Exciting things have been happening at the 1–2 grade CAHAL class at Yeshiva of South Shore. Mrs. Riva Ratner always starts things off with the boys singing their calendar routine as they transition from Hebrew to the English half of the day. The boys are easily able to identify the days of the week and the months of the year. Afterwards, each boy takes a turn graphing the weather as well as counting the days of school in various ways. They are eagerly awaiting the 100th Day of School celebration.
The class behavior plan has been working nicely. The boys earn points/ pennies as they behave appropriately and focus on their work. They practice their math skills by adding their points and pennies to buy prizes from the class store every Friday.
In reading groups, each group is working at its own pace while building its sight word vocabulary. Some groups are mastering phonemic awareness skills, blending short vowel words using different songs and hands-on methods, while other groups are working in their readers.
In math, the first-graders are practicing their addition and subtraction skills using different hands-on manipulatives and modalities. The second-graders are becoming masters in place value. They can write numbers in expanded, standard, word, and block form. They can also identify numbers into the hundreds place. The boys are great detectives and have become experts at breaking apart word problems and identifying the key words.
In ELA, they have been working on proper sentence structure, punctuation, and writing one paragraph. The boys enjoyed writing about their favorite fall activities and going on a fall walk. In social studies, they learned all about Election Day and the election process. The class has had a very successful start to the school year.