First Grade: March 10-14, 2025

First Grade

Mar 14

Dear First Grade Families,

Happy Spring! This week marks the beginning of spring, a natural time for change and new beginnings, and fittingly, a new Main Lesson block. The class has returned to Mathematics, having continued practicing their math facts during morning Circle throughout our last block. Daily math practice has included movement activities such as hopscotch addition, subtraction using the parachute (How many hid underneath while our eyes were closed?), and partner bean bag toss to practice skip counting.

The final week of our Language Arts block demonstrated just how far the students have come on their reading journey. They have gained so much confidence in letter/sound recognition, rhyming, and phoneme substitution, whereby learners replace a sound in a word to create a completely different word. An example of a phoneme substitution chain is the progression from fig to bag to bat and finally to cat. Try it at home with words that can be broken into three units of sound (like sh-i-p, l-i-p, l-a-p, and l-a-tch), and see how long a chain you can create! Your child can then try finger spelling the words. Ask them how, and they should be able to show you! To begin with, consonants are easier than vowels, so be aware that difficulties with identifying the vowel sound are perfectly normal at this stage.

First Grade finished their week with an Environmental Education activity in partnership with their fellow Grades classes. Donning gloves, boots, and smiles, students conducted a litter clean-up at their beloved creek. Many interesting finds were bagged and responsibly disposed of for a much cleaner creek to benefit the school environment and its denizens, feathered, scaled, and furry alike. The children increased their first-hand knowledge of the impact of human activity and materials on the earth. The school is proud of its young environmental stewards!

Announcements and Reminders for First Grade: