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