Mrs. Jensen's First Grade

Our class had 100% turnout for open house last night, way to go first grade families! I’m very excited to work with your student and partner with you this year.  Please contact me, I welcome questions, concerns and comments.

The next 3 weeks we will be working on Smart Start in reading. This is a review of kindergarten words and reading concepts.  Students will very soon have a list of unit 1 words in their red homework folders.  PLEASE practice reading and spelling these words. Students must be able to correctly spell the high frequency unit words to earn a 3 or 4 on that component of the report card.

In math, we are reviewing the concepts of numbers 1-10 as well as recognizing patterns and identifying shapes. Your child’s homework began today and will continue daily unless its a unit testing day. On the unit test days, we will celebrate their hard work and effort by taking a day off from math homework.

We are working on building a strong sense of community in our classroom this week. I’ve been placing emphasis on the saying “When we work together, we have more fun, learn more and get more done”. Students are working toward filling the class marble jar (we earned 6 marbles already!) and soon will be given a Star Punch card to recognize individual effort and hard work. We will also be using an ipad app this year called Class Dojo to help track great behavior. At Roper, we strive to Be Safe, Be Responsible, and Be Respectful.

Our class is off to a great start!

This week’s spelling words are:  black, clip, flag, flip, plan, slip, be, and pull.  The challenge words are glass and place, and of course there will be those two extra bonus words. Our test will be on Monday, Sept. 23.  This week we have been learning about l blends, which show up in our spelling this week.  Look for words that begin with bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, and sl when you are reading with your child or even around the house or grocery store…ANY place can be a learning place.
We are finishing our unit on home safety this week, and will begin our animal and habitat unit on Monday.  We will focus on several groups of animals: birds, mammals, insects, reptiles, amphibians, and arachnids.
We are well into unit 2 in math, and the students are learning some great addition strategies.  I know the students in our class were pretty excited to be able to answer my question this afternoon… (32+6).
Our essential question in reading this week is “What makes a pet special?”, the corresponding vocabulary includes:
Care-to feed, love, and play with a pet
Train-to teach a pet to do something
Companion-a person or animal you can spend time with
Groom-to bathe or brush a pet
Popular-something many people like
I look forward to seeing you at conferences on Sept 26 and Oct. 1.

Welcome to the 5th week of school! Our spelling list this week includes: hit, kiss, miss, pin, sit, win, out, and up. The two challenge words are skin and spin. In addition there will be two bonus challenge words each week that students don’t have the opportunity to study in advance. The next spelling test will be Monday, Sept. 16.
We have finished our social studies unit Around Our School and are mid-way through our Health unit of Home Safety. We will be having our first math unit test on Thursday, October 12.
This week’s vocabulary words are: city, country, feast, scurried, and bored. If you get a chance ask your student what these words mean and perhaps if they can use the word in sentences. Our essential question this week revolves around the question of: What is it like where you live?

We have successfully completed 3 weeks of what our new reading curriculum calls Smart Start. Your child has reviewed/learned 30 words and is ready for spelling tests! Our first spelling test will be next Monday, Sept.9. This week’s words are: can, cat, hat, man, nap, tap, does, not, that and flat. We are studying the word families -an, -at, and -ap this week. Your child may identify these words as rhyming words or word ladder words (words that change one letter to make a new word).

In addition to spelling words, you may have noticed that the unit 1 word list has been added to the plastic sleeve in the homework folder. These words should be practiced daily. If your child is able to read the word, encourage them to try spelling them-you’ll be studying for the end of the quarter dictation test.

I hope that you and your child have been reading daily at home and writing down your times to contribute to our Read to Succeed goal of 3 million minutes. IF your child reads 300 minutes or more per month, they will earn an incentive AND become better readers.

Lincoln Public Schools has adopted McGraw-Hill for our new reading series. There are many on-line resources that teachers and students will be using. There are a few apps that can be downloaded for free until AUGUST 31. These apps provide a fun way to practice our new reading curriculum. https://www.mheonline.com/apps/

Class of 2025!

This year’s first graders are on track to graduate in 2025. We have discussed graduation several times school-wide as part of our morning message. Also included in our morning messages are vocabulary words of the day, complete with definitions and examples. Mid-September, it will be first grade’s turn to read the Roper Word of the Day over the intercom, a very exciting thing!

Many of you have probably noticed a sheet of smart start words in the plastic sleeve of the homework folders. Please encourage your child to practice not only reading these words, but spelling them as well. Our assessment rubrics have changed with our new reading series and to be considered proficient, students must be able to read & write the high frequency words each quarter.

Thank you for your efforts with math homework. It’s been impressive that all students have been returning the daily homework so far this year. Woohoo families! Keep up the good work.

This week is our official last week of spelling tests! We will continue to practice spelling, but as a review.
This week’s regular list words are: newer, warmest, highest, faster, deepest, and richer. The challenge list words are: smarter, smartest, slow, slowest, bigger, biggest, and little. This week, the focus is on using -er and -est as comparisons.

We are knee deep into our soil unit this week. Students began a compost bin complete with worms, and are completing experiments using sand, clay, and humus daily. Hopefully, they’ve been listening and can explain what loam is if you ask. On Thursday, May 16, we will have a soil expert at Roper and students will spend @25 minutes outside completing our unit.

Next Tuesday, May 14 will be our Omaha Zoo fieldtrip. We plan to leave Roper around 8:30 and will return by 2:45. Think positive thoughts for a warm, sunny day!

This week’s spelling words are: coin, soil, boy, oil, toy, and point. The challenge list words are: voice, choice, avoid, voyage, destroy, enjoy, and about. We are working on the oi/oy sound this week. *Usually oi is found in the beginning or middle of a word and oy is usually found at the end.

Report cards went home this week and we are already into the third week of 4th quarter. Time is whizzing by, I had overlooked updating this website and I apologize for that.

At the beginning of the school year, we set a class goal of reading 3,000 books. We are currently at 2,975! We will have a guest reader to help celebrate when the next reading sheet comes in.

In math, we just finished fractions and are beginning double-digit addition. We are encouraging students to draw the numbers, using tens sticks and ones, then seeing if they can make a new ten to circle before counting by tens the answer.
Have a great week and encourage your children to do their best. We still have a lot of territory to cover in the next few weeks!

This week’s spelling words are: cup, cups, frog, frogs, tree, and trees. The challenge list: cards, plates, pails, sisters, eggs, animals and of.

This week’s focus is on plurals, adding (s) to express more than one. We will also be working with -s, -ed, -ing endings in words and discussing present tense.

Conferences are coming up on February 26 and 28.  We will follow the same schedule that we had for Fall conferences.  A sheet will be coming home on Tuesday.  Please contact me if the time scheduled no longer works.