Having a HOOT in Mrs. Mullen's First Grade!: February 2016

Monday, February 29, 2016

February 22-26

Hello Families!
Here's a sneak-peek at our amazing week!

In Writer's Workshop we finished fixing and fancying up our reviews. We then looked at all of our review topics, grouped like reviews together, and then created a first grade anthology of reviews! Some of our topics were restaurants, vacation spots, toys, and movies. On Wednesday we began writing book reviews. We found that we already know A LOT about writing reviews and that we could use these skills for our book reviews! On Monday next week, we'll use what we know about book reviews to review our favorite Dr. Seuss book.

In Reader's Workshop we finished up practicing recording our reading with a partner. This was very helpful for us as we listened to our recordings and listened for fluent, expressive reading. You can practice this at home at www.vocaroo.com. For the rest of the week, we were busy in our Frog and Toad Book Clubs. We have been learning why we have book clubs, what they look and sound like, how to ask and answer questions during book clubs, how to build our conversations and how to make our own and add to others' connections. Here's our anchor chart that we created together:

And here we are in our book clubs:

I was busy collecting "Book Club Buzz" while groups were meeting with each other. Here's some of the great thinking our first graders were doing this past week:

First grade mathematicians worked together to solve number stories.

In Math Workshop we have been busy writing and solving addition and subtraction teen story problems. With these larger numbers, strategies such as the Make-a-Ten strategy are really coming in handy!

This week we also enjoyed chicken soup with rice and practiced our new poem February.

In science, we experimented with sugar grains again for a Dissolving Race! This time we added this solid to warm water and cold water. Ask your first grader to share his/her results with you.

We made sure that the same person stirred both mixtures so that we would have a fair dissolving race.

Next week Dr. Seuss will be on the loose in first grade! Please remember to send your reader with his/her favorite Dr. Seuss book! Here are our plans for the week:

Monday: Bring in your favorite Dr. Seuss book
Tuesday: Seuss-tastic snacks! Thanks so much for signing up to bring items for this event!
Wednesday: Wacky Wednesday Let’s get silly! Wear your clothes backwards, inside out or mismatched!

Thursday: Hop-on-Pop-corn Today we'll enjoy popcorn while watching the original version of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.

Friday: We'll further our science experimentation with solids and liquids by making Oobleck! Thanks for the donations!

Mark Your Calendars!

March 9: Early Release Day
Irish Dancers will perform at 10:15am

March 11: We'll be going to see 2nd grade's Character Fashion Show at 9:15am!

March 14: Report cards come home

March 23rd: Cinderella production will be streamed into our classroom at 2pm

March 25-April 3rd: Spring Break

April 13: Early Release Day

April 19: Schlitz Audubon 11:45-2pm

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

Sunday, February 21, 2016

February 16-19

I can think of almost no better way to start the day than with a good friend and a book!

Hello Families!
We had a short week due to parent teacher conferences and staff development on Monday, but despite it being short, we sure accomplished a lot! And speaking of conferences, I have so enjoyed having time to speak to each of you about your first graders, sharing their successes, their challenges and their goals. I so appreciate your support at home! It truly does make a world of difference. On to our week...

During Writer's Workshop, we continue to focus on writing reviews. Specifically, we were busy adding supporting details to make our reviews more convincing, adding small moment stories as a means of persuasion, hooking our reader with interesting introductions and catchy conclusions, and working with partners to give each other writing check-ups.

We have our very own mentor authors who share their great work with us!

We LOVE learning from our in-house mentor authors!

"Dr. Carroll" writing a prescription for her writing partner.

Prescriptions included compliments...

and prescriptions - or ways to improve our writing!

Proud "doctors" shared their prescriptions with each other!

Writing partners looking over each other's writing very carefully so that they can let them now what they're doing well and what they can work on next.

"Dr. Kaczor" providing specific feedback.

In Reader's Workshop we have been busy making our reading sounds its very best by paying attention to punctuation, characters and the story line. Partners have been practicing and critiquing their best reading by recording themselves on www.vocaroo.com. You can have your reader do this at home as well! It's a really easy tool that has been extremely motivating to our readers!

One of our Words Their Way groups focused on short e patterns with the nasal _nt.

Our word was focused on short & long /e/ patterns. We're noticing that there are MANY long /e/ patterns. Examples are e_e, ea, y, ee, e, ei, and ie! This is a pretty tricky one, particularly in terms of spelling and knowing which pattern to use when we're writing. The more we read and experience these patterns and the more we begin to use them in our writing, the better we'll get! As I shared with you at conferences, I've set up a Spelling City account where your child can practice these vowel patterns as well as our first grade Word Wall Words. Here's the link again http://www.spellingcity.com/mrsmullenspellingcity/.

In Math Workshop this past week we were busy with solving teen addition and subtraction number stories. We persevered through a pretty tricky strategy where we used the make a ten strategy to solve teen subtraction. I'm amazed at what these first graders can accomplish together!

We observed our salt crystals very closely.

In Science, we revisited our solids (gravel, tissue, salt) and discovered that the salt really was still in the water after we stirred it in our last session! We discovered it changed a lot!

Our salt crystals changed A LOT!

Next, we experimented with sugar grains and sugar cubes. Ask your scientist to tell you all about the experiment and what we discovered.

We observed our sugar grains and sugar cubes very closely as well, then used a Venn Diagram to share our observations.

One partner held the cups while the other stirred for our "Dissolving Race." The same person stirred both cups, because "what one hand does, the other follows!" This helped ensure a fair race.

Next Tuesday we're looking forward to having Mrs. Geinopolos join us for a guidance lesson!

Until then...

Michelle Mullen

Reminders:

Please turn in BOX TOPS for EDUCATION to school as we're in the midst of a contest right now! We're hoping to take the lead for the first grade class with the most BOX TOPS returned!

We seem to be at a lull with BOOK BRIEFCASES. Many of our friends haven't been bringing in a signed BOOK LOG each day. These are an extremely important part of your child's development as a reader and an important habit to build as this expectation will continue in second grade and beyond. Thank you!

Mark Your Calendars!

February 18th: Conferences in PM

February 24: Early Release Day/Conferences

March 9: Early Release Day

March 14: Report cards

March 25-April 3rd: Spring Break
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

Friday, February 12, 2016

February 8-12

One of our friends brought this wonderful book to share this week. We LOVED it!

Hello Families!
I hope this finds you all staying warm in the midst of this deep freeze! We had a busy week wrapped in love! Here it is from beginning to end...

In Writer's Workshop we finished up our opinions about our collections in small groups on Monday.

This slide began the excitement about writing reviews!

On Tuesday we began writing reviews to persuade others. We have been thinking about restaurants, movies, games, toys, etc. that we know well and have been writing reviews about them - what fun! Each reviewer received a Tiny Topics Notebook to collect his/her ideas.

Please help your writer to think of more movies, toys, restaurants, museums, waterparks, etc. that s/he can review!

Your writers are SO engaged with this writing, and boy is it ever fun to witness! We read a couple of reviews by young writers and had a look at what they did to convince their readers. We also listened to a couple first graders share their book reviews. Next, we gave those strategies a try in our own writing.

A first grader reads her review of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

Another writer reads her review about My Life as a Chicken.

We also learned about how in our reviews we should imagine that our reader is right there, and we're talking right to them! We pretended to be radio announcers while sharing our plan for our review. Here we are practicing with our friends:

We added to our reviews by making comparisons. For example, one of our reviewers was writing a review of Key Lime Cove and told why it was better than Blue Harbor. We shared our writing with our partners and got some suggestions right on the spot for how to make our reviews even more convincing!

We even talked about how we can talk back in a friendly way to others who disagree with our opinions:

In Reader's Workshop, we've been busy talking about ways to understand our books. Here's our anchor chart of strategies we've focused on so far:

We're also focusing on fluent reading by using all that we know about solving tricky words to get the job done quickly! We listened closely to a first grader read a book review and a dad read a chapter from Frog and Toad to his daughter. We created a chart of what we noticed that these readers did while they were reading. Here's what we noticed:

Now we're practicing these skills every time we read in preparation for being reading stars for an audience! We'll be recording ourselves reading one of our book reviews which we'll begin writing in the next couple weeks! Our book reviews will be posted on our blog for our grown-ups to read, and we'll also post QR codes with the link to our book reviews on the bulletin board outside our classroom for an even wider audience! We're SO EXCITED!

We completed unit 4 in math and completed our unit assessment. I have to say, I was mighty impressed by how well everyone performed on this test. They did a great job of demonstrating some pretty hefty learning from this unit! Next, we began unit 5. Our first lesson really challenged us, so we'll be taking 2 days for it. Homework for 5.1 came home on Thursday. We'll be doing part 2 of the lesson on Tuesday, and on that day a set of purple Make a Ten cards which were explained in the parent letter that also came home on Thursday will come home. Those will be your child's homework. Please KEEP THESE AT HOME TO PRACTICE WITH.

Making a 10 to find the unknown partner.

Our word study focus this week was on short and long /o/. Next week's vowel focus will be short and long /e/ and our word wall words will be:

our

mother

come

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! XOXO

Friday afternoon we celebrated Valentine's Day by decorating Valentine bags, decorating cookies, playing Valentine math games, reading our Valentines, and watching A Charlie Brown Valentine. What a fun, relaxing time together and great way to end our week. Thanks to everyone who was able to donate to our celebration - we LOVE you!