January 20-23

Hello First Grade Families!
Here's a sneak-peek at our short week:

In Writer's Workshop this week we were busy at work on our realistic fiction series. With our guest teacher Mrs. Lurie, we looked at our narrative writing checklists in order to assess where we are and to set goals for the future. We decided to have a look at the second grade checklist, and guess what? We discovered that we are even working on second grade skills! We really are SUPER SERIES WRITERS! 
We spent time this week working on punctuation and even had a "punctuation party." What party would be complete without a gift? Each of our super series writers received a special punctuation pencil to use while editing for punctuation! We discovered that we can read our work aloud to ourselves to listen for punctuation. This helps us to be sure that we are giving our readers the right orders about how our story should sound. The next day was even more powerful when we had our writing partner read our work to us! For some of us, we noticed right away when something didn't sound quite how we wanted it to sound. We then quickly got out our brand-new punctuation pencils and got to work! Here are a couple examples:

We also began work on our Series Book Boxes. During this upcoming week, we'll create our Meet the Author page to glue on the back.

During Reader's Workshop this week we spent some time with our latest issue of Scholastic News where we made connections to our learning in science: states of matter! It was interesting that the article was about Lake Michigan! This week we also continued work with our character study, paying close attention to our characters in order to not only learn more about what kind of people they are but also to help us understand the story better. We focused on imagining what our characters are thinking and making connections to our characters by thinking about how we are like our characters and how we are different from them. 

During Math this past week we continued our work with place value by visualizing teen addition and learning teen addition strategies. Here is one of our friends showing a new strategy she learned.

During Science this week we continued our focus on states of matter. First we had a look at what happened to the water we put in our petri dishes last week. We discovered that the water that was in the covered petri dishes remained, but the water that was in the petri dishes that were not covered disappeared! Ask your first grader what happened to the water. Our experiment this week focused on condensation. We discovered that when water vapor cools, it can change back to a liquid. We were excited to see the water cycle at work with some of us exclaiming, "It's raining in our cup!" Ask your first grader to tell you about how we set up our experiment and what we observed in each of the cups.

Because of our short week, we'll continue on with another week of our current word wall words. As a reminder:

just

away

came

after 

little

We're also continuing our focus on the long and short sounds for the vowel e. This is a tricky one for kiddos. Point out the different spelling in long e words when you come upon them. 

Mark Your Calendars:

Tuesday, January 27 First Graders will celebrate Half-Way Day! HOORAY!

Thursday, January 29 Bedtime Story Night 6:30-7:30

February 3 Jump Rope for Heart assembly: Be on the lookout for information regarding this Stormonth tradition!

February 9-13 Bus Driver Recognition Week: Thank a bus driver!

February 11: Early Release/Conferences

February 12: Lockdown drill practice in the building

Conferences in the evening

February 16: NO SCHOOL/Conferences

February 26: Jump Rope for Heart event

March 9: Ivy & Bean field trip to Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts

March 11: Irish Dancers performance here at Stormonth

March 28: Spring Break begins

Thank you for stopping by!

Michelle 

January 12-16

Hello Families!
Here's a sneak peek at our past week:

In writer's workshop we talked about how writers show their readers what is happening in their stories by picturing their story and adding tiny, realistic details. Our mentor author Cynthia Rylant does a magnificent job of this in her Henry & Mudge books! 

We also looked at how Cynthia Rylant and James Howe, author of the Pinky & Rex series, divide their stories into chapters. For this lesson, we also discussed how we can write "snappy" titles for our chapters. 

One of my favorite lessons occurred this week as well - we looked at how Cynthia Rylant writes in patterns of three. Ask your first grader how s/he did this in his/her story in order to tuck in three details or examples when describing something. Everyone did such a super job with this! And finally we talked with our partners and with the whole group about the SUPER POWERS OF SUPER SERIES WRITERS!

Ask your writer to tell you two or three of his/her writing super powers that s/he has learned in our realistic fiction unit. 

In reader's workshop this past week we continued discovering what type of people the characters in our stories are. We collected evidence about what characters say and do, we thought about what the characters said and did in order to determine their likes and dislikes, and we thought about both the words that the author used and what the character(s) said. Finally, we looked at the illustrations. Not only do we learn about the characters when we collect all of this evidence, but it also helps us to better understand the story.

We finished up our work with the vowel "O" this week and spent time thinking about word families since all five of our words this past week lent themselves to that.

In math this week we continued our focus on place value by representing teen numbers with sticks and circles. We also compared teen numbers and beyond by thinking about the number of tens in each number. We had fun learning some new place value games as well.

 


In science this week, we used our leftover water from last week's experiment and froze it - liquid to a solid. Then we observed the properties of the solid. Next we had a "Melting Race!" where each of our scientists tried different ways to get their ice cube to melt inside a ziploc baggie. Ask your scientist what strategies s/he tried and which s/he felt worked best and WHY. We tried rubbing it in our hands, putting it in hats/shoes/boots, smashing it on our desks and under chair legs, sitting on it, blowing our breath on it, etc. Here we are during the melting race: 

 

 

 

After the ice melted, we collected the water in petri dishes. We covered two petri dishes and left the other two uncovered. Next, we made predictions about what we think will happen to the water. 

Some predictions from our class: the water will freeze, nothing will happen, the water will disappear and the water will evaporate. 

Over the next week we'll observe what happens and record our information.



This week we also finally go to our Maurice Sendak poem "January" to go with Chicken Soup with Rice. We enjoyed sipping once, sipping twice, sipping chicken soup with rice!
 
In observance of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday coming up and all of his accomplishments, we looked closely at our Scholastic News issue about Martin Luther King, Jr. We then talked as a group about what dreams we have for the world. Each of us then wrote about our dreams. Here are just a couple of your kiddos' wonderful ideas:

 And still more! An acapella group from the University of Madison performed for us this week. They sang many of our favorite songs. It was quite a treat for us! Dr. Dalzin's daughter is part of this incredible group of young women. BRAVO!

Next week's word wall words: 

little 

away

after

just

came

Be sure to spend some time practicing these words on www.spellingcity.com

Mark Your Calendars!

January 19 NO SCHOOL/Teacher Professional Development Day

January 21 MAP Testing (Math)

January 27 Half-Way Day! Can you believe it?!

January 29 6:30-7:30 Bedtime Story Hour. This is a FIRST-GRADER ONLY EVENT!

February 11 Early Relase Day/Parent Conferences

February 12 Evening Conferences

February 16 NO SCHOOL/Parent Conferences

February 25 Early Release Day

March 9 Ivy & Bean production at Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts

Thanks for stopping by!

Michelle Mullen

January 5-9

Welcome back!

We were all so excited to be back together on Monday after our winter break. I hope you all enjoyed time with friends and family you hold dear! I wanted to share this photo to show you how close-knit this group is. This is what happened after one of our friends hurt her eye Friday morning and spent a long time in the health room. What an incredible group hug from all of her friends!

We continue to work on our realistic fiction stories in Writer's Workshop. Coming up with realistic stories about what could happen to our characters at Sunny Days School with their teacher Mrs. Readwell has taken center stage! We brainstormed a list of possible problems/solutions in a school setting. I'm willing to bet that one of our authors will write about what happened today during our science lesson. Let's just say digital cameras do not like to be dropped in pitchers of water...

We also talked a lot this week about the importance of planning our stories and discussed how we can do this in several different ways. Another day was spent writing a problem and solution for a story then telling our plan to a partner.

 
Partners then played "TAG." They TOLD one thing that they really liked about each other's story. Then they ASKED each other a question or two about their story. Finally, they GAVE each other some advice. These steps are helpful to our writers as they assist them in making sure that their story has a beginning/middle/end, problem/solution, and that they have told it step by step. It also helps them to perhaps think about their story in a new way. 

A note came home Friday requesting an empty cereal box from home. We'll be using these for our boxed set book collections! The kiddos will decorate them once all of the cereal boxes are here,  and then our authors will begin filling them with each story about their character. 

In reader's workshop we began our "Getting to Know Our Characters" unit. It's really nice when our writing and reading units align with each other, as it makes for some very powerful teaching and learning. Our lessons focused on getting to know our characters by paying attention to their actions, likes, and dislikes; noticing how the characters change from the beginning to the end of the story; and predicting what we think will happen based on what we know about the character. We also began our workshop rotations thanks to all of my Scholastic bonus points which allowed me to purchase a "boom box" for our listening station! The kiddos got quite a kick out of the cassettes! 

Ask your child what s/he does during each rotation:

Read to Self/Reading Journals

Partner Reading

Guided Reading

Listen to Reading

Computers

In math, we learned a new game called "Sea a 10." The kiddos had a blast with this! Each player flips a fish. As soon as someone sees numbers that add to 10 they call out, "I see 10!" Whoever says it first gets the cards. 

But watch out! If you flip a shark, you lose all of your fish! 

Next, we finished up our Contexts for Learning: The Double Decker Bus unit with a culminating project. Ask your first grader to tell you about it!

On Thursday we moved on to our Place Value unit. We were introduced to a few new games to support our understanding of place value. Here's an activity to try at home: 

1. Roll 2 dice.

2. Have your child make the largest number s/he can with the dice and write down that number.

3. Repeat

4. Now put a <, >, or = symbol between the numbers. 

On Friday we began our new science unit: Changes. We discussed solids, liquids and what the word "change" means. We then did an experiment where we observed a solid (effervescent tablet), a liquid (water), and then observed what happened 

when we put the tablet in the water. 

There were lots of oohs and aaahhh and... a camera in a pitcher of water. Drats.

 

We used all of our senses except for our sense of taste, of course! Ask your first grader to show you how we use our sense of smell in science. WAFT! WAFT! WAFT!

Also ask your first grader to tell you 

how the solid and liquid changed during our experiment. 

We began having volunteers join us for Writer's Workshop. 

Thank you to everyone who has signed up. We love having you here!

Conference slips were sent home Friday. Please send back your conference time preferences at your earliest convenience. Thank you!

Be sure to put next week's word wall words in www.spellingcity.com

They all lend themselves to word family work: 

back (track, stack, black, rack, Jack)

get (let, set, met, set)

did (hid, rid, bid, kid, slid)

day (play, stay, May, tray)

now (cow, plow, chow, bow)

Mark Your Calendars:

Wednesday, January 14 Early Release Day

MAP Testing: January 15th and 21st

NO SCHOOL/Staff Professional Development: Monday, January 19th

January 29th Bedtime Story Hour 6:30-7:30pm

Thanks for stopping by!

Michelle Mullen

December 15-19

Hello Families!

Our final week before the winter break found us continuing to explore nonfiction texts and deciding on a topic we were most interested in. We gathered our interesting facts, wrote them in our own words, then included pictures, diagrams and other text features to go with them. This nonfiction unit just got our feet wet with this genre. We'll explore nonfiction more in depth in the spring! Our photos show our fact-gathering first then our final projects! 

 


Our K4 book buddies joined us on Friday to make snowflakes. It was great to spend time with them!

 

 

Our Scholastic News issue for this last week was all about Holiday Economics. We learned about goods, services and having a budget. 

During Writer's Workshop this week, we continued to write about our realistic fiction characters. We discovered that we could focus on dialog by using our hands to mimic conversations our characters would have. 

This helped us to plan our stories with our partners. 

We also drew our characters and have them hung up with their names so that we can use each other's characters in our stories! Here are some of our characters:

Ask your first grader to tell you a little bit about his/her character. Some questions to ask: What kind of person is your character on the inside? What kind of trouble does your character experience? How does s/he solve the problems? Who are some other characters (secondary characters) in your stories?

Our focus in word work for the past two weeks has been on the 

short/long sounds and patterns for the vowel i. 

One of our activities was making words with long i and short i on the Smartboard.

In math, we continue our work with the Double Decker Bus! Our knowledge of ten partners and beyond grows every day! Here we are practicing with our partners: 

 

We enjoyed some painting on Friday - come on by to see our snow globes on our Happy New Year bulletin board just outside our classroom!

 

Our last day together in 2014 found us cleaning out our desks inside AND outside! There's nothing better to clean the outside with than SHAVING CREAM! 

Our Mitten Tree was a HUGE success this year! We collected 103 pairs of mittens and 21 hats! COA Youth and Family Centers received all this warmth on December 20th - just in time for the holidays and this polar vortex. Here is a link to their Facebook page where they posted about our Mitten Tree: https://www.facebook.com/COAYFC/posts/867854979932120

Thanks so much for your generous donations! 

When we return from winter break, we'll be reflecting on 2014 and setting goals for the new year ahead. I'm so looking forward to it!

Our new word wall words will be:

been

could

who

very

than

Please be sure to visit www.spellingcity.com to practice these tricky words!

Take care!

Mrs. Mullen 

Mark Your Calendars:

January 14: Early Release Day

January 19th: NO SCHOOL - Professional Development Day for Teachers

January 29th: First-Grade Bedtime Story Hour 6:30-7:30pm Please be sure to return a permission slip for this event for our first graders.