Hello First Grade Families!

We had a wonderful first week together in first grade! We spent a lot of time 

getting to know each other and learning about and practicing our 

first grade routines. On our first day together, we each created a self-portrait

and wrote some important information about ourselves for our time capsule. 

Our time capsules say: DO NOT OPEN UNTIL JUNE 2015! We'll do the project again in June and compare our self-portraits, our likes/dislikes, and even our handwriting!

We're excited for you to see the bulletin board outside of our classroom! We each drew a small self-portrait to put alongside our photo from Meet & Greet and, after much thought, wrote about what we hope to learn in first grade. 

We all worked carefully on our self-portraits!

                                  

In Math Workshop, we explored some of our math tools. One of our explorations was with unifix cubes, and we learned that we can sort them, explore patterns, compare numbers, use them for solving addition and subtraction problems, and even measure with them!

During Reader's Workshop, we learned why we Read to Self - to become better readers and to have fun! We practiced, practiced, practiced by having our friends show us the right way and the wrong way. Here we are observing one of our first grade friends reading the whole time, staying in one spot, getting started right away and reading quietly. She did a fantastic job! 

During Reader's Workshop we also learned Three Ways to Read a Book. 

We practiced these as well. Then we were ready to practice building our stamina! 

Stamina is reading long and strong without giving up! From our graph you can see that 

we're all working together to build our reading stamina; we started with 

2 minutes and by Friday we were up to 8 1/2 minutes! Way to go, Readers!

Here are some of the books we read this week. We even created our own version of 

If You Take a Mouse to School. Our book is called If You Take a First Grader to School. 

Ask your first grader to tell you about each of the books by retelling them. 

Don't forget to tell the charters' names!

King and Queen began this week! This is a way of highlighting one of our special friends each day and getting to know more about him/her. The "Royal Proclamation" is derived from questions that your child's classmates ask him/her. Please know that this is written very quickly in front of the children (modeled writing). Forgive what may be some sloppy writing on my part! I then type up the information and put it on our King & Queen cupboards which you will see when you come for Curriculum Night/Orientation on Tuesday! 

Our first king and first queen were very excited, 

and we were excited to learn more about them!

We were also introduced to our poetry notebooks this week. One of our first poems was the First Grade Chant. Here is one of our friends pointing to the words while we read along with him. Another friend shows off her completed poem which will go in her Book Bin for practicing her fluency (reading smoothly with accuracy and expression). 

During Writer's Workshop, we interviewed each other in order to get to know each other better and to practice our writing skills for a meaningful purpose. We found out that we have experts in many different things in our classroom! Some examples: gymnastics, coloring, Legos, hockey, climbing pine trees, Irish dancing, flips, baseball, soccer, books, and riding a scooter. What an interesting and talented group of first graders! 

That was just a sneak-peek at our week! Ask your first grader about our "Stormonth Way Boot Camp." It would be great if your child could tell you at least one rule for each area of our school. Be sure to ask them about Line Basics, Voice Levels, Show 2, and Give Me 5!

Thanks for stopping by our blog. Be sure to leave us a comment so we know you've been here! We LOVE hearing from you!

NEXT WEEK:

Tuesday, September 9 is Curriculum Night/Orientation. Information came home in Friday Folders. We hope to see you there!

MAP Testing begins for us on Friday morning at 10am. We get to show what we know in our computer lab! Please be sure your child is well-rested and has had a healthy breakfast. 

REMINDERS:

Please be sure to send a snack with your child each day. We enjoy snack together every afternoon. With these warm days, it's a good idea to send along a water bottle as well.

Library books are due back to school on Tuesday.

Until next time!

Mrs. Mullen :-)