Having a HOOT in Mrs. Mullen's First Grade!: January 2017

Hello Families!
Here's a sneak peek at our week:
On Monday we completed an opinion writing pre-assessment. This is a great tool to use to plan instruction and set goals for each writer. On Tuesday and Wednesday we began writing about our collections from home and are beginning to understand how to write this kind of writing. We wrote a shared writing opinion piece following our field trip to Marquette's Helfaer Theatre on Wednesday.

During Readers' Workshop this week, we've been focusing on our fluency and expression while reading nonfiction texts. Some of us have had a chance to use www.vocaroo.com to practice our best expert voices and then listen to it to see how we did. I encourage you to have your reader use vocaroo (or another voice recording site/app) to record him/herself reading and then listen to how s/he sounds. It can be very eye-opening for some of them and is great for determining if a book is a just right book or not. If our voices sound "boring and bumpy" the book is not just right. However, if we sound smooth and lively, it is!

During Math Workshop we continue to focus on place value and using the strategy of making a 10 to solve teen addition problems.

During Science Workshop we made wind vanes and investigated what a wind vane tells us about the wind. Ask your scientist what s/he discovered!

On Wednesday afternoon we went to the computer lab to "show what we know" for our MAP Math assessment. We'll have our Reading assessment on January 24 first thing in the morning.

This week we also learned more about Martin Luther King, Jr. in our latest issue of Scholastic News. Ask your first grader about it!

Next week we'll be building kites during our Friday science investigation, and we'll begin tracking the moon on Thursday when the quarter moon arrives!

Until then...

Michelle Mullen

***Please make note of our annual family picnic which has been added to our list of important dates below. Parent-Teacher conference dates/times have also been added. Please keep your eye out for information regarding our new conference online sign-up.

Book Orders were sent home last week. Please let me know today (Sunday) or tomorrow (January 17th) if you'd like to place an order. There is a wonderful book in this order that I just discovered a couple weeks ago. It's called Ada Twist, Scientist!

Mark Your Calendars!

Tuesday, January 24: MAP Testing 8:50am

Wednesday, February 8: Early Release Day

Monday, February 20: NO SCHOOL/Teacher In-Service Day

Wednesday, February 22: Early Release Day

Wednesday, March 8: Early Release Day

Parent-Teacher Conferences: 3-6:30PM

Thursday, March 16th: Parent-Teacher Conferences 4:30-8:00PM

Wednesday, March 22: Early Release Day

Parent-Teacher Conferences 3-6:30PM

Thursday, March 23: Musical (2pm & 6:30pm)

Monday, March 27-Friday, March 31: Spring Break

Wednesday, April 12: Early Release Day

Friday, April 14: NO SCHOOL

Monday, April 17: NO SCHOOL/Teacher In-Service

Wednesday, April 26: Early Release Day

Wednesday, May 10: Early Release Day

Wednesday, May 24: Early release Day

Monday, May 29: NO SCHOOL

Tuesday, June 6th: SAVE THE DATE!!!

Annual Family Picnic! 11:30-12:40

Thursday, June 8: Last day of First Grade!

See you later, Second Grader!

Happy New Year!
This was a week of reflection, revisiting, and looking ahead. Here are some important questions we focused on this week:

How have you improved in first grade? How did you improve and who helped you improve?

What has been challenging?

What would you like to work on more?

We used these reflective questions to help us with a couple New Year projects. The first was a way for us to brainstorm ideas for our second project. In this first project we used "2017" to write about the following:

2 = Two goals I have

0 = Something I want to stop doing

1 = One book I want to read in 2017

7 = Seven new things I want to learn

Our second project had us focusing in a bit more on one personal goal, one book to read, one thing to learn, and we added one new food we want to try. Here they are without the noisemakers attached - you can see those when you come for conferences!

During word work we focused on short /u/ families -un, -ut and -ug as well as short /i/ families -ip, -ig and -ill.

During Reader's Workshop this week, we revisited our understanding of Just-Right Books. We then sorted our book bin books into 3 piles: Books that were too easy, books that were too hard, and books that were just right. We then focused on finding interesting information to share in our just-right nonfiction books and marked them with post-its. Here we are sharing our books with classroom peers:

This reader decided to add a "?" to the front of the book as a reminder to ask his partner what s/he knew about soccer before he read it.

We had time on Thursday and Friday to practice reading our nonfiction books with smooth and lively voices in preparation for a visit from Mrs. Grambow's friends who were doing the same! All of the children gathered together in partnerships on Friday morning, sharing their nonfiction books with each other!

The sticker on the wing of the pinwheel helps us to watch and keep track of the rotations.

In science this week, we created pinwheels. We'll be using these this upcoming week to answer the following focus questions:

How strong is the wind today?

How can pinwheels be used to observe the wind?

A reminder that your child's collection is due tomorrow (Monday, January 9th). Some great collections have arrived at school while some may be a bit tricky to rate, rank and write about. As you're helping your child to choose a collection, please remember that the items should lend themselves to A LOT of writing. An important piece of information in the note that went home is that the items in the collection should be different but similar. Here are some photos of some collections that will lend themselves to some great writing:

A collection of Pokemon figurines. They're similar in that they're all Pokemon, however, each one is different.

Similar in that they're Matchbox cars, different in that they're different kinds of cars.

Similar in that they're all plastic animals, different in that they're different animals.

All Shopkins, but different Shopkins.

What's really terrific about each of these collections is that each item is interesting and have different characteristics. This way your child. would be able to write, for example, that Batmobile is the best because it's faster than the others, the windows open, the tires are really big, it's my favorite colors, etc. Or the mixer Shopkin is the best because it has two characters instead of one, it has my favorite colors, it's a tool rather than a food, etc. If the items are too different, it's very difficult to make comparisons, and if the items aren't interesting in and of themselves, it will be quite difficult for your young writer to write about them from a descriptive lens. If you've send a collection that you're now rethinking, please send a new one to school tomorrow as we'll be sharing our collections with each other. If your note regarding the collections either never came home or got lost in the shuffle, here it is.

Your child should be able to tell you about the collection as many of our friends have already brought their collections in.

I'm looking forward to seeing and learning about all of the collections tomorrow!

Until then...

Michelle Mullen

***Please make note of our annual family picnic which has been added to our list of important dates below. Also, this Thursday is our field trip to Marquette to see the musical Fancy Nancy. Please be sure to return your child's permission slip/fee if you haven't done so already. Thank you to everyone who offered to volunteer to be our chaperone. The parent selected has been contacted.

Mark Your Calendars!

Wednesday, January 11: Early Release Day

Thursday, January 12: Fancy Nancy play at Marquette

(please be sure to return your child's permission slip and money)

Monday, January 16: NO SCHOOL