Welcome to room 67's website!
Our first trimester has flown by...time flies when you are on a
wonderful journey, full of great educational adventures and challenges!
In reading, we began our extensive study of fairy tales, folktales,
fables, and tall tales, reading the award-winning cultural fairy tale,
Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters. We also read several other cultural fairy
tales, including Irish Cinderlad, Yeh-Shen, The Rough-faced Girl, Smokey
Mountain Rose, The Turkey Girl, The Persian Cinderella.
We learned the three ways stories can be fractured: setting, characters,
and point-of-view, and performed a Reader's Theater of Spiderella for our
first grade friends in room 66 and 69.
While on track break, Trucker Robert sent us Landstar t-shirts, pens,
and mini die-cast trucks. We wrote thank you letters, of course, and can
hardly wait to receive postcards and letters in return.
We began learning cursive handwriting on Monday, August 31, 2009. We
have learned the proper formation of the lowercase letters and the capital
letters. During the second trimester, students will be expected to use
cursive handwriting on all assignments except spelling.
A cursive letter chart was sent home the first week of school. It is
vital to practice at home, ensuring the children's success when writing
cursive, using the proper, current Zaner-Bloser formation, and reading
cursive information from the board.
Our seventh mathematics topic focuses on division. We took
our challenge test on Friday, February 5, to determine which students will
have their mathematics instruction differentiated. A special thanks to those
students who were up to the challenge. Congratulations to Cynthia, Benjamin,
Katya, and Kenny for receiving 80% or higher on the challenge test. They
will have the opportunity to complete challenge work...work that focuses
on the same mathematical concepts as class work, just at a higher level.
Additionally, Preston received between 70% and 79% and will have the
choice of completing challenge work or class work.
Prior to track break, a multiplication chart was sent home to begin
the memorization process. Practice at home will enhance the immediate recall
of multiplication facts and will improve the students' ability to master two
digit multiplication and division.
We have begun our next science unit of study, "The Human Body". Each
student made a life-sized body replica and, as we learn about each organ and
it's function, will add them to our "bodies".
In social studies, we are learning about Pioneers.