We are approaching the end of the school year fast and boy will we be busy this month!! We have our field trip to the aquarium, Hammonton Lake Day, half days, and the end of the school year Mass. It's hard to believe that we are in our final days of first grade and soon will be having fun in the sun.
I always recommend that the children continue to read, write, and practice their math skills over the summer months. There are two required summer reading books for the children to read and the titles can be found on the school library website. I also recommend visiting the public library and have your child choose books to read for fun.
The students can practice writing skills by keeping a journal of the activities that they do each day or maybe write down information about places they visited.
Help your child prepare for second grade by using flash cards to practice addition and subtraction facts. They will learn two-digit addition and subtraction with regrouping and they will only have number lines on the desks at the beginning of the year.
The websites listed on the books that your children bring home are also excellent resources for practice activities.
Always know that if you ever have any questions or concerns that you may contact me at 609-704-2400 (ext. 179) or by email at dreola@stjosephprek8.org. I check my voicemails and emails each morning when I come in and again at the end of the day. If you ever want to meet for a conference, I arrive at school by 7:15 AM each morning or we can meet any day after school.
Monday - SPANISH from 8:30-9:00 AM
Tuesday - LIBRARY from 8:15-8:45 AM
Wednesday - ART from 10:15-10:55 AM
Thursday - GYM from 8:30-9:00 AM
COMPUTERS from 10:30-11:00 AM
Friday - MUSIC from 10:00-10:30 AM
SNACK is from 9:15-9:30 AM
LUNCH is from 11:15-11:45 AM
RECESS is from 11:45-12:05 PM
What we are learning during the month of June?
Religion - As you know we have completed the Religion book. We spent a week reviewing the main lessons from the year and I am very proud to announce that the students performed very well on the end of the book test. Currently we are working on a "Ten Commandments" booklet. Each day we are writing down and discussing a commandment and drawing illustrations in a booklet form. After we complete the booklet, we will listen to various Bible stories.
Reading - We will be finishing our last book shortly before the school year is over. Isn't it amazing how far the children have come? Do you remember our first story, "The Hat"? It had three to four words on a page. Now I watch the children choose chapter books to read on their own.
English - We are continuing to work on our language and grammar skills by finding mistakes in sentences and making corrections. We practice the skills of noun/pronoun agreement, verb agreement, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling in our daily language assignments.
We will work on writing paragraphs by practicing writing main ideas and adding three details about that idea.
Spelling - We will work on these phonetic patterns: short "e" spelled "ea"; the "oo" sound as in boot and broom. We are also differentiating between words with short and long vowel sounds.
Math - We are currently working in Chapter 9 and learning about various measurement skills. While we are working in this chapter, we will go ahead to Chapter 10 and practice addition skills with two-digit numbers. Then I plan to jump ahead to Chapter 12 to introduce the concepts of fractions and probability before the school year is over. While we study about fractions, we will also work in Chapter 11 which covers two-digit subtraction skills.
Science - In science we will work in the "Habitats" chapter and then read and discuss the "Space and Technology" chapter.
Computers - As the children continue to work at their own pace, these are some of the following skills that they will be working on: desktop, windows and controls, toolbars and menus, software, and parts of a spreadsheet.