Springtime

Writing

Over the month of April we will be doing more writing. At this point of the year in grade 1 the students have a really great French vocabulary and can converse in French with me and their peers. Now that they have a good vocabulary base, we will spend more time writing. 
Once or twice a week the students will practice writing from a topic or starter sentence that I give them in class. They will also have weekly opportunities to do a free-write in their journals. 

Below are the writing goals for Fully Meeting writing  in the spring of Grade 1. These are the things we will be working towards in class:
- Including a detailed drawing 
-writing several sentences (3+) that follow a logical order and make sense to the reader
- using letter sounds to spell unfamiliar words and spelling frequently used words correctly. 
-beginning to use capital letters and periods correctly. 

Subtraction

We are beginning to work on subtraction in class. The children are learning different ways to represent subtraction. They are also working on writing subtraction accurately using - and =. 

In class this past week we read the story of Pete the Cat and his buttons. The students then cut out their own Pat le chat and glued him in their math booklet with some of the buttons falling off. They then wrote the correct math equation. 

Writing subtraction equations are hard for grade 1's as the order for subtraction is important. While in addition the meaning is not affected by how it is written eg. 5+6 and 6+5 are 11 the answers in subtraction vary based on the order it is written. For example,  11-5= 6 and 5-11 = -6 ! 


Ways to support your child:

Subtraction:

- point out subtraction stories whenever possible. I put 6 carrots on your plate and you have eaten 4, how many are left? How can we write that? 

- When reading to you child and when they read to you have them use their finger to track from left to right (this will also support reading). Reading left to right is taught as part of our culture. Other culture read right to left or in columns. Our grade 1's sometimes still read from right to left as they are building their habits. 

Writing:

- listen to French songs and shows to help your child build their French oral language vocabulary 
This is so important since they hear very little French outside of school. Many shows on Netflix and other streaming sites have French language tracks. Hint: if you are watching too and want to follow along put on English subtitles :) 
-have your child write often in either language 
- ask them what sounds they hear in words around the house to support them spelling new words
- tell stories with your child that have a problem and a logical solution

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