Welcome to First Grade

WE LOVE FIRST GRADE!!!!

We are off and running! This is our first official blog post. It was suppose to be up yesterday, but "someone" forgot to hit publish! Oops! Take a look around the learning corner, lots of good information over there and some of last years posts are still up. You can see some of the cool things we did last year. Enjoy your weekend! And I love your kiddios, thank you so much for sharing them with me!

Compassion Project

January 17, 2013

Dear Parents;

This week our class has been learning about compassion. We learned that compassion is when we see someone’s need and do something about it. Eyes +  Hands  =  Hearts. In class I am encouraging all children to think about special ways that they can practice kindness towards others here at school and outside of school. Students will be provided with four compassion hearts where they can record the acts of compassion or kindness they have completed throughout the rest of the month. Please help your child by signing the back of each heart describing the act kindness your child has done. Have your child draw a picture or write on the heart about the act of kindness. As each heart is completed, please return the hearts to the classroom so that it can be displayed with the rest of the hearts from our classroom. Your child may ask for additional hearts once the original ones are returned to school. We are hoping to fill the entire hall with the compassionate and kind acts that our wonderful children have done for others. Our class goal is to do 100 acts of kindness by the 100^th day of school, February 5^th. But of course we don’t have to stop there.

When talking to your child about special things they can do for others, please stress to them that these kindnesses should be done without reward. They should also be done without announcing it to someone why they are doing them. I realize that they will need to tell you about them so that you may write them down, but we are hoping that many of these kindnesses will continue and become automatic behaviors without needing to be recorded.

I appreciate any time that you might be able to spend with your child in discussing suggestions for ways that they can show kindness towards others. Some possible suggestions would be: helping a younger sibling, writing a kind note to someone, offering help to a family member or neighbor, sharing with siblings, offering to help with family chores, cleaning a room without being told, completing homework without being reminded, etc. These are only a few ideas that could be used. Having your child come up with their own ideas will be even more meaningful to them.

Completed hearts may be sent in one at a time or all together. I hope that you will enjoy this activity with your child. If you would like to join us in recognizing acts of kindness and compassion with your own acts of kindness, we will gladly add your hearts to our display.

Thank you for your help!

Music Class

We have been learning about lots of different holiday traditions. Today we sang, danced and played instruments to Festival of Lights. Click below to watch the video. 

Click Here

Extra Recess Fun

Yahoooo! We earned an extra recess. We enjoyed the time playing games, drawing with side walk chalk, and chatting with our friends. 

Weekly Wrap Up

Mathematicians
In math, students are learning about patterns, even and odd numbers and counting up and back on the number grid. We are also learning about the frames and arrows routine as a way of finding patterns in numbers as well. Students also explored various math games that promote fluency of addition facts and number sense. Please continue to review writing numbers to 120 beginning with any number. Also, continue to review addition facts to 10 in order to improve fluency of these facts. 

Readers
We have begun learning the Thinking Strategy Synthesizing: This is where readers listen to the text, think about all the little ideas or clues that help give them a bigger picture in their minds. Readers combine what they already know with new information to create a new understanding. Synthesizing is like putting the pieces of a puzzle together so you can see the “BiG” picture.

Readers are also learning what makes a good retelling. Students are learning that readers include the setting, the names of the characters and significant events in order when they retell. Students are also learning the strategy “say something” this week. After students read a page with a partner, students are encouraged to say something they wondered, are reminded of or noticed about the story. If students have nothing to say, students are then asked to reread the passage in order to think more critically about the passage. Students also continue to review explore the sound for short u and high frequency words throughout the week.

Writers

Students are continuing to focus on personal narratives or “small moment” stories. Our focus throughout this week has been on the following:

• sharing their work with a writing partner in order to improve the quality of their writing.
• learning how to touch each page prior to writing as a way to plan their stories.
• understanding how to write a story sequence.

We have also begun the publishing process and writers have begun to publish one of their small moment pieces. These will be on display outside our room. 

Scientists

As scientist we explored cranberries in many different ways. We bounced them to determine if they were fresh, we flooded a bog to see how cranberries are harvested, and we strung cranberries together to make a cranny and used them to measure different objects.

Historians

As historians we have been learning about native americans and pilgrims. We have discovered how things were different long ago, and some ways that they are similar. Students learned how native americans made dug out canoes, instruments and how they used symbols to communicate through writing. They have learned about chores, homes, and games that native american and pilgrim children had. 

PUMPKIN DAY!!!!

Wow, what a fun day we had yesterday being scientists and exploring pumpkins to find the answers to some of the things we have been wondering. We measured our pumpkins to see how tall they were, how much they weighed, how many ribs it had, and the circumference. We sorted and classified our pumpkins by size, color, and stem size. We made predictions about which pumpkins would sink and which ones would float. We learned that because pumpkins are hollow, they float no matter what size. We cut open a pumpkin to see the hollow inside. The scientists loved getting to scoop out the seeds. Later we made estimates on how many seeds we thought would be in the pumpkin. And we then counted by tens to learn there were 575 seeds in our class pumpkin. We also learned about the pumpkin life cycle and ended our day getting to sample a taste of pumpkin pie and pumpkin muffin. Check out our pictures below and have your scientist tell you all about this wonderful learning experience. 

 Scientists recorded their observations, predictions, and learning in their pumpkin books.

 Scientists worked together to measure their pumpkins.

Counting pumpkin ribs.

 Even our class pumpkin that weighed 21 pounds floated!

We sorted pumpkins by stem size.

Some pumpkins had no stem, some had short stems and some had long stems.

 No matter what size, shape or stem the pumpkin had, we learned they all float!

 We loved getting messy as pumpkin scientists!

 We estimated how many seeds we pulled out of the pumpkin.

 We counted by 10's and 1's to learn there were 575 seeds in our pumpkin.

Thank you for sharing your scientist with me, I hope they had as much fun learning as I did :D