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.
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
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