Having a HOOT in Mrs. Mullen's First Grade!: February 2015

Sunday, February 22, 2015

February 17-20

Hello First Grade Families!
Here's a sneak peek at this past week...

During Writer's Workshop we continued on with our opinion writing and even assisted our writing partners in selecting their best piece of opinion writing about their collections! Partners awarded each other a first place ribbon and told them all the reasons why they thought that particular piece was the best one.

Now we are busy at work on review writing! Thank you so much for compiling a list of review possibilities. The kiddos have taken to this writing right away and are hard at work convincing their readers! One of our friends is convincing her readers not to go to McDonald's because the only thing healthy there is the water, while another is convincing his reader that they should download the Minecraft app. Many of our writers are talking right to the reader by asking questions right at the beginning...

"Do you like to have fun? Do you like to roller skate? Then you should head right out to Ozaukee Skateland!"

In Reader's Workshop, we are continuing our focus on strategies we can use when we come to tricky words. This week we talked about reading across a word part by part, flipping the vowel sound, trying other sounds for the letters, and thinking about what is happening in the story. With all of these strategies we are sure to be sure that it not only looks right and sounds right, but that it makes sense. Comprehension should always be the focus!

In math we played 2-digit addition games, then prepared ourselves for our unit 4 assessment on Thursday. On Monday we'll begin unit 5. In this unit first graders will use tens and ones to add, subtract, and solve story problems to find teen totals and unknown partners. They will continue to add with tens and also learn to subtract with tens and add three numbers. I strongly encourage you to have your child practice his/her addition and subtraction math facts within 10 daily. There are many great apps that you can download for free to help your child become fluent with his/her facts. We did another fact fluency check this past week. This particular assessment had the unknown in various positions. This was a bit trickier for some. Be sure to include these types of problems when practicing at home. Examples: 4+__=7

___ = 8+1

We learned about Abraham Lincoln and about Chinese New Year through our Scholastic News magazines. We found a lot of root words in our "All Aboard, Abe!" issue and highlighted them in a separate activity. This was one of our reading strategies from last week, so we were really able to put it to practice!

On Tuesday we spent a lot of time discussing bullying: what it looks like, how we can help someone who is being bullied, what to do if we see or hear about someone being bullied, and what to do if we are bullying others. I hope you were able to discuss the bullying pamphlet that came home with your child.

In art class, first graders painted their snakes. Aren't they fantastic?!

In science we separated our solid/liquid mixtures. We discovered that we could separate the gravel and the kleenex from the water, however, we still didn't see our salt. Now we have our salt/water mixture in in petri dishes. I think the kiddos are going to be very excited when they see those petri dishes in the morning!

Mark your calendars:

February 26: Jump Rope for Heart event during PE classes

March 2: First graders will be celebrating Dr. Seuss' Birthday and Read Across America by wearing red and white and bringing in their favorite book and a stuffed animal.

March 9: Ivy and Bean play at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center

March 10: Book Fair/Cake Walk Event

March 28: Spring Break begins

Sunday, February 15, 2015

February 9-13

It was another milestone week in first grade - the 100th day! And yes, indeed, we are all 100 DAYS SMARTER! During our morning meeting, we all shared ways that we are smarter. I hope that during our conferences you were able to see all the ways listed on our "100 Days" bulletin board.

Here's a sneak-peek at our week:
Writer's Workshop: Part of our time this week was spent judging our classmates' collections and deciding if we agreed or disagreed with the item they thought was the best one. We then had to support our opinion with several reasons and LOTS of details. We learned about using "sparkle" words such as adorable instead of just cute. Here are some of our collections with our written opinions:

And here are some of our agreements and disagreements:

This week we also worked with our writing partners to show them the places in our writing where we wrote an opinion and the places where we had details to support that opinion. Our partners helped us out by providing their own opinions. Some of us used those as a way to make our writing stronger by "quoting an expert."

We enjoyed some time with our K4 Book Buddies on our early release day. We got to know them a bit better by interviewing them about things they love. We then helped them to create a cupcake-shaped book to take home and share with their families Of course, our time with them wouldn't be complete without showing off our developing reading skills, too!

Reader's Workshop: We continue to discuss word solving strategies during Reader's Workshop. During one of our lessons, we shared with a partner all of the strategies we use quite a bit, and then set a goal to use others more. It has been great to see kiddos have these charts with them during guided reading and see that they are employing their goal strategy (ies) when they come to tricky words. Please help to remind your reader to go back and reread the entire sentence when they need to stop to fix up a word. This second time through should sound fluent - just as if they were having a conversation with someone.

Math Workshop: During math workshop we made connections between facts we know like 4+3=7 and 40+30=70. We know that four ones plus three ones equals seven. We then know that 4 tens plus 3 tens equals 7 tens. During the week, we also learned strategies to help us count on into the next decade when adding a two-digit number and a single digit number. We also used the <, > and = symbols to compare double-digit numbers.

Valentine's Day: Thanks so much for the donations for our Valentine's Day celebration. We had a great time decorating cookies, passing out and reading our valentines, and playing Vowel Bingo!

We hope you all had a very Happy Valentine's Day - WE LOVE YOU!

Reminders:

* Permission slips for our trip to see Ivy & Bean were sent home Friday.

* Jump Rope for Heart fundraising is happening now. Our event will take place on

February 26 in PE classes.

* A note came home Friday about our upcoming writing unit focused on writing reviews.

Please be sure to help prepare your writer for this work by talking about reviews and

sending in his/her ideas on Tuesday, February 17th. Thank you!

Mark Your Calendars:

February 16: NO SCHOOL/Conferences

February 25: Early Release Day

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 perform here at Stormonth

March 28: Spring Break begins

Thanks for stopping by the blog!

Michelle Mullen

Sunday, February 8, 2015

February 2-6

Hello Families!
This week we wrapped up our work with our Realistic Fiction units in writing and reading. Here are just a few of the books we looked at very closely this week to discover what type of person the character was.

We proved our thinking by going back into the story and finding evidence. We discovered that more often than not, we need to use all of the clues that an author gives us to truly determine what type of person that character is. In other words, we need to make inferences based on what the author DOES tell us.

After finishing up these units, we began our persuasive/opinion writing study by studying our collections very closely. First we had to judge our collections...

We watched a 2-minute segment of a dog show to see how carefully the judges decided on which dog is the best. Then a friend helped to judge MY collection of dogs! She decided the Saint Bernard was the best. Here she is lining the dogs up, comparing them, and then telling us WHY the Saint Bernard was her first place winner.

Then we worked hard to convince our reader...

Here we are judging our own collections:

Now we're focused on not only including reasons, but including a lot of details for EACH reason. Ask your opinion writer about what we discovered when we highlighted my opinion piece with yellow for the reasons and green for the details. Which color was there more of? Why was that?

In Reader's Workshop we are focusing on how we can be our own teachers by using all of the strategies we know when we come to tricky words. Each day we're highlighting a strategy. I'm using texts from our guided reading lessons with strategies that the kiddos actually used. This makes for some very meaningful teaching and allows your reader to be in the "Strategy Spotlight" by sharing this good work under the HoverCam! In this example, we had a look at two strategies. Our reader was having a tricky time with the word hands, but then he quickly noticed the word "and" in it. This helped him to solve it on the run. He then cross-checked to be sure it looked right, sounded right and made sense. In the second example, our reader was having a tricky time with the word barked. He first thought about what was happening in the story - a bird was about to eat Danny's worm! Danny is trying to get the bird to go away. Danny is a dog... barked! Again, he cross-checked to be sure it looked right, sounded right and made sense. In all of our strategy work, we link everything to MEANING, and I encourage you to do the same at home. Be sure they cross check that it makes sense. Have your first grader show you our movement for checking to see if it

looks right, sounds right and makes sense.

We completed our word wall assessment on all 78 of our words and also completed a vowel assessment. I will share this information with you at conferences. This will help me in determining next steps for your first grader during

whole class, small group and individual word work times.

In science this week we mixed three different solids with a liquid - water. Ask your first grader to share with you what the three solids were and what s/he discovered.