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!
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:
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
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