Reading

First Graders are deep into their study of Cynthia Rylant’s books. This week, we explored personification. Despite being a big, complicated word, personification is an easy concept for young children to understand. In Cynthia Rylant’s books, we discovered, she sometimes uses personification to make her animal characters talk, wear clothes, drive, and even bake cakes! In other stories of hers, however, she lets the animals act like animals and the people act like people. Now that we know about personification, we are noticing it everywhere!

Math

Students are building their “fact power” in math! More and more, they are able to use strategies and shortcuts to solve mental math problems. This week, we explored a fun was of making “- 9” problems easier. If you just take away 10 instead (which is always easy to do) and then give one back at the end, you’ve just solved a tricky “- 9” problem! We got to practice with some very tricky problems, like “55 – 9 =   .” It didn’t take long for these young mathematicians to discover the answer… 46!

Swimming!

This week marked our very first swimming lesson as a class! There was excitement in the air, and some nervousness too, but once everyone jumped in and started working with our friendly swimming instructors, everyone had a great time. Students practice holding their breath, kicking their feet, and even swimming on their backs. We can’t wait for our next swim lesson!

Important Dates

• Monday and Tuesday, March 7 and 8 – Half Days, Student-Led Conferences
• Friday, March 11 – Second Swim Lesson!
• Friday, March 18 – Third Swim Lesson!
• Saturday, March 26 – Sunday, April 3 – No School, Spring Break
• Monday, April 4 – School Resumes