Tues. Nov. 10th 2015

Hello parents!

Today we started "Hands on" portion of our community service, painting the wall behind the basketball court. We divided the students by DISK Houses to pain their part of the mural in their house color. Today we will also be making our first class trip to the communal garden with Mr. Chow, who is going to be teaching the kids about how to take care of the garden and what our duties will be.

Math: Understanding Fact Families in math. Parts and wholes. 
Example: 2 + 5 = 7 so 7- 5 =2

Social Studies: Rights vs. Responsibilities part 2 How communities honor important citizens. We will be doing a review on this chapter tomorrow, and will have an assessment on Monday.

Science: How are plants different? What does a plant neeed to survive?

Homework: Science worksheets!

Monday, Nov. 9th, 2015

Hello everyone! Happy Monday! Here is a list of what we did in Grade 1 today: 

 

Assembly & Community Service: As  some of you are aware, this year for community service we have started a campaign to help beautify our campus. We are designing and painting some new murals through our the week, and starting a community garden. The garden will be have plots divided by the DISK Houses and we will be able to work on them through out the year. We will be teaching kids how to garden and help them understand the impact climate change can have in the near future if we don't start implementing good strategies to grow along side nature, without destroying it. 

Math: Subtraction strategies, how to find how many more, or how many fewer by subtracting. Understanding that word problems that read "How many more" or  "How many fewer" is an indication to use subtraction.

Reading: Students took turns reading aloud "Little Rabbits Tale" while winning participation points for their tables. Later we completed some exercises from their JPB that practiced writing or speaking in the future tense: Using going to or will and the verb tense.

Social Studies: We reviewed what it means to be a citizen and began to understand the difference between rights and responsibility. Rights is something you choose to have (the right to buy certain things, the right to vote) and responsibilities are things you must do (like recycle and follow laws). 

Spelling Words: 
he
she 
huge
fast
cute
white
smart
nice
funny
ugly
pretty
orange
brown
black
slow

Homework: 5 Sentences in spelling Tab with any of the spelling words.
Math: MPB 6.3

I will also be sending home a newsletter today which discuss activities for Thursday, November 26th. Please fill it out and send it back if you will joining us for the family lunch. 

Thank you and have a great day!

 

Thursday, November 27th 2015

Hi parents!

Here is a summary of our Thursday:

Language Arts: Practice writing sentences when using "I" and naming other people. Practice writing proper nouns in capital letters.

Math: Different subtraction strategies, using number lines when subtracting 4 or more or counting back for subtracting 1, 2 and 3. 

Science: Introduction to Plants! Lesson 1: What do plants need to survive: Plants have needs just like animals. They need sunlight, water, space to grow, soil and nutrients.

A few announcements for this months activities:

Friday November 12th:
Second Friday of the month, kids can come in regular casual clothes (not the uniform)

Thursday November 26th:
Half Day of School
Mass Celebration
Language Festival
Family Thanksgiving Lunch

Friday November 27th: 
No School - Thanksgiving Celebration

In the next few days I will be sending you more information regarding our activities for November 26th, such as times, schedule and what to bring for family lunch as the information is made available for us. 

Have a great day,
-Ms. L 

Wednesday, November 4th, 2015

Hello everyone! Recap of our day:

Language arts: We reviewed on nouns, regular vs. proper and introduce new rules when using "I" to refer to oneself. It must always be spelled in capital letter and stated last when naming other people.

Reading: We read our new story: "Little Rabbits Tale" which is a different version of Chicken Little (The Sky is Falling!) We also completed pages on our Journeys PB  where we practiced telling personal narratives using First, Next and Last as references.

Social Studies: Understanding citizens and what role they play in communities, such as patriotism, kindness, responsibility, respect, incentives and  citizenship. Reviewed the terms fiction vs. nonfiction.

Science: Unit 3 Assessment Animals!

Homework: MPB 5.3 and 5.4 (Math addition review before starting Chapter 6 Subtraction Strategies)

Have a wonderful day!

-Ms. L

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015

Hello everyone, here is a run down of grade 1 for today:

Language Arts: Regular nouns (person, place or thing, not names) vs. Proper nouns (person place or things that are names). Understanding when to use a capital letter. Practiced naming and writing proper nouns for different places, such as: Kaohsiung, Dominican International School, Aozhidi Park, Taiwan.

Math: Completed the Chapter 5 Assessment on different strategies we can use to solve addition sentences and addition word problems.

Science: Completed a review together on Animals and their classifications in their Science Fusion book. Tomorrow we will be having an small assessment on the animal kingdoms and their classification. We have reviewed and learned a lot about this in class. Matching which animals have eggs or live babies and the difference in their skin types (scales, feathers, hair, etc..) as well as their basic needs (water, air and food).

Today we also wrapped up the presentations of Animals from last week, I was so impressed in the improvements from a lot of the kids! They are doing wonderfully! We will take a break from presentations this week. Please remember to send in their Reading Logs as they finish them so I can give students new ones, every time a log is filled out, Dojo points are rewarded.

Spelling Quiz on Friday: Spelling words for the week are once again High Frequency Words in the English language and all of them are words that your child is using daily in school.

1. thank
2. this
3. think
4. they
5. then
6. like
7. over
8. once
9. will
10. said
11. only
12. other
13. just
14. after
15. every

Homework: English Work Book Plus page 30
Write spelling words three times

Have a wonderful day!

Wednesday, October 28th, 2015

Hello everyone! Here is a summary of our day:

Language Arts: Regular nouns vs. proper nouns (names of people, places and thins) Practiced adding capital letters to all proper nouns in sentences.

Math: Different addition strategies, understanding which one works best for which problems. Word problems.

Social studies: Assessment Unit 2

Science: Classifying animals in more than one way. Understanding what makes each classification of animals unique. Using adjectives to describe animals, and to help us classify them.

Homework: Science Apply Concepts worksheet &
Study for spelling quiz tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to Jinny! We had a great pizza party today!

Tuesday, October 27th, 2015

Hello all, here was our day today:

Story Time: We read some books Julia brought from the City Library about Halloween, kids loved them! 

Math: Addition strategies, adding doubles, and using doubles facts to make adding easier. Chapter 5 Assessment has been moved to Tuesday, we would like to practice word problems for a few more days before the assessment.  

Social Studies: We created mini books with important information about this unit, we have included definitions and drawing inside of these mini books, I encourage you to have your child read the mini book to you. 

Homework: 
Spelling- Spell each word 3 times.
Math - MPB page 5.3
Social Studies - Read your Mini book to someone. 

Here is the schedule for All Saints Day on Friday:

Friday, October 30^th, 2015 1-4 p.m.

 

·         12:45-1:15: Put on Costumes

·         1:15-2:15: Division Games

·         2:15-2:30: Break

·         2:30-3:20: Individual classroom All Saints’ Day related activities

·         3:20-3:50: Parade and Arranged Pictures (parents are invited at this time to participate and take pictures)