challenged each first grader to make a goal for their writing. Some goals are to add more details or to make the beginning more exciting.

We continued our study of information writing in our reading groups. Some groups read non-fictions books and noticed some new things in nonfiction books, such as labels and maps. Some groups learned more about penguins or endangered birds!

In Math we learned to break up numbers into tens and ones when subtracting and to subtract the ones from the ones. We also practiced solving subtraction problems with a number line.

We continued our study of good citizenship in Social Studies. First graders discussed what a good citizen looks like and then made up skits demonstrating good citizenship. Some skits were about helping people when they drop things, or what to do when someone disrupts the class.

First grade scientists observed seeds and thought about how we can make plants grow in our classroom.

In Hebrew, we learned the letter zayin and we now know all of the letters of the Hebrew aleph-bet! Our first graders are Hebrew experts! This is a very exciting accomplishment and we are looking forward to celebrating as a class  next week. We read and wrote lots of words this week. The first graders started making their own Hebrew dictionaries using our word wall and word cards.

In Yahadut, we learned a new prayer from the amida called, shover oyvim umachniyah zedim. In this prayer we thank god for protecting us from danger. We spoke about who are the people in our lives that protect us every day.

In Parasha we learned about Parashat Bo, which is when Pharaoh tells the Israelites to leave Egypt and they pack up quickly and go. We spoke about why we thought that God choose to help the Israelites and what was so special about that time and Moses. We also continued to watch a part of the movie “The Prince of Egypt”.

 Shabbat Shalom!