First Grade Weekly Update May 26th-30th
Weekly Syllabus: May 26th-30th, 2025
Reminders
Monday, May 26th is the Memorial Day Holiday. No School!
Tuesday, May 27th is the 8th Grade Ribbon Ceremony from 1:00-1:30
Friday, May 30th is the Baccalaureate Mass @ 10:00 and 8th Grade Graduation @ 5:00
Religion
We with be finishing our Family Life unit. Unit 5 God’s Gift of Community Lesson 9 I Have Many Families and Lesson 10 Family Peace.
Virtue of the month: Patience is within the virtue of Fortitude which enables one to endure difficulties for the sake of what is good. Patience means to bear present difficulties calmly. When I am angered or inconvenienced in any way patience gives me the grace to respond with kindness so that I don’t waste any of the opportunities to grow in love.
The saint associated with this virtue is: St. Gianna Molla
Language Arts
Unit 16 Lessons 6-10
Word Work: Identify, decode, and read tag along e words (house, tease, mouse), read and write homophones and homographs, understand and use verbs and adjectives in poetry,
Spelling Words: raise, leave, noise, house, please, live, eight, old, hold, and write
Reading: Develop fluent reading, understand story structure and text features, draw conclusions and make predictions, summarize, and compare and contrast.
Writing: Poems/Memorable events and favorite things
Author Study: Mo Willems
Mathematics
Number Corner for May: Activities in May focus on numbers up to 120, with students working with the number grid for addition and subtraction in both the Calendar Grid and Computational Fluency workouts, and practicing forward and backward counting by 10s off the decade during the Number Line workout. The Calendar Collector encourages students to extend their concepts about fractions to quarters and dollars by thinking of a quarter as one-fourth of a dollar. They collect a quarter a day and group the quarters into dollars to see how many dollars they can collect before the end of the school year. Counting the days in school continues this month with an eye toward 200 and also summer vacation.
Bridges: Unit 8 Module 3 offers a full-fledged science project: students learn to fold and fly simple paper gliders, construct Unifix cube trains to measure flight distances, and create tally charts to show the flight data collected by the entire class. The teacher then invites students to modify their original gliders or make new ones with the intent of improving their flight distances. They collect and analyze a second round of data to see whether or not their glider modifications made any difference. These six sessions put into play a great deal of math and science, including concepts of change in location.
First Grade Weekly Update May 19th-23rd
Weekly Syllabus: May 19th-23rd, 2025
Reminders
Tuesday, May 20th is May & June Birthday Free Dress
Wednesday, May 21st is our Spring Concert from 7-8 in the church.
Friday, May 23th is the last day for our Midway Shelter service learning collection. It is also a minimum day dismissal.
Friday, May 23rd is the Schoolwide Emergency Dismissal Drill
Monday, May 26th is the Memorial Day Holiday. No School!
Religion
We will continue with our Family Life Unit.
Virtue of the month: Patience is within the virtue of Fortitude which enables one to endure difficulties for the sake of what is good. Patience means to bear present difficulties calmly. When I am angered or inconvenienced in any way patience gives me the grace to respond with kindness so that I don’t waste any of the opportunities to grow in love.
The saint associated with this virtue is: St. Gianna Molla
Language Arts
Unit 16 Lessons 1-5
Word Work: Identify oo sounds, read and write words with oo, use superlative adjectives, understand and use homophones eight/ate, and write/right.
Spelling Words: moon, spoon, room, broom, book, took, shook, hood, wood, and stood
Reading: Develop fluent reading, read with natural phrasing, draw conclusions, recognize plot problems and solutions, identify main topic and key details, and understand authors purpose.
Writing: Poetry
Author Study: Mo Willems
Mathematics
Number Corner for May: Activities in May focus on numbers up to 120, with students working with the number grid for addition and subtraction in both the Calendar Grid and Computational Fluency workouts, and practicing forward and backward counting by 10s off the decade during the Number Line workout. The Calendar Collector encourages students to extend their concepts about fractions to quarters and dollars by thinking of a quarter as one-fourth of a dollar. They collect a quarter a day and group the quarters into dollars to see how many dollars they can collect before the end of the school year. Counting the days in school continues this month with an eye toward 200 and also summer vacation.
Bridges: Unit 8 Module 3 offers a full-fledged science project: students learn to fold and fly simple paper gliders, construct Unifix cube trains to measure flight distances, and create tally charts to show the flight data collected by the entire class. The teacher then invites students to modify their original gliders or make new ones with the intent of improving their flight distances. They collect and analyze a second round of data to see whether or not their glider modifications made any difference. These six sessions put into play a great deal of math and science, including concepts of change in location.
First Grade Weekly Update May 12-16
Weekly Syllabus: May 12th-16th, 2025
Reminders
Please make a donation to our Fun Run Fundraiser if you have not already done so!
Sunday, May 11th is our Family Mass @ 9:00. All are welcome.
Tuesday, May 13th is our Fun Run. First Grade will be running from 9:25-9:55.
Thursday, May 15th is Walk and Roll to School Day. You can walk, bike, scoot, skate, or carpool to school and earn a prize. Please check in with SLC upon arrival.
Religion
Family Life-Unit 3 God’s Gift of Life and Unit 4 God’s Gift of Love.
Virtue of the month: Patience is within the virtue of Fortitude which enables one to endure difficulties for the sake of what is good. Patience means to bear present difficulties calmly. When I am angered or inconvenienced in any way patience gives me the grace to respond with kindness so that I don’t waste any of the opportunities to grow in love.
The saint associated with this virtue is: St. Gianna Molla
Language Arts
Unit 15 Lessons 6-10
Word Work: Identify final long o sounds, associate ow with long o, read a decodable story with long o, decode difficult words from an informational text, recognize ow spelling patterns, and write words with ow
Spelling Words: low, blow, grow, slow, snow, warm, walk, once, give, and done
Reading: Develop fluent reading with repeated reading of a story, observe end punctuation while reading, understand characters and their feelings, discuss lessons taught in a story, identify the topic of an informational text, compare and contrast texts, understand the author’s purpose and reasons, and understand shades of meaning
Writing: Poetry
Author Study: Mo Willems
Mathematics
Number Corner for May: Activities in May focus on numbers up to 120, with students working with the number grid for addition and subtraction in both the Calendar Grid and Computational Fluency workouts, and practicing forward and backward counting by 10s off the decade during the Number Line workout. The Calendar Collector encourages students to extend their concepts about fractions to quarters and dollars by thinking of a quarter as one-fourth of a dollar. They collect a quarter a day and group the quarters into dollars to see how many dollars they can collect before the end of the school year. Counting the days in school continues this month with an eye toward 200 and also summer vacation.
Bridges Unit 4: We will be going back to Unit 4 to do some measuring! The mathematical focus of Module 4 is measurement, comparing and ordering two-digit numbers, writing inequality statements, finding differences, and working on a number line. In the context of a pretend trip to Antarctica, students get their heights measured for snowsuits and graph the results. The class records height and other data for two types of penguins: the rockhopper and the king. Students make measuring strips and strings and use them to order and compare the numbers and find differences.
First Grade Weekly Update April 28th-May 2nd
Weekly Syllabus: April 28th-May 2nd, 2025
Reminders
Full week of school!
Religion
We will begin our Family Life curriculum. Here are the units we will be discussing: Unit 1 God’s Gift of Family, Unit 2 God’s Gift of Self, Unit 3 God’s Gift of Life, Unit 4 God’s Gift of Love, and Unit 5 God’s Gift of Community.
Virtue of the month: Patience is within the virtue of Fortitude which enables one to endure difficulties for the sake of what is good. Patience means to bear present difficulties calmly. When I am angered or inconvenienced in any way patience gives me the grace to respond with kindness so that I don’t waste any of the opportunities to grow in love.
The saint associated with this virtue is: St. Gianna Molla
Language Arts
Unit 14 Lessons 6-10
Word Work: Associate c with /s/, Associate g with /j/, Introduce the spelling list (face, place, cage, page, buy, light, wash, right, find, and kind), practice decoding and encoding soft c and soft g words, guide practice with Memory Words, alphabetize words.
Spelling words: face, cage, place, page, kind, find, right, light, buy, and wash
Reading: Fluency practice with a literary text, review Unit 14 Words to Know (attract, guide, and flexible), understand problem and solution, understand characters and key details, connecting text to self, review onomatopoeia, fluency and comprehension with an informational text, understand picture-text relationships in an informational text.
Writing: Finish Narrative stories.
Author Study: Cynthia Rylant
Mathematics
Number Corner for May: Activities in May focus on numbers up to 120, with students working with the number grid for addition and subtraction in both the Calendar Grid and Computational Fluency workouts, and practicing forward and backward counting by 10s off the decade during the Number Line workout. The Calendar Collector encourages students to extend their concepts about fractions to quarters and dollars by thinking of a quarter as one-fourth of a dollar. They collect a quarter a day and group the quarters into dollars to see how many dollars they can collect before the end of the school year. Counting the days in school continues this month with an eye toward 200 and also summer vacation.
Bridges Unit 7 Module 3: Hansel and Gretel are having so much fun marking the paths around their house in the woods that they decide to add a few amenities. Each of these objects has a different length; the fence sections are 10 units, the benches 5, the trash cans 2, and the flowerpots 1. This gives students all kinds of interesting opportunities to design paths of different lengths and to compute the lengths of path sections presented to them. The Hansel and Gretel theme culminates in a partner game the students make themselves involving a path 120 steps long. They spin to make jumps of 1, 2, 5, or 10, and later 20 or 30, to race from one end of the path to the other. The game can be played forward or backward and allows students to practice adding and subtracting 2-digit numbers on a number line.
First Grade Weekly Update April 14th-18th
Weekly Syllabus: April 14th-18th, 2025
Reminders
Thursday, April 17th is Holy Thursday and a noon dismissal. No Share and Care.
Sunday April 20th is Easter Sunday. Enjoy your break with family and friends! Blessings for a Happy Easter!!!
Religion
Praying the Jelly Bean prayer and reflecting on the Stations of the Cross.
Virtue of the month: Gratitude- Gratitude falls under the virtue of Justice- giving to each, beginning with God, what is due Him. Thankful disposition of mind and heart.
Gratitude perfects our will and all our relationships with others, including family, country, and Church. It is the constant and firm will to give to others what they are due. It disposes us to respect the rights and dignity of others, leading to harmony and equality in human interactions.
Saints associated with this virtue are: St. Josephine Bakhita, St. Mary Magdaline, and St. Augustine.
We will be keeping a gratitude journal this month and writing what we are grateful for daily.
Language Arts
No spelling words
We will finish our unit from last week.
Mathematics
Number Corner: April brings opportunities to review and extend many mathematical concepts addressed this year in Number Corner. For example, the Calendar Grid reviews fractions by folding geometric shapes, encourages students to define the shapes by attributes, and introduces line symmetry. During Calendar Collector students collect Popsicle sticks that they estimate, bundle into 10s and 1s, represent with tally marks, and use to measure and compare the length of classroom objects. Each of the number family patterns the students have met this year reappear in a 1–120 number grid, and students discover that familiar computational strategies for single-digit numbers can also be used to solve equations with double-digit decade numbers.
Bridges Unit 7 Module 2: This module and the next focus on numbers to 120 on a number line. Students enter the fairytale world of Hansel and Gretel, who create and mark paths by dropping pebbles every 10 steps. When these intervals prove to be too far apart, they use pinecones to mark each halfway point. Finally, they drop bread crumbs to mark each step. Hungry birds and squirrels have a way of making the bread crumbs disappear sometimes, leaving interesting gaps here and there. The pathlike number lines that emerge during this module give students many opportunities to count forward and backward by 1s, 5s, and 10s from a variety of starting points, read and write numbers to 120, and add and subtract 1-digit numbers to and from 2-digit numbers.
Social Studies
We will continue our unit on American Symbols. Students will learn about symbols on stamps, the Liberty Bell, the Bald Eagle, Landmarks as symbols, The White House, Mt. Rushmore, The American Flag, and the Statue of Liberty.
First Grade Weekly Update March 31st-April 4th
Weekly Syllabus: March 31st-April 4th, 2025
Reminders
No School on Monday, March 31st in honor of Cezar Chavez
The Celebration of the Arts will be on Wednesday, April 2nd and Thursday, April 3rd from 3-6:30
Please continue to work on the Lenten Homework and turn in the grapes and leaves with acts of kindness. Also, take time to look at the Lenten Path packet with ideas for practicing the three pillars: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Religion
We continue to focus on Lent. We will be reflecting on the Stations of the Cross.
Virtue of the month: Gratitude- Gratitude falls under the virtue of Justice- giving to each, beginning with God, what is due Him. Thankful disposition of mind and heart.
Gratitude perfects our will and all our relationships with others, including family, country, and Church. It is the constant and firm will to give to others what they are due. It disposes us to respect the rights and dignity of others, leading to harmony and equality in human interactions.
Saints associated with this virtue are: St. Josephine Bakhita, St. Mary Magdaline, and St. Augustine.
We will be keeping a gratitude journal this month and writing what we are grateful for daily.
Language Arts
Unit 13 Lessons 6-10
Word Work: Associate er, ir, and ur with the er sound. Learn about the trickers ar, or, and ear that also say er, and recognize and use synonyms
Spelling words: bird, third, turn, burn, cold, know, does, laugh, both, and again
Reading: Read memory words fluently (cold, know, does, laugh, both, and again), practice reading at an appropriate rate, listen to and read grade level informational text, understand and draw conclusions about characters and their feelings, and recognize and understand job names ending in er and or.
Writing: We are working on our animal reports.
Author Study: Cynthia Rylant
Mathematics
Number Corner: April brings opportunities to review and extend many mathematical concepts addressed this year in Number Corner. For example, the Calendar Grid reviews fractions by folding geometric shapes, encourages students to define the shapes by attributes, and introduces line symmetry. During Calendar Collector students collect Popsicle sticks that they estimate, bundle into 10s and 1s, represent with tally marks, and use to measure and compare the length of classroom objects. Each of the number family patterns the students have met this year reappear in a 1–120 number grid, and students discover that familiar computational strategies for single-digit numbers can also be used to solve equations with double-digit decade numbers.
We will begin Bridges Unit 6 Module 3: The activities in this module center on story problems. Using their number racks and the fact strategies they’ve been working on, students solve three types of addition and subtraction story problems: result unknown (10 + 4 = ? and 15 – 6 = ?), change unknown (10 + ? = 14 and 15 – ? = 9), and start unknown (? + 4 = 14 and ? – 6 = 9). Students also work with part-whole and comparison situations. Translating story problems to equations is emphasized throughout, and during Session 3 the teacher introduces a new Work Place game in which students work together to draw number cards and arrange them to form true equations. The module concludes with a Unit Assessment.
Social Studies
We will continue our unit on American Symbols. Students will learn about symbols on stamps, the Liberty Bell, the Bald Eagle, Landmarks as symbols, The White House, Mt. Rushmore, The American Flag, and the Statue of Liberty.
First Grade Weekly Update March 24th-28th
Weekly Syllabus: March 24th-28th, 2025
Reminders
Please continue to work on the Lenten Homework and turn in the grapes and leaves with acts of kindness. Also, take time to look at the Lenten Path packet with ideas for practicing the three pillars: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.
Religion
We continue to focus on Lent. We will be reflecting on the Stations of the Cross.
Virtue of the month: Circumspection- Circumspection falls under the virtue of Prudence which enables one to reason and to act rightly in any given situation.
Circumspection is the careful consideration of the circumstances and one’s options to determine the best course of action. For example: I think before I act and ask for advice when making important decisions as well as praying to ask for God’s guidance.
Saints associated with this virtue are: Blessed Miguel Pro, St. John Baptist de la Salle, St. Jane Frances de Chantal, and St. Edmond Campion.
Language Arts
Unit 13 Lessons 1-5
Word Work: Identify, decode, and write ar and or words and understand the use of the suffix -ful.
Memory Words: both, again, laugh, cold, does, and know
Spelling Words: paper, even, silent, open, super, their, now, always, because, and been
Reading: Develop fluent reading with repeated readings of a story, read memory words fluently, understand characters and characters feelings, connect self to text, connect character feelings to problem and solution plot, identify key details, and identify main topic and retell key details.
Writing: Problem-Solution Fictional Stories
Author Study: Marc Brown
Mathematics
Number Corner for March: The March Calendar Grid features telling time to the hour and half-hour on both digital and analog clocks, and students explore elapsed time as they determine the time between each marker. Coins return to the Calendar Collector, and students practice counting mixed sets of dimes, nickels, and pennies to determine their total value. This month they review strategies for solving equations within 20 and learn how to “think ten” when adding numbers with sums greater than 10. The Number Line and Days in School workouts both introduce students to numbers beyond 100.
Bridges Unit 6 Module 2: The activities in this module continue to focus on addition and subtraction story problems and fact strategies to 20. Students make double-flap dot cards and picture cards, writing sets of fact family equations and story problems to match. They model and solve addition combinations to 20 on their number racks, identifying such strategies as working with easier combinations like 10 + 4 and 7 + 7 to solve more challenging combinations such as 9 + 4 and 7 + 8. A game at the end of the module, Pick Two to Make Twenty, sets work with addition combinations in an appealing and challenging context. The module concludes with a short checkpoint assessment.
Social Studies
We will continue our unit on American Symbols. Students will learn about symbols on stamps, the Liberty Bell, the Bald Eagle, Landmarks as symbols, The White House, Mt. Rushmore, The American Flag, and the Statue of Liberty.
First Grade Weekly Update March 17th-21st
Weekly Syllabus: March 17th-21st, 2025
Reminders
Tuesday, March 18th is birthday free dress.
Thursday, March 20th is our field trip to the Oakland Zoo.
Religion
We continue to focus on Lent
Virtue of the month: Circumspection- Circumspection falls under the virtue of Prudence which enables one to reason and to act rightly in any given situation.
Circumspection is the careful consideration of the circumstances and one’s options to determine the best course of action. For example: I think before I act and ask for advice when making important decisions as well as praying to ask for God’s guidance.
Saints associated with this virtue are: Blessed Miguel Pro, St. John Baptist de la Salle, St. Jane Frances de Chantal, and St. Edmond Campion.
Language Arts
Unit 12 Lessons 6-10
Word Work: Associate aw with the short o sound, decode aw words, read a story with aw words, determine the number of syllables in words, decode difficult words from an informational text, encode aw words, spell memory words, understand and use the conjunctions because and and, and understand and use adjectives and precise verbs.
Spelling Words: law, saw, dawn, lawn, crawl, come, coming, they, our, and put
Reading: Develop fluent reading with repeated readings of a story, read a story with expression, read memory words with automaticity, read and discuss a grade level informational text, identify main idea, retell key details, connect ideas with cause and effect, compare and contrast two texts.
Writing: Descriptive Writing
Author Study: Marc Brown
Mathematics
Number Corner for March: The March Calendar Grid features telling time to the hour and half-hour on both digital and analog clocks, and students explore elapsed time as they determine the time between each marker. Coins return to the Calendar Collector, and students practice counting mixed sets of dimes, nickels, and pennies to determine their total value. This month they review strategies for solving equations within 20 and learn how to “think ten” when adding numbers with sums greater than 10. The Number Line and Days in School workouts both introduce students to numbers beyond 100.
Bridges Unit 6 Module 2: The activities in this module continue to focus on addition and subtraction story problems and fact strategies to 20. Students make double-flap dot cards and picture cards, writing sets of fact family equations and story problems to match. They model and solve addition combinations to 20 on their number racks, identifying such strategies as working with easier combinations like 10 + 4 and 7 + 7 to solve more challenging combinations such as 9 + 4 and 7 + 8. A game at the end of the module, Pick Two to Make Twenty, sets work with addition combinations in an appealing and challenging context. The module concludes with a short checkpoint assessment.
Social Studies
We will continue our unit on American Symbols. Students will learn about symbols on stamps, the Liberty Bell, the Bald Eagle, Landmarks as symbols, The White House, Mt. Rushmore, The American Flag, and the Statue of Liberty.
First Grade Weekly Update March 10th-14th
Weekly Syllabus: March 10th-14th, 2025
Reminders
Saturday, March 15th is our school auction. Hope to see you there!
Religion
We continue to work on our Lent Lapbooks and Stations of the Cross. Continue to do acts of kindness and turn in the grapes and leaves.
Virtue of the month: Circumspection- Circumspection falls under the virtue of Prudence which enables one to reason and to act rightly in any given situation.
Circumspection is the careful consideration of the circumstances and one’s options to determine the best course of action. For example: I think before I act and ask for advice when making important decisions as well as praying to ask for God’s guidance.
Saints associated with this virtue are: Blessed Miguel Pro, St. John Baptist de la Salle, St. Jane Frances de Chantal, and St. Edmond Campion.
Language Arts
Unit 12 Lessons 1-5
Word Work: Identify words with the all sound, read stories with the all sound, encode words with the all sound, understand and use adjectives, understand and use precise verbs, and combine sentences using the conjunction and.
Spelling Words: call, mall, small, stall, wall, baseball, basketball, hallway, fallen, and taller
Reading: Read and discuss grade level literary text, understand text structure (beginning, middle, and end), draw conclusions with text support, identify key details, identify main topic and retell key details, and understand and use Words to Know (puzzled, collapse, steep, and system)
Writing: Descriptive Writing
Author Study: Marc Brown
Mathematics
Number Corner for March: The March Calendar Grid features telling time to the hour and half-hour on both digital and analog clocks, and students explore elapsed time as they determine the time between each marker. Coins return to the Calendar Collector, and students practice counting mixed sets of dimes, nickels, and pennies to determine their total value. This month they review strategies for solving equations within 20 and learn how to “think ten” when adding numbers with sums greater than 10. The Number Line and Days in School workouts both introduce students to numbers beyond 100.
Bridges Unit 6is tightly focused on addition and subtraction to 20. During this unit, first graders continue to develop fluency with addition and subtraction facts to 10 and strategies for working with facts to 20. Students make extensive use of the number rack to model and solve number combinations and story problems of all types. In the process, they learn how to write and solve equations that involve unknowns in all positions and determine whether addition and subtraction equations are true or false.
Bridges Unit 6 Module 1-During these five sessions, students review combinations of 10, Add Ten, Add Nine, and Doubles. They also investigate three strategies useful in working with subtraction combinations to 20: taking away, finding the difference, and using familiar addition facts to help solve related subtraction facts.
Social Studies
We will continue our unit on American Symbols. Students will learn about symbols on stamps, the Liberty Bell, the Bald Eagle, Landmarks as symbols, The White House, Mt. Rushmore, The American Flag, and the Statue of Liberty.
First Grade Weekly Update March 3rd-7th
Weekly Syllabus: March 3rd-7th, 2025
Reminders
Wednesday, March 5th is Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. We will have an all school mass on this day @ 9:30. All are welcome to attend!
Please check out the Enrichment classes Newsletter for January/February
January/February 2025 Enrichment Newsletter.
Religion
We will be reflecting on the Stations of the Cross and working on our Lent Lapbooks.
Language Arts
Unit 11 Lessons 6-10
Word Work: Decode long vowel trickers, read and decode a story with long vowel trickers, recognize spelling patterns for long vowel trickers, spell memory words (their, now, always, because, and been), understand and use synonyms, and understand and use “try short, try long” strategies.
Spelling Words: paper, even, silent, open, super, their, now, always, because, and been
Reading: Develop fluent reading with repeated readings of a story, read with appropriate stress, identify main idea and retell key details, give support of an opinion, compare and contrast two reader stories, identify topic of informational text, and discuss the main ideas and details of an informational text.
Writing: Opinion Writing
Mathematics
Number Corner for March: The March Calendar Grid features telling time to the hour and half-hour on both digital and analog clocks, and students explore elapsed time as they determine the time between each marker. Coins return to the Calendar Collector, and students practice counting mixed sets of dimes, nickels, and pennies to determine their total value. This month they review strategies for solving equations within 20 and learn how to “think ten” when adding numbers with sums greater than 10. The Number Line and Days in School workouts both introduce students to numbers beyond 100.
Bridges Unit 5 Module 3: After a project in which students create nine-patch mini-quilts by composing square quilt blocks into a larger squares, the focus shifts to fractions. Students fold and cut paper to decompose shapes and play a bingo game to explore halves, fourths, and thirds.
Social Studies
We will begin our unit on American Symbols. Students will learn about symbols on stamps, the Liberty Bell, the Bald Eagle, Landmarks as symbols, The White House, Mt. Rushmore, The American Flag, and the Statue of Liberty.