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