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