October 20-24

Hello Families!
October seems to be flying by at the speed of light! You know what they say: time flies when you're having fun! Here's the fun we were up to this past week in first grade...

In writer's workshop this past week, we were busy bringing our stories to life! Here is what we have learned so far - 

We also talked about how we can use our hands to help tell our stories in small steps across our fingers. I've seen many of our friends grabbing onto small moments and putting them in their imaginary pockets. Then they bring those stories out at writing time and tell them step by step across their fingers! We can even grab those small moments and put them in our pockets when we're not at school! Ask your first grader to tell you what part of our story we tell when we tell our story in between our fingers. 

We all enjoyed acting out our small moments. 

Here are some of our friends acting out their stories with their partners: 

During Reader's Workshop this past week we became word detectives! We are gradually learning strategies that we can use when we come to tricky words. Our first strategy was focused on how we get our minds ready to read by looking at the cover, thinking about the story, then going on a story walk so that we can get the story in our minds. When we do this, we can be better word detectives, because we have some context for the story. Our first strategy was linked to meaning/comprehension, because understanding what we read is what is most important. Ask your first grader to tell you about the

 other ways we learned to solve tricky words. 

During math we continued our focus on counting on strategies when solving addition word problems. During our workshop rotations we played math games to reinforce our learning. 

I can tell that so many of our friends have been on spelling city to practice their word wall words! GREAT job on this week's assessment! Here are some of our friends practicing their words during word work time:

In science we participated in our first experiment! We used our thermometers to find the temperature of a cup of cold water and a cup of hot water. Each group of scientists then decided on how many smaller cups of cold and hot they would put in their mixed water cup and recorded that temperature as well.

Here is our chart where we gathered data from all four groups. Team 2's data was a bit surprising to us. Ask your first grader to tell you why it was surprising and what we found out about how team 2 measured their water. This was an unexpected lesson in accurate data!

Word Wall Words for the Week of October 27-31:

but

not

what

all

over

Mark your calendars: 

Friday, October 31: Costume Parade

November 7: No School for Students - Professional Development Day for Staff

November 21: Field Trip to Betty Brinn (more info to come soon!)

November 25: Informance

November 26: Half Day

November 27-28: Thanksgiving Holiday

Thanks for stopping by!

Michelle Mullen

October 13-16

Hello Families!
Wow - only four days together, but it seemed like at least five with all that we accomplished! This was a week of a lot of self-reflection, and here's why...

Writer's Workshop
In writing this week we learned that we need to go from being the writer to being the reader. This means that when we reread our own books, we read them just as if we were reading a published book. Sometimes when we're reading we notice a "mess-up" and have to fix it up. This helped us to prepare our pieces for our Gallery Walk!

Each writer selected their best piece of work to display in their gallery. Alongside that piece was the very first piece they wrote in first grade. Writers also had a guest book for visitors to provide them feedback on their writing.

We all enjoyed spending time reading each other's work and reflecting on our own! 

Following our gallery walk, we joined in a circle talk about how we have grown as writers. 

Here is a sampling of some of the responses during our conversation about how we have grown as writers…

I have been practicing word wall words. -Ellery

I don’t give up! -Olivia

I try my hardest. -Everett

I start getting a little better with writing. It’s a little neater. -Ella

I started using speech bubbles. -Jacob

I make more details. -Ari

I sound out words. -Madison

I have read more books. That helps me to be a better writer! -Gwen

I write as much as I can. -Esme

I keep trying again and again. -Mackenzie

I’m getting better at writing hard words. -Ellie

I never give up! -Colin

I’ve been writing books at home. -Willy

During writing this week, we also talked about how writers write for many different purposes. One purpose is communicating with others to say thank you, how are you, to invite someone somewhere, etc. We learned about addressing an envelope and writing a friendly letter. Now we can use the Wee Stormonth Post Office! 

 

 
Some of our friends chose to write to a former teacher, a family member and a friend here at Stormonth. They'll all be so happy to receive your letters!

Lynette Long's book Domino Addition was a great springboard for our work in math workshop this week!

We spent our time representing story problems and writing equations to go with them. The discussions surrounding this work helped us understand the meaning of equality. We compared both the equal sign and the not equal sign as well. These discussions are helping us avoid the common error of thinking of the equal sign as punctuation before or after the answer rather than a symbol meaning "is the same amount or value as..." 

When solving story problems, we discovered that it takes a very long time to draw detailed pictures to represent the story problem! A castle and kings and queens REALLY take a long time!

 
Instead, we learned to use simple shapes to represent the items in story problems.

Next we replaced our pictures and abstract shapes with circle drawings. In reflecting on our learning, we discovered that this was a  much more efficient way to solve story problems.

We also reflected on how we go about solving addition equations. We discovered that it's easier for us to simply say the larger number first, THEN count on from there. When we count ALL or count on from the smaller number, it takes us much longer to solve the equation. 

During word work this week, we explored different ways to practice our five new word wall words - write them in SHAVING CREAM, BUILD THEM with magnetic letters, ROLL & WRITE them, and RAINBOW WRITING. Ask your first grader what his/her favorite way was. We also went to www.spellingcity.com and played HANG MOUSE.

NEXT WEEK'S WORD WALL WORDS: 

or, one, had, by, put

Be sure to visit www.spellingcity.com for some fun activities to support your speller!

Ari celebrated his birthday this week with a fun and healthy treat! These oranges with apple-flavored licorice looked just like miniature pumpkins!

What a fun-filled week it was! 

Mark Your Calendars: 

Next week is RED RIBBON WEEK! First grade will focus on "BEE-ing HEALTHY!" Please send a HEALTHY SNACK with your first grader daily.

October 20: Dragonfly Day - Wear pink or green

October 21: Red Ladybug Day - Wear polka dots or spots

October 22: Butterfly Day - Grade Level COLOR day! First grade's color: YELLOW!!!
                       Early-Release Day
                       P.M. Conferences

October 23: Bee Day - Wear stripes

October 24: Spider Day - Wear black clothes or a shirt with an insect.
                      All-School Assembly

                   
Until next time!
Michelle Mullen

October 6-10

Welcome to another first grade blog post! Thanks so much for stopping by! Here's a sneak-peek at our week:

Writer's Workshop

In writer's workshop this week we talked about "zooming on" on one small moment. We likened our writing to the seeds of a watermelon. The watermelon would be a BIG story all about our trip to State Fair Park; our seed story would be a small moment where we zoom in on our trip down the big yellow slide. We learned, too, that writers stay focused or zoomed in right at the end of their story. So instead of saying, "Then I went home," we want to stop and think, "What was the VERY NEXT thing that happened?" This can be tricky and will take lots of practice! When you're reading with your child at home, point out when and how an author does this. We also established our long-term writing partnerships this week. Writers don't only need paper and writing tools, but they also need good company! Our writing partners helped us by listening to our writing plans this week and asking questions about our stories. These questions helped us to add more details to our small moments. Here we are planning with our partners before writing. We plan our stories by touching each page and telling what we will write on each of them.

We also learned that our partners can help us even when they're not there! Whenever we sit down to write, we can imagine the questions our partner might ask us about our stories! 

Reader's Workshop

In Reader's Workshop this week we also established partnerships. We always sit "EEKK" style with our reading partner. Ask your first grader what EEKK means.

We worked on staying focused with our reading partner by making some decisions prior to reading. Some things we need to decide are where we will sit, which books we will read first (we always read our just-right books first), which partner will read first, and how we will read (take turns, choral read, you read one page -I read one page, etc.). We also know that it's important for us to use our good reader strategies while reading with our partner. Some things I saw our readers doing this week were putting up their stop sign bookmarks to make a prediction, make a connection or ask a question. I also heard readers retelling as they were going along. Great job, readers!

Science

In science this week we explored thermometers. We are practicing reading and recording the temperature on thermometers. This can by tricky, because we have to remember that on some thermometers each small line in between marked temperatures is two degrees, not one! 

Word Work

We learned five new words this week and added them to our word wall. They were 

as, with, his, they, saw

After practicing them in different ways during the week, we had an assessment on Friday to see if we were able to write them independently. Any words that we missed will go on our word rings. We'll practice these words during guided reading and read-to-self times.  

Next Week's Words: be, this, have, from, here

Please visit www.spellingcity.com to have your child 

practice his/her words in many fun ways!

Math Workshop

We began unit 2 and our math workshop routines this week. We were familiar with the workshop structure from reader's and writer's workshops: mini-lesson then time to practice new skills and strategies. This week our focus was on addition strategies and drawing sketches (just like in writer's workshop!) to help represent our thinking when solving word problems or number stories. We all enjoyed having time on Dreambox, playing math games, working independently in our math books, and working with Mrs. Mullen!

Mark Your Calendars:

October 15: SMILE! It's picture day!

October 16: PM Conferences

October 17: NO SCHOOL/Conferences all day/Monster Bash 5:30-8:30

October 20-24: RED RIBBON WEEK! Please refer to the schedule I sent via email

October 22: Early Release & PM Conferences

Thanks for stopping by!

Michelle 

September 29-October 3

Hello First Grade Families!
This past week was an opportunity for me to get to know your children really well as readers. I administered our PALS literacy assessment last Friday and this week was busy meeting with readers during our reading workshop and specials to administer the Fountas and Pinnell assessment. What is so nice about these assessments is that they provide me with one-on-one time with your child and allow me to make decisions for their instruction in the areas of word and sound recognition, spelling, strategy instruction for reading, fluency, and comprehension.

Your first graders really needed to do their best to build their stamina during reader's workshop so that I could meet with children uninterrupted. Perhaps they shared the amazing news: we built 22 minutes of stamina on Thursday! Way to go! This is quite an accomplishment and one that I hope they will continue to build on both at home and at school. 

After carefully analyzing all that data, I'm ready to begin guided reading and strategy groups with your readers. This means that you will soon see guided reading books coming home with your child. Your child should be able to read this book to you independently. We'll be practicing it in small groups prior to it making its way home to you. My purpose in this is that they will have a book that they are confident reading - a just-right book! Some of you may be curious about why for some children these books may seem a bit too easy to read. The reasoning for this is that during my assessments I found that a good number of children are able to read higher level texts, however, their ability to deeply comprehend and respond to these texts was limited. This is another reason why we encourage children to spend time with quality picture books before moving on to chapter books where it is much more difficult to hold onto characters and themes over time. We'll be thinking deeply about what the author's purpose is, what they feel the author was trying to teach us and show us about who the character really is, as well as plot and themes. It's a lot to ask of a first grader, but this is just the type of thinking we want them to do and they can do with just in time instruction and support at home. It's an exciting process to be sure!


This week we began using our individual behavior monitoring. We all begin our day on Ready to Learn - a clean slate each day! As the day goes along we can move up our chart for making wise choices  - simply following the Stormonth Way! If our behavior is exceptional - for example, helping out a friend, helping Mrs. Mullen when all her markers spilled on the floor (yes, this happened!), offering to do the job of a friend who is absent, etc. On the other hand, if we are making choices that are not following the Stormonth Way such as interrupting, not making smooth transitions from one activity to the next, being unkind to others, etc. we will move down the chart to "think about it," "teacher's choice," or "parent contact." Your child always has opportunities to make his/her back up the chart for demonstrating his/her ability to make better choices. We have had quite a few "superstars" who have been able to pick out of our treasure chest at the end of the day. I have noticed not only more consistent wise choices but also friends helping friends to make wise choices. 

In math this week we finished unit 1. We continued using our stair steps to show partners of 9 and 10. We enjoyed playing some games to support this learning. One was "Shake & Spill" where we took 10 chips, dumped them out, sorted them into the color they landed on (either red or yellow) then placed them on our ten-frame. We then wrote the equations that they showed.   

 

After completing one of our activity pages, we played another game where we used 9 single-color unifix cubes to see if our partner could determine the missing partner. We did this by turning our back to our partner and removing some of the cubes. We then showed our partner what was left, and our partner had to determine how many were missing. This is a GREAT activity to do at home with your first grader! You can use pennies or any other small item to play the game.

Next week, we will begin practicing our math workshop routines as we begin unit 2. This structure is very similar to our reading and writing workshops where we gather together for a lesson whole group then move on to activities to support this new learning. Your child will move through three rotations each math day: work the the teacher, computers, independent application of concepts.  

During Writer's Workshop this week, we learned how writers make a plan. They can touch and tell their stories across the pages of their books. It was fun to see so many of the kiddos mimicking my mini-lesson and touching and tell their stories across their pages, each time saying in a quiet voice, "Turn the page," when they got to the end of a page. We also learned how authors use their sketches to help them add words to tell their stories. We also learned about REVISING - re-visioning or re-seeing our stories! We used our writing partners to help us with this.  

We shared our stories with our partners, and then our partner would ask us questions that s/he was wondering such as who..., what..., how... when...? This helped us to revise our work by adding more details in order to help our readers get a movie in their heads of our stories. 

Writers also want to be sure their readers can read their work, and this means that spelling the best we can is very important! We learned that writers spell by stretching out each word and listening for and recording all the sounds they hear. We spent a couple days on this and will continue to revisit it as it is an area where we are continually developing as we write and read more and more! Here are some of our friends sharing their work with their partners and pointing out places in their stories where they needed to use spelling strategies to spell tricky words. By sharing our strategies with others, it not only solidifies our own learning but it may even teach another writer a new strategy! Some of our friends were even able to use our document camera to show their good thinking on our Smart Board!

 Here is our chart we created about "Ways to Spell Words." Notice we even added that writers think about syllables. Ask your child why they would want to think about the syllables in a word when they're spelling. 

October has arrived which meant that it was time for chicken soup with rice! We read our new poem "October" together then enjoyed chicken soup with rice while watching the short video clip of the book Chicken Soup With Rice. This is always a fun and memorable time!

 
During science this week, two responsible friends were able to check our weather each morning. They then recorded precipitation, wind speed and weather on our weather calendar. On Friday, our individual, week-long Wind Data Graphs were complete. This meant we were ready to analyze our data! Here is one of them: 

And finally, our lockdown/evacuation/reunification drill was quite a success on Tuesday. Thank you all so much for speaking with your children prior to the drill. 

They all did a fantastic job of helping us to stay safe here at Stormonth!

Mark Your Calendars:

October 8: Early Release Day 

October 15: Picture Day

October 16, 17 & 22: Conferences

October 17: No School & Monster Bash

October 22: Early Release 

October 31: Costume Parade

Thanks for stopping by the blog!

Until next time...

Michelle Mullen