December 21-22

Thank you to Adream Early for organizing this wonderful tower of gifts
including delicious hot chocolate mix, an adorable mug, and a very
generous gift card! My heart is overflowing!

Hello Families!

I hope this finds you all enjoying the winter break. I bet all the kiddos were so excited to get to play in the snow at long last! My three girls sure were excited! I wanted to give you a sneak peek at our last couple days together in 2015, thank you for the wonderful gifts, and leave you with some thoughts for the new year upon us.

So, first, thank you for all the wonderful gifts! Hopefully individual thank you notes made it home in Friday folders on Tuesday. I am incredibly grateful for your kindness and generosity! THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!

On to our very short week...

Here is one of our friends editing an All About piece by using all she knows about capital letters, punctuation, and spelling strategies.

We continued with our nonfiction writing and reading units of study. We'll finish up our reading unit during our first week back. In math workshop, we finished up our Double Decker Bus unit. Here we are working together with our math racks.

We demonstrated our understanding by creating and solving our own bus stories as well as solving our partner's bus story. 

Our new poem this week was "A Peppermint Stick," and it came with a peppermint stick, of course! Yo-ho-yummy-yum oh!

And finally, some words to leave you with for the new year. I like to keep this nearby all year round as a reminder.

This year...
Mend a quarrel. Seek out a forgotten friend. Dismiss suspicion. Encourage youth. Write a love letter. Play. Keep a promise. Ask yourself questions. Manifest your loyalty. Nurture integrity. Share some treasure. Find the time. Forego a grudge. Rejuvenate and explore curiosity - you just may find your passions along the way. Weep freely. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Try to change no one except yourself. Walk tall. Work to understand. Appreciate. Examine your demands on others. Be kinder. Be gentler. Have faith. Laugh a little. Laugh a little more. Decry complacency. Welcome a stranger. Oppose malice. Resist prejudice. Consider another viewpoint by looking through an historical lens. Express your gratitude. Deserve confidence. Take pleasure in beauty. Savor Earth. Gladden the heart of a child. Speak your love. Speak it again. Speak it sill once again. -Howard Hunter 

*I have taken some liberties with this, making some minor changes and adding to it over the years. This year's changes were inspired by a book I've been reading over the break: Big Magic:Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert and by conversations with my husband about a book he is reading right now entitled Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Both come HIGHLY recommended. I hope it speaks to you as it does to me. 

Mark Your Calendars!

December 23rd-January 3rd: Winter Break

January 13: Early Release Day

January 18: No School

January 22: Ivy & Bean at Marquette

January 27: Early Release Day

February 2: PAJAMA DAY!
Bedtime Stories First Grade Event 6:30-7:30

February 10: Early Release Day & Conferences

February 11: Conferences

February 12: Valentine's Day Celebration

February 15: No School for Students/ Conferences in PM

February 24: Early Release Day

March 9: Early Release Day

March 25: No School

April 13: Early Release Day

April 19: Schlitz Audubon 

April 22: No School for Students

April 27: Early Release Day

May 11: Early Release Day

May 25: Early Release Day

May 30: No School

June 9: Last day of first grade

December 14-18

Hello Families!
After a busy week, my heart is full! Our Mitten Tree is brimming with kindness, its branches filled with mittens - and even a few hats - for small, cold hands this winter. Your donations totaled 80 pairs of mittens, 5 hats, and one headband! I will be delivering these to the COA Youth & Family Center on the 23rd. The recipients of your generosity will be so grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you - a thousand times over THANK YOU! I hope this spirit of giving continues to grow in your children and that they continue to see how they can make a difference in the world by sharing their many gifts.

Here's a sneak peek at our week:

Writer's Workshop
We continue to work on our teaching books, sharing our vast knowledge in ways that will interest them, have them thinking and wondering, and leaving them wanting to read more! We worked on our Table of Contents, thinking about how we can use short and interesting titles. We learned from mentor authors that it is far more powerful to include a chapter entitled "Chomp!" than "What Sharks Eat."We also learned that, just as we plan out our book chapters, we also need to plan out each individual chapter telling the contents of each across our fingers and remembering to include all that we know. Of course, our lessons on planning wouldn't be complete without being reminded of the important DETAILS! We discovered, too, that we need to ask ourselves, "What kind of writing am I doing?" Is it a list? Then we should include list paper. Is it a how-to? Then we should include that paper. Our paper needs to suit our purpose. Finally, we worked on catchy conclusions. These are a bit tricky to get used to. We looked to mentor author Gail Gibbons and authors to hear how they do it. We'll continue to pay close attention to these catchy conclusions during our read-alouds.

Reader's Workshop
We continued to focus on getting smarter about our topics before, during and after reading. Our thinking focused on what we know, what we wonder about or want to know, and what we learned. We also focused on how we can learn through text features such as the table of contents, index, glossary, and headings. Finally, we created a class Q&A book where we wrote one of our questions about our topics and the answer we discovered in our reading. We talked a bit about how we can put this learning into our own words. This will be focused on again in a future nonfiction unit. Finally, we worked on identifying the main topic and key details of texts. This is an end of year expectation for first graders. I encourage you to focus on this higher-level skill while reading nonfiction with your first grader at home.

Math
In math we continue to work with the Double Decker Bus. The kiddos are really enjoying it, and it is really helping them to think in new ways about numbers, solidifying their understanding of 5- and 10-groups, addition and subtraction. Please remind your first grader when doing homework that...
the Double Decker Bus can only have 10 passengers on each deck
they should color in their first 5 beads and leave the next 5 as just a circle

When they are just using solid circles or empty circles in their drawings, it is not helping them to see and use 5- and 10-groups. Next week we will create and solve our own Double Decker Bus stories!

Guidance
With Friday off last week, we pushed our guidance lesson to this week. Our focus was on the Peace Bridge. This is a tool/thinking process that we can use to resolve conflicts. Ask your first grader to tell you all about it! Mrs. G was here for guidance on Friday, and her focus was on the internet, specifically emails and texts and how others may perceive what we have written. Ask your first grader about that as well.

Science
We wrapped up our science unit this week by reviewing all that we have learned about weather - tracking the weather to see patterns by paying attention to cloud cover, wind speed and precipitation; and learning about the water cycle and its components - precipitation, accumulation, evaporation, condensation. In January we will begin our next unit: Solids, Liquids and Gases!

We celebrated our December birthdays in the lunchroom with lunch and cupcakes with the first grade team, and we also enjoyed chicken soup with rice on Friday to accompany our December poem from Maurice Sendak's Chicken Soup with Rice collection of poems.

Next week is a short one with still MUCH learning to do prior to our long winter's nap. Well, OK, maybe not a nap... and maybe not even winter! I hope some snowflakes will fall for these first graders - they are so anxious for them! I wish you all a joyous holiday season. Your children are gifts to me every single day, and I am so grateful for them and for you!

See you in the New Year!
Michelle

Mark Your Calendars!

December 23rd-January 3rd: Winter Break

January 13: Early Release Day

January 18: No School

January 22: Ivy & Bean at Marquette

January 27: Early Release Day

February 2: PAJAMA DAY!
Bedtime Stories First Grade Event 6:30-7:30

February 10: Early Release Day & Conferences

February 11: Conferences

February 12: Valentine's Day Celebration

February 15: No School for Students/ Conferences in PM

February 24: Early Release Day

March 9: Early Release Day

March 25: No School

April 13: Early Release Day

April 19: Schlitz Audubon 

April 22: No School for Students

April 27: Early Release Day

May 11: Early Release Day

May 25: Early Release Day

May 30: No School

June 9: Last day of first grade

December 7-11

Hello Families!
We had an unexpected short week due to illness in our building. I hope everyone was able to either get well this weekend or stay healthy! Here's a sneak peek at our four days together:

Writer's Workshop

We continue to be busy with our nonfiction books where we are teaching others about topics we are experts at. We revisited different ways to spell tricky words, but this time we focused on domain-specific words. These words can be very tricky, so we really need to slow down and take our time when we are using all we know to spell them well. Our writing partners were a great help to us this week as they helped us add and subtract information in our teaching books. Setting writing goals was part of our week as well. We took a very close look again at the nonfiction writing revision and editing checklists and highlighted two areas we felt we need to work on. We also worked together to edit a teaching book. Here we are making corrections: 

Reader's Workshop
Our reading lessons are fitting in very nicely with our writing lessons as we're focusing on solving tricky words in reading. We also began looking at nonfiction text features including diagrams and key words.

Math
We began the Double Decker Bus mini-unit in math this week. Everyone is really enjoying this unit, especially using our rekenreks to show our thinking and using what we know about numbers to tell how many beads are on the disappearing arithmetic racks during our lessons. 

Thank you so much to everyone who has been able to bring in new children's mittens for our Annual First Grade Service Project: The Mitten Tree! We're hoping to fill our branches this week with new mittens for children in need. 

Next Week's Word Wall Words:

her

make 

him

into 

us

Until then...

Michelle

Mark Your Calendars!

December 18: Share Your Talent Day & 
Mitten Tree collection ends

December 23rd-January 3rd: Winter Break

January 13: Early Release Day

January 18: No School

January 22: Ivy & Bean at Marquette

January 27: Early Release Day

February 2: Bedtime Stories First Grade Event 6:30-7:30

February 10: Early Release Day & Conferences

February 11: Conferences

February 12: Valentine's Day Celebration

February 15: No School for Students/ Conferences in PM

February 24: Early Release Day

March 9: Early Release Day

March 25: No School

April 13: Early Release Day

April 19: Schlitz Audubon 

April 22: No School for Students

April 27: Early Release Day

May 11: Early Release Day

May 25: Early Release Day

May 30: No School

June 9: Last day of first grade

November 30-December 4

Hello Families!
What an exciting week we had! Here's a sneak peek:

Writer's Workshop
On Monday, we practiced reading our How-To books so that they sounded "smooth and lively!" This helps out our readers! We then traveled to Mrs. Armstrong's room to share our How-To books with each other. This was a great way for us to not only truly understand that our books were for an audience, but we also learned how to do many different things from Mrs. Armstrong's first graders. We then began our next unit: Nonfiction Chapter Books. This unit prepares children to write information texts of all sorts and supports the work we're currently doing during Reader's Workshop. 

Reader's Workshop
We're continuing to develop the skills needed to tackle nonfiction texts. Our focus has been on fluency and comprehension. One of the mentor texts we are using is called Owls. In order to extend this learning, we took part in the national "SKYPE-a-Thon" on Thursday! This gave us the opportunity to have a virtual field trip with Rhana Paris who is the outreach coordinator at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. She taught us all about owls! We even met the aquarium's resident owl Napoleon! Ask your first grader to tell you all about it. Here's a short video clip of our SKYPE session:

Math
During math this week, we continued to learn strategies for solving mixed problems using both addition and subtraction. Sometimes we solved for an unknown partner, other times for an unknown total. On Friday we took our unit assessment. Everyone did really well with their problem-solving skills! I am so impressed! An area to focus on for some is checking to make sure that they have used the correct label. Your child's assessment will be coming home this week. Please review the test, sign it, and return it to school. Thanks so much!

Science
In science this week we learned about three different kinds of clouds: stratus, cirrus, and cumulus. Ask your first grader to tell you about them. We then created a cloud book to show what we learned. 

Next Week's Word Wall Words:

them

then

don't 

out

their

Until then...
Michelle

REMINDERS: We have had many friends not returning their library books on Mondays. Please help your first grader to remember his/her books each Monday. Thank you!

Please remember to sign your child's progress report folder and return it to school. Thanks much!

Mark Your Calendars!
December 18: Share Your Talent Day
December 23rd-January 3rd: Winter Break
January 13: Early Release Day
January 18: No School
January 22: Ivy & Bean at Marquette
January 27: Early Release Day
February 2: Bedtime Stories First Grade Event 6:30-7:30
February 10: Early Release Day & Conferences
February 11: Conferences
February 12: Valentine's Day Celebration
February 15: No School for Students/ Conferences in PM
February 24: Early Release Day
March 9: Early Release Day
March 25: No School
April 13: Early Release Day
April 19: Schlitz Audubon 
April 22: No School for Students
April 27: Early Release Day
May 11: Early Release Day
May 25: Early Release Day
May 30: No School
June 9: Last day of first grade

November 16-20

Hello Families!
Thank you for stopping by the blog. We hope you enjoy our recap...

In Writer's Workshop, we continue to work on our How-To pieces. We found we can use labels in our pictures to help teach the reader even more. Writing catchy conclusions was another focus. We also learned how important it is to use exact words to describe the actions the reader will need to do. This was even more apparent on Thursday when partners acted out each other's directions! Here we are acting out our stories together... 

"Put the dish cloth and the soap in the sink." OOPS! Amiah and Harrison discovered that they needed to revise their How-To directions!

This How-To writer discovered that he needed to add 3 more steps to his piece, and he indicated this with his "+ + + ."

This How-To writer discovered that she needed to use more clear directions, and she indicated this with "*."

After acting out our How-To books, we worked together to make some revisions. 

During Reader's Workshop this past week we have launched our Nonfiction unit of study. Here we are taking time to slowly explore our new books and learn about our topics even before we read!

We're finding that many of the strategies we learned during our fiction unit are just as important when reading nonfiction. We focused on taking sneak peeks and found that we can learn SO MUCH even before we begin reading! Nonfiction readers need to slow down to focus on photographs and captions and spend time with each page.

We spent a lot of time with the book Hang On, Monkey! this week. We learned so much from the words, pictures and captions.

We're lucky to have our reading partners by our side so that we can learn even more by chatting with each other about our learning.

During Math Workshop this week we have been focusing on solving and creating subtraction number stories by using different strategies. 

In science this past week, we have been busy each morning observing our puddles we created last week. We added our daily observations to our puddle books. Slowly each day our puddles disappeared!

Ask your first grader to explain to you what happened to the water in our puddles.

We learned on Friday that it wasn't magic... it was EVAPORATION! This lead us to our lesson about the Water Cycle and a project to demonstrate our understanding. 

Ask your first grader to explain the water cycle to you.

Thanks to everyone who was able to donate to our annual food drive! Our class donated 18 items toward the school total of 1,295! 

Thank you for your donations!

We're so excited for our concert next week! The kiddos have been having an amazing time practicing with our artists in residence, School of Rock!

Until then...

Michelle Mullen

Mark Your Calendars:

November 24th: Concert Performances at 10am and 2pm

November 25th: Early Release Day & First Grade's Thanksgiving Celebration

November 26th & 27th:

Thanksgiving Holiday

November 30th: BOOK ORDERS DUE. Please take advantage of the many great deals on Scholastic's high-quality books.

December 9th: Early Release Day

December 23rd-January 3rd: Winter Break

November 9-13

Hello Families!
Here's a sneak peek at another great week...

In Writer's Workshop we continued to learn about writing how-to pieces. We found that one of the strategies we learned during our Small Moments unit fits in very well with How-To writing: ZOOMING in on small topics. So instead of writing a book called "How To Train Your Dog," you could instead ZOOM in and focus on one aspect of that training. For example, "How to Teach Your Dog To Sit." 

We looked again at How to Wash a Wooly Mammoth and paid close attention to the introduction. We noticed that in this book and in others, the author includes an INTERESTING INTRODUCTION where s/he introduces him/herself to the reader and lets the reader know what s/he will teach them. 

We also spent time looking at time order words in the beginning, middle and end of our mentor texts. We're adding to our growing list of transition words each day! This lesson harkened back to our Small Moment writing again by showing us how important it is to plan our How-To pieces across our fingers as well!

Another skill we learned was about how we need to think about WHO our reading AUDIENCE is. I gave them the example of  writing a piece called "How to Make a Bed." I would write it differently depending on who my audience/reader was. For example, I wouldn't tell Mr. Mullen to first take all of the stuffed animals off of the bed, but if I were writing the how-to piece for my daughters I would need to tell them that! We got a good chuckle out of that! It's helpful for us to visualize the person we're writing to as well and even pretend they are right there, and we are talking to them. 

Finally, we talked about how How-To writers use an "in charge" teaching voice. We went back and reread pieces we finished to see if we used an in charge teaching voice. If we didn't, we revised a bit!

In Reader's Workshop this week we continued to develop our understanding of plot, retelling, partner work/expectations, all with a focus on the importance of paying attention to the clues the author gives us about characters so that we can get to know them better. We also talked about how important it is for us to pay attention to the setting of the story. Sometimes the setting changes, and if we don't pay attention to that, it can impact our understanding of the story.

In math this week we worked really hard at solving equations with unknown partners! This can be a bit tricky! We also worked on writing our own unknown partner stories. Again, TRICKY! For one of our lessons, we solved missing partner pancake stories. How fun it was for a couple of our first grade friends to see their second grade friends on our slides - especially Willy whose second friend Willy (yes, the same name!) moved to Japan! 

We learned about a mom named Kayla who is a veteran (ask your first grader what a veteran is) in our latest issue of Scholastic News. We also used a letter to a veteran as one of our morning messages this week. There were many mistakes that we needed to fix up! What great editors we are getting to be! 

Mrs. Geinopolos joined us on Friday to discuss PEER PRESSURE. Ask your first grader to tell you all about it!

One of our morning seatwork activities is practice with reading the poems in our poetry folders as well as practicing our word wall words. This is one way to improve our fluency. Here's one of our friends busy at work: 

In science this week we talked about how, just like there are wind flags to estimate wind speed and thermometers to measure
temperature, there are also rain gauges to measure rainfall. Next we created rain gauges which were simply plastic cups with straight sides and a scale attached to the outside. Our scale is based on unifix cubes. This way we'll be able to read the measurement on the same container in which it rains! We practiced reading our rain gauges when Mrs. Mullen pretended to be a rain cloud and poured water into our cups! 

After that, we took our rain gauges outside in the courtyard so we can begin collecting rain. We had a teachable moment when we saw a rain barrel out there. Everyone was curious about what it was!

One of our friends having a good look at our rain gauges. We hope the tiles and rock will keep our basket in place! It sure has been windy outside!

For the second part of our lesson, Mrs. Mullen showed us some water she has been collecting at home during the past week in her own rain gauge! We talked about what we thought happened to puddles; where does the rainwater go? We thought it would be fun to see if we can find out! We used Mrs. Mullen's rainwater as well as the water in our rain gauges and poured it into a pie tin then added food coloring so we could have a good look at the water. We recorded our steps in our Puddle Books. Next, we made predictions about what our puddles will look like on Monday. We'll record our data next week!

Each team has a puddle. Which one belongs to your first grader's team? Ask your first grader to predict what will happen to their puddle.



Finally, we read a story about a 5-year old who invented a new kind of umbrella! Ask your first grader to tell you what the problem was that lead to the invention and what the solution was.
I encouraged your scientists to give this some thought this weekend: If you could invent a new kind of umbrella, what would it look like? Perhaps some of our friends will draw their invention or even make a prototype! Then they could even write a How-To piece next week to teach someone how to make their umbrella invention!

Some of us were surprised with some notes in our backpacks on Friday afternoon. We had no idea who they were from - another mystery for us to solve. We also wondered why only some of us received a note and not others. Perhaps we could share our happiness with someone who wasn't so happy! We soon discovered that it was Mrs. Clement's second graders who left us the notes! Here's a video they shared with us as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwelE8yyY0U
We hope you might be inspired to share a kindness with someone else as well. Kindness is contagious - pass it on!

Next Week's Word Wall Words: 
here   how   if   will   too

Until next time!
Michelle


Mark Your Calendars:
Please help support our annual Food Drive! 
It runs from November 9-20

November 24th: Music Performance

November 25th: Early Release Day

November 26th & 27th:

Thanksgiving Holiday

December 9th: Early Release Day

December 23rd-January 3rd: Winter Break