*Note anything underlined in the table above or in the notes below is a clickable link for your convenience *
Key to Abbreviations:
GP- The Gospel Project- Home Edition
TB- Singapore Math Textbook
WB- Singapore Math Workbook
EP- Singapore Math Extra Practice
MM- Mental Math (see appendix in HIG)
AAS- All About Spelling teacher manual (click here to print any missing phonogram cards)
FLL- First Language Lessons
SF- Sounds First Phonemic Awareness Program (click here and scroll down to Grade 1)
OPG- The Ordinary Parents' Guide to Teaching Reading (click here to print OPG sight words)
SotW- Story of the World
G&B/A- The Good and The Beautiful, Arthropods
G&B/MB- The Good and The Beautiful, Marine Biology
Coming Soon:
Tuesday, October 6- Teacher/Co-Teacher conferences; no class for students
Tuesday, October 20- Picture retakes
Thursday, October 29- Historical Dress Up- students may dress in costume as a historical figure from their grade level history study. Details below.
Thursday, October 29- Spirit/Pizza/DOGS Day- Fortis spirit shirts and shorts or jeans may be worn.
Friday, October 30- Fortis Fall Fest (more info to come!)
Historical Dress Up- October 29th: Costumes must be in the theme of our history studies this year, which will cover nomads through the beginning of Christianity (see SotW Chapters 1-37). Guidelines: No weapons, no gore, nothing scary, students need to be able to move and sit properly and use the restroom on their own. Have fun thinking of ideas. I can't wait to see what you come up with!
Math:
For the upcoming strategy of "Make 10 to Add" it is IMPERATIVE that the students be fluent with their math facts, especially pairs that make 10. Please spend extra time now building math facts on a 10-frame or rekenrek and strengthening number sense to make this important strategy easier for them to grasp.
Spelling:
In Lessons 7 and 8, we are continuing to work on spelling words with open and closed syllables, as well as learning how to divide those types of words into syllables. Syllable division rules are helpful for decoding unknown multisyllable words.
It's very important for students to recall that every syllable has at least one vowel (Rule Card 10). In fact, "a part of a word that contains a vowel sound" is the very definition of a syllable. Knowing this rule will help students check themselves and avoid mistakes like spelling belong as "blong."
Reading:
OPG L94 begins common spellings for the /ī/ sound with IE as /ī/ and Y alone as /ī/. We will focus dictation for that lesson on the words ending with Y as /ī/, as we have already studied in AAS. This is by far the most common way to spell /ī/ at the end of a word. OPG teaches /ī/ as one of the sounds for IE, even though there are only about 4-5 English words that are spelled with IE as /ī/ at the end. You may choose IE words to dictate in your student's OPG Dictation Pages if you wish.
We will start reading from "Frog and Toad All Year" this week! As with Little Bear, allow your child to read the words they know how to decode, while you fill in by reading words they haven't learned to decode yet. I know they will fall in love with Frog & Toad!
Words from "Down the Hill" that students should be able to decode: the, hill, Frog, wake, up, he, and, see, is, I, will, not, am, in, my, bed, fun, came, things, top, hat, help, best, kill, me, went, they, we, ride, this, big, on, sled, be, with, it, fine, fast, sit, go, bump, fell, past, trees, rocks, glad, that, steer, can, than, but, bang, hit, thud, plop, well, by, did, that, home, may, much.
Irregular/heart words in "Down the Hill": said, have, do, to, of, friend.
History:
SotW Ch. 12 questions for disucssion: Why did Amenemhet want to conquer Nubia? What kind of weapons did the Hyksos use against the Egyptians? What was the turning point that lead to the Hyskos being defeated?
Journal sentence: Egypt became powerful during the Middle Kingdom.
Science:
This week we begin a unit on butterflies! Even those among us who are not terribly fond of most insects can enjoy the beauty and grace of the lovely butterfly. As we know, they don't start out that way. Not only will we (hopefully!) witness an amazing physical transformation, we'll take the time to understand it as a picture of the amazing work God does in our own lives. He takes us from crawling around in our sinful state, and through his work on the cross, changes us into a completely new creation!
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" -2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV
This week, your child will be bringing home information for this semester's science project. You will receive hard copies of the presentation guidelines and the Arthropod Observation form. The Arthropod Project will be due November 12th. This is intended to be a fun and educational project for your student!
Geography:
Due 10/15
Memory Work:
It's time to start learning our Quarter 2 poem, "Count Your Blessings." Click here for a version of the melody you can use to practice at home (our poem only contains the first and fourth verses and the chorus). Due 11/19
We're also beginning to learn the books of the Bible in order, beginning with the New Testament (we will go back and do the Old Testament after Christmas). Here is the song we practice with in class. Your child is free to learn the books with that song or another song they may perhaps already know. Due 12/3
First quarter complete! We officially complete the first quarter this week. I've listed some objectives below to remind you of the goals we're striving for with the students.
Math Objectives: Your child should be:
1. fluently and quickly adding and subtracting with "Friends of 10" (8+2=10 and 10-2=8, as examples) by now, approaching mastery of other bonds (addition and subtraction) within 10. If not, please make this a focus!
2. able to write appropriate subtraction/addition equations for a given "story problem," knowing which numbers in the story are parts or whole.
Reading Objectives:
1. By the end of every week your child should have practiced reading aloud to you for at least a total of 1 hour from OPG. Their reading fluency should be continually improving.
2. Use phonograms to decode the OPG lessons from each week.
3. Say phonogram sounds from assessments 1-2; be working on sounds from assessment 3.
4. Know how to identify open and closed syllables and their corresponding vowel sounds.
Handwriting Objectives: Your child should be:
1. leaving appropriate spaces between letters and words.
2. forming letters properly- top to bottom, left to right
3. beginning sentences with a capital letter and remembering the end punctuation.
4. using uppercase and lowercase letters appropriately (not writing uppercase letters in the middle of words).
Grammar Objectives: Your child should be:
1. able to define a noun and the difference between common & proper nouns
2. capitalizing all proper nouns.
2. capitalizing all proper nouns.
3. able to give you examples of nouns.
Spelling Objectives: Your child should be able to:
1. recite AAS rule cards correctly.
2. write words from Lessons 1-6 correctly from dictation.
History/Geography Objectives:
1. Practice oral narration skills that will translate to written narration skills.
2. Become comfortable and successful presenting information to a group.
Science Objectives: Your child should be:
1. lead to worship the Creator in response to the awe inspired by a deeper understanding of our world.
2. able to identify the major characteristics of an insect: six legs, three body parts, two antennae.
3. able to name several insects and describe their special qualities.
