March 16-20

Hello Families!
It's hard to believe that our second trimester progress reports will be coming home on Monday! Two trimesters down, one to go. Next week, we'll be finishing up our tricky words unit in reading and our persuasive writing unit. In math we'll be moving onto unit 6 where we'll be using what we know about sorting and classifying to sort and display data. We'll also build on what we know about comparing numbers to develop comparison statements for a set of data. Your first grader will be teaching you about "comparison bars!" New writing and reading units will begin after our spring break.

On Monday, we enjoyed a St. Patrick's Day story and then wrote about who is more important to us than gold. If you're in the building over the next couple weeks, stop by to see them!

In Reader's Workshop this past week, we've been focusing our attention on using all we know about solving tricky words to help us to read for an audience. We began this study by brainstorming a list of qualities of good read-aloud voices. In other words, what do readers do well when they read aloud that helps us to enjoy the story or remember the information? We then put this to practice with our own partners! We discussed how we should sound when we read a fiction book and how we should sound when we read a non-fiction book. Over the next week, we'll focus on very specific attributes of each type of book and how we can best read to an audience.

During Writer's Workshop we continued writing our book reviews. We are getting so good at applying all we know about convincing our reader to our reviews of books! On Thursday we partnered up again to give each other writing checkups. Ask your first grader what his/her prescription was for his/her partner and also what his/her partner prescribed to make his/her writing even better. Here is one of our partnerships providing each other feedback:

We completed unit 5 in Math on Thursday and took our unit assessment on Friday. This past week we also did another fluency check. This was a mixed addition/subtraction check in which they had 1 minute to complete 15 problems. These will be coming home. If your child was not able to complete all 15 problems correctly, that is an indication that s/he needs extra practice with addition/subtraction fact fluency within 10. There are numerous apps and online games for your child to practice this important skill. 

In science this week we experimented with a solid - baking soda - and two different liquids. Check in with your scientist to first ask about his/her observations of the solid... 

and the liquids (hopefully they'll tell you about "wafting"...

Then have them tell you what happened when they mixed the solid with the liquids...

WHOA!!!

Thanks for stopping by the blog!

Mark Your Calendars:

March 23: GAME DAY! We have earned a school-wide acknowledgement for following the Stormonth Way! 2,000 BUGS have been earned, so we have earned 2,000 seconds of game time! That's 33 minutes! On Monday afternoon we'll spend 33 minutes with card/board games. If your child would like to bring in a special game on Monday, please feel free. We'll do our best to keep all pieces intact!

Progress Reports come home

March 28: Spring break begins

April 6: First day back

April 7: Referendum VOTE. Please check the district website tab titled 

Referendum Update for more information about the referendum. 

April 15: Early Release

April 29: Early Release

May 13: Early Release

May 25: Memorial Day holiday

May 27: Early Release

May 28: Schlitz Audubon field trip

June 4: Lion King musical production 

June 10: Tentative date for first grade's "Show & Share" family picnic

June 12: Last day of first grade

March 9-13

Hello First Grade Families!
This past week Stormonth hosted another Scholastic Book Fair. It was great to hear about how many of our students were able to attend and purchase new books! Thank you so much to everyone who was able to donate coins. Stormonth raised over $2,000! This, along with the very generous gift certificates I received, allowed me to purchase a great collection of new fiction and nonfiction books for our classroom library. Here they are:

During Writer's Workshop this week we continued to work on our persuasive writing pieces.

After seeing the Ivy and Bean musical on Monday, we each wrote a review of it. Everyone did a terrific job using what they know about opinion writing to write top-notch reviews of the show! Here's one of our reviewers busy at work: 

This week we also selected our best review to share in small groups of writers who wrote a similar review. Here we are sharing our reviews and giving each other feedback based on what we noticed each writer did to convince their reader:

                                                      

During guidance this week we learned about the Peace Bridge. The Peace Bridge is a tool on our playground that we can use to help solve problems. Ask your first grader to tell you about some of the steps on the Peace Bridge. Here we are practicing:

We were not only lucky to have the Irish Dancers come and perform for us, but we have one of the dancers right in our classroom! She demonstrated her skills for us the day after the performance! 

One of our lessons in math this week found us working in small groups to devise and use a systematic way to count large quantities of objects. We discovered that we could count the objects much faster and more accurately when we put them into groups of tens and left-over ones. Here is one of our small groups working together: 

In science we separated ink into its component colors. We discovered that some mixtures (marker colors) contain "hidden" substances that are revealed only when the mixture is separated. We used black and green ink, a water dropper and a coffee filter to separate these inks into their component colors. Ask your first grader to tell you what happened!

 

In Reader's Workshop we continue to add to our growing list of strategies we can use when we come to tricky words always with our focus being on comprehension. Hopefully you're seeing your first grader using these strategies when s/he is reading to you at home.  

Thanks for stopping by the blog to read about another fun week in first grade!

Michelle Mullen 

Mark Your Calendars:

March 28: Spring break begins

April 6: First day back

April 7: Referendum VOTE. Please check the district website tab titled 

Referendum Update for more information about the referendum. 

April 15: Early Release

April 29: Early Release

May 13: Early Release

May 25: Memorial Day holiday

May 27: Early Release

May 28: Schlitz Audubon field trip

June 10: Tentative date for first grade's "Show & Share" family picnic

June 12: Last day of first grade

March 2-6

Hello First Grade Families!
What a wonderful week we had really stretching ourselves and learners and as teachers to our peers! Here's what we were up to:

During Writer's Workshop we continued to work with our reviews. Our focus this past week was on revisiting introductions...

 and learning about catchy conclusions! 

On Tuesday we spent time focusing closely on capitalization and punctuation. As our first graders have more and more to say, it seems that those basic conventions get a bit lost in the process. Because this is an end-of-year first grade expectation, this will be an ongoing focus for the rest of the year. Here are a couple of our writing partners editing a review written by one of my first graders from last year. They are checking very carefully for missing punctuation and capital letters as well as capital letters where they don't belong. For this editing, we use our special editing pencils!

I encourage you to include writing in your child's weekly homework diet. Writing just a few sentences about the best or worst part of his/her day would offer some great opportunities to practice these skills as well as serve as a conversation starter between you and your child. With this activity, they won't be able to just respond with "nothing" when you ask them what they did in school!

Wednesday was a pretty exciting day during writing workshop. We worked with our partners to give each other writing checkups! I likened this to a trip to the doctor for a physical. After some discussion of this analogy, we worked together to give one of my reviews a writing checkup. After that, the kiddos gave each other writing checkups, letting their "patients" know what they did well and offering our kind suggestions for what they could work on next. We even signed our name Dr. _____________. They really enjoyed this! 

                                      Here is Dr. Art writing a prescription for his patient.

During Reader's Workshop this past week we spent a good deal of time with comprehension strategies. Some of our teaching points were:

* Readers think about what is happening in the story and 

what might happen next before they start to read a page or part.

* Readers pay attention to the setting , using pictures and 

words to watch for where the story is taking place.

We also learned another accuracy strategy...

* Readers think about the kind of word when they come to a tricky word.

and an expanding vocabulary strategy...

* Readers are on the look out for new words to learn. 

With this strategy, we didn't just focus on figuring out what the word means and moving on. Instead, we talked about how it's important for us to understand the word well enough that we could explain it to someone else. In addition, we talked about knowing it so well that we begin to USE that word when we talk and write! One of our examples was the word "clustered." I hope some of you will hear your first grader using this word!

In math this week we focused on creating and solving teen story problems using both addition and subtraction. The unknown was in various places in these problems. We had to determine if it was an unknown total or an unknown partner. Here we are working with small groups and showing our group members what strategies we used to come up with our solutions: 

And here is one of our friend's solutions:

In science this week we worked with sugar grains again. This time we completed an experiment to see if the temperature of the water would have an effect on how quickly the sugar grains dissolved. Ask your first grader to tell you what happened in his/her experiment.

Finally, we ended our week with Maurice Sendak's poem "March" from his book Chicken Soup with Rice and, of course, enjoyed eating chicken soup with rice together. It was a perfect tummy-warmer for such a chilly day!

Just a reminder: Monday is our trip to see Ivy and Bean. We will eat early in our classrooms that day, and it would really expedite the process if the children brought a lunch to school.  While this is not necessary, it would be very helpful. Feel free to choose hot lunch though. We will be out of the building from 11:05-2:00 pm that day. 

Thank you so much for all of the coins, dollars and checks that were sent in this week! We'll keep our fingers crossed that we win an ice cream party! If not though, this money will still go toward new books for our classroom library, and what could be better than that?!

Thanks for stopping by our blog!

Michelle Mullen

Mark your calendars:

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

March 10: Book Fair/Cake Walk Event

          March 28: Spring Break begins      

February 23-27

Hello Families!  
I can hardly believe that we are finished with February! This is when the school year really begins to zoom by! Here is a sneak peek at what we've been up to in first grade and what's coming up:

The Spring Book Fair is coming! The fair is Tuesday, March 10th from 3pm-8pm in the Stormonth cafeteria. The Cake Walk will be held in the gym the same evening from 6-7pm. On March 2nd we'll begin a school-wide "Coin War!" It is a wonderful opportunity for kids to give a small donation to help us purchase additional books for our school. Donations can be brought in from March 2 - March 6. The classroom with the most donations will win an ice cream party!

Stormonth will be focusing on the Stormonth Way in the hallway as we have noticed that a lot of our friends (teachers even!) have been forgetting our "0" voices in the hall rule. This means that we should not be talking in our hallways. Ask your first grader why this is important. Our PBIS team came up with an acknowledgement for this expectation: the GOLDEN HALL PASS! One classroom from each grade level will receive the pass each week for demonstrating The Stormonth Way in our hallways. We would appreciate it if you would remind your first grader of the expectations. A problem time during our day is right after lunch before heading to recess, so if you would specifically focus the conversation around that time, it would be MUCH appreciated!

Our Jump Rope for Heart to benefit the American Heart Association was held this week, and what fun it was! Our specialists put together a fun-filled and health-filled 45 minutes during our special time. Mrs. Grimm-Nilsen even joined in on the fun! Thank you to everyone who participated in raising money for this wonderful event!

In math this week, we continued to work with solving and creating teen story problems. We did this with the unknown in various locations in our stories. Here are some examples of stories and the strategies we used to solve them.

I encourage you to spend time each day having your child practice his/her fact fluency. Again, there are numerous apps for you to practice this in a fun and engaging way.

On Friday we had the pleasure of attending 2nd grade's Character Fashion Show! What a fun time it was! We were given clues as to who the character was and then called out our guesses. We have done so much reading this year that we were pretty good at figuring out who our second graders were dressed as. They did a terrific job, and it was fun for us to imagine who we might dress up as next February!

 

 

 

Our first grade scientists discovered that the salt we thought had disappeared last week was actually still in the water even though we could no longer see it! After a week of evaporating, beautiful salt crystals were left behind! They were much bigger than the crystals we observed last week! Some of the crystals even had an "X" right in the center of them. It was pretty spectacular - almost like looking at snowflakes!

For this week's experiment, we observed sugar grains and sugar cubes and recorded our observations. We then had a dissolving race! Ask your first grader what they discovered!

 

In preparation for our upcoming field trip to the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center, we read Ivy & Bean. What a great story! The author, Annie Barrows, really helped us get to know Ivy and Bean. Ask your first grader to tell you what kind of a person each girl is and what these characters did/said in the story that supports their response. We can't wait to see Ivy & Bean on the stage! We're especially curious to see if Bean will throw real live worms in Nancy's face!

 We continue our tricky words unit during reader's workshop, and our chart of strategies grows and grows! We have so many strategies from which to choose, and it has been great having our readers share their strategies with the whole class and with their partners! Again, with all these strategies we always ask ourselves: Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense? When I got to the end of one of our read-alouds this week, I realized I was a bit unsure as to which character was which at the  end of the story. Instead of just choosing a new book next, I knew that I had to go back and read the book again and really pay attention to the characters as well as each part of the story as I read. The first graders helped me along, and after the second read I could demonstrate my understanding, and it made the book so much more enjoyable!

During writer's workshop this week we continued to work on our reviews. I have noticed that revising has taken center stage with our writers. They have really grown in this area! Instead of ending a piece and saying, "OK, that one's done," they are going back to old pieces each time we learn a new strategy that review writers use to convince their readers and adding them! It's so fun to see! 

That was our busy, busy week!

Mark your calendars:

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      

Thank you for stopping by the blog!

Michelle Mullen