November 10-14

Follow the Yellow Brick Road! Yes, that is what we've been doing during Reader's Workshop this week! This is a fun and concrete way for us to practice retelling with story elements. Our focus this week has been on PLOT. Ask your first grader to make a triangle with his/her hands and retell a story by telling the BEGINNING of the story with the rising action, the MIDDLE of the story with the PROBLEM, the falling action and the ENDING with the SOLUTION. Here is one of our friends following the Yellow Brick Road as she retold Cynthia Rylant's story The Glory Flower. 

In our book bins we each have a bookmark of the retelling road so that we can refer to it when reading independently or during partner reading.

After time spent learning each of the story elements, we put all of that knowledge together to create a retelling of Cynthia Rylant's The Kittens alongside a project where we needed to use our listening and observation skills to create one of our favorite characters... MUDGE!

In writer's workshop this week we continued to turn to authors we love to notice craft moves that they use in their writing that we'd like to try. On Monday, each partnership was given an "old favorite" to explore. They then presented the craft move that they noticed and planned to try. Here we are exploring our texts with our partners: 

Here are some examples of their presentations which they shared using our HoverCam: 

 
One of our partnerships noticed how Kevin Henkes showed that the kitten had to climb a long time by repeating "and she climbed and climbed and climbed..." After seeing this great craft move, another friend decided to include it in her story about waiting for a movie to start. She wrote "I waited and waited and waited..." Another partnership noticed how Cynthia Rylant made a list of the balloon colors instead of using and again and again (this is an important lesson for first graders who tend to want to connect their sentences with and!). We then recalled that this is one of the expectations on our writing checklist (separating items in a series with a comma), so this was another great lesson for our friends!

In math we continued to work with unknown partners. We are really solidifying our understanding of the connection between addition and subtraction! I'm noticing that many of our friends are beginning to devleop fluency with their facts to 10! Math games at home to support fact fluency is highly recommended. You can find apps online such as "Ten Frame Fill" or even try the following: take a handful of ten coins, show some in one hand and hide the others. Your child tells you how many are missing!

Quiet on the set! During guidance this week the kiddos made a documentary of sorts with Mrs. Gianopolos! Each first grader told what s/he would like to be when they grow up and why. They'll see this video again when they're in fourth grade. Here is one of our friends on set... 

This week we also began our vowel unit. For the next two weeks we'll be focusing on the long and short sounds for Aa. Some of you are beginning to see strategy cards coming home with books tht say "Try the other sound." Sometimes we say "Flip the sound." This is a strategy you can use with your child at home if s/he is stuck on a word such as "bait." They may say "bat" then realize that wouldn't make sense. Instruct them to "flip the sound." 

This week's word wall words: 

there

how

if

will

too

Please be sure to visit www.spellingcity.com

Mark your calendars:

November 21: Betty Brinn Field Trip 9-Noon *A bag lunch would be appreciated on this day if at all possible. However, hot lunch/milk WILL be available.
November 25: Informance at 2pm
November 26: Half Day - Student dismissal at 12:30pm
November 27 & 28: NO SCHOOL. Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanks for stopping by!
Michelle Mullen