After a busy week, my heart is full! Our Mitten Tree is brimming with kindness, its branches filled with mittens - and even a few hats - for small, cold hands this winter. Your donations totaled 80 pairs of mittens, 5 hats, and one headband! I will be delivering these to the COA Youth & Family Center on the 23rd. The recipients of your generosity will be so grateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you - a thousand times over THANK YOU! I hope this spirit of giving continues to grow in your children and that they continue to see how they can make a difference in the world by sharing their many gifts.
Here's a sneak peek at our week:
Writer's Workshop
We continue to work on our teaching books, sharing our vast knowledge in ways that will interest them, have them thinking and wondering, and leaving them wanting to read more! We worked on our Table of Contents, thinking about how we can use short and interesting titles. We learned from mentor authors that it is far more powerful to include a chapter entitled "Chomp!" than "What Sharks Eat."We also learned that, just as we plan out our book chapters, we also need to plan out each individual chapter telling the contents of each across our fingers and remembering to include all that we know. Of course, our lessons on planning wouldn't be complete without being reminded of the important DETAILS! We discovered, too, that we need to ask ourselves, "What kind of writing am I doing?" Is it a list? Then we should include list paper. Is it a how-to? Then we should include that paper. Our paper needs to suit our purpose. Finally, we worked on catchy conclusions. These are a bit tricky to get used to. We looked to mentor author Gail Gibbons and authors to hear how they do it. We'll continue to pay close attention to these catchy conclusions during our read-alouds.
Reader's Workshop
We continued to focus on getting smarter about our topics before, during and after reading. Our thinking focused on what we know, what we wonder about or want to know, and what we learned. We also focused on how we can learn through text features such as the table of contents, index, glossary, and headings. Finally, we created a class Q&A book where we wrote one of our questions about our topics and the answer we discovered in our reading. We talked a bit about how we can put this learning into our own words. This will be focused on again in a future nonfiction unit. Finally, we worked on identifying the main topic and key details of texts. This is an end of year expectation for first graders. I encourage you to focus on this higher-level skill while reading nonfiction with your first grader at home.
Math
In math we continue to work with the Double Decker Bus. The kiddos are really enjoying it, and it is really helping them to think in new ways about numbers, solidifying their understanding of 5- and 10-groups, addition and subtraction. Please remind your first grader when doing homework that...
the Double Decker Bus can only have 10 passengers on each deck
they should color in their first 5 beads and leave the next 5 as just a circle
When they are just using solid circles or empty circles in their drawings, it is not helping them to see and use 5- and 10-groups. Next week we will create and solve our own Double Decker Bus stories!
Guidance
With Friday off last week, we pushed our guidance lesson to this week. Our focus was on the Peace Bridge. This is a tool/thinking process that we can use to resolve conflicts. Ask your first grader to tell you all about it! Mrs. G was here for guidance on Friday, and her focus was on the internet, specifically emails and texts and how others may perceive what we have written. Ask your first grader about that as well.
Science
We wrapped up our science unit this week by reviewing all that we have learned about weather - tracking the weather to see patterns by paying attention to cloud cover, wind speed and precipitation; and learning about the water cycle and its components - precipitation, accumulation, evaporation, condensation. In January we will begin our next unit: Solids, Liquids and Gases!
We celebrated our December birthdays in the lunchroom with lunch and cupcakes with the first grade team, and we also enjoyed chicken soup with rice on Friday to accompany our December poem from Maurice Sendak's Chicken Soup with Rice collection of poems.
Next week is a short one with still MUCH learning to do prior to our long winter's nap. Well, OK, maybe not a nap... and maybe not even winter! I hope some snowflakes will fall for these first graders - they are so anxious for them! I wish you all a joyous holiday season. Your children are gifts to me every single day, and I am so grateful for them and for you!
See you in the New Year!
Michelle
Mark Your Calendars!
December 23rd-January 3rd: Winter Break
January 13: Early Release Day
January 18: No School
January 22: Ivy & Bean at Marquette
January 27: Early Release Day
February 2: PAJAMA DAY!
Bedtime Stories First Grade Event 6:30-7:30
February 10: Early Release Day & Conferences
February 11: Conferences
February 12: Valentine's Day Celebration
February 15: No School for Students/ Conferences in PM
February 24: Early Release Day
March 9: Early Release Day
March 25: No School
April 13: Early Release Day
April 19: Schlitz Audubon
April 22: No School for Students
April 27: Early Release Day
May 11: Early Release Day
May 25: Early Release Day
May 30: No School
June 9: Last day of first grade
No comments:
Post a Comment