April 11, 2008

Dear Parents,

We have been working hard in first grade. Our paper bodies in the
hallway now have body parts on them and next week we will be adding
more. We also had some visitors in from the Harbor School to share
stories that they had written in their ELA class and Mr. Nelson was in
to share his knowledge about the human body.

In Science this week we have been focusing on the urinary system. We
discussed what our kidneys and bladder do. Miriam’s dad came in and
shared some great x-rays of the kidneys and bladder. Check out some
pictures of his visit on the school website. We will be learning about
the pancreas, gall bladder, spleen, and liver next week. We will also
be focusing on the digestive system.

In spelling this week we worked on ai words as in rain. Many students
did very well on their spelling assessment and writing their spelling
sentences accurately. The class is much better at editing their work
before they pass it in and their penmanship has improved greatly as
well.

They have all been writing much better stories this week too. Many of
them have had the chance to type their own stories when they are at the
publishing stage and shared their stories with the class at cirlce
today.

We have started unit 8 in math this week. This unit focuses on counting
money and introducing the dollar, making change for amounts less than
$1, and identifying fractions. I will be sending home the unit 7
assessment on Monday.

Have a good weekend.