Our final week before the winter break found us continuing to explore nonfiction texts and deciding on a topic we were most interested in. We gathered our interesting facts, wrote them in our own words, then included pictures, diagrams and other text features to go with them. This nonfiction unit just got our feet wet with this genre. We'll explore nonfiction more in depth in the spring! Our photos show our fact-gathering first then our final projects!
Our K4 book buddies joined us on Friday to make snowflakes. It was great to spend time with them!
Our Scholastic News issue for this last week was all about Holiday Economics. We learned about goods, services and having a budget.
During Writer's Workshop this week, we continued to write about our realistic fiction characters. We discovered that we could focus on dialog by using our hands to mimic conversations our characters would have.
This helped us to plan our stories with our partners.
We also drew our characters and have them hung up with their names so that we can use each other's characters in our stories! Here are some of our characters:
Ask your first grader to tell you a little bit about his/her character. Some questions to ask: What kind of person is your character on the inside? What kind of trouble does your character experience? How does s/he solve the problems? Who are some other characters (secondary characters) in your stories?
Our focus in word work for the past two weeks has been on the
short/long sounds and patterns for the vowel i.
One of our activities was making words with long i and short i on the Smartboard.
In math, we continue our work with the Double Decker Bus! Our knowledge of ten partners and beyond grows every day! Here we are practicing with our partners:
We enjoyed some painting on Friday - come on by to see our snow globes on our Happy New Year bulletin board just outside our classroom!
Our last day together in 2014 found us cleaning out our desks inside AND outside! There's nothing better to clean the outside with than SHAVING CREAM!
Our Mitten Tree was a HUGE success this year! We collected 103 pairs of mittens and 21 hats! COA Youth and Family Centers received all this warmth on December 20th - just in time for the holidays and this polar vortex. Here is a link to their Facebook page where they posted about our Mitten Tree: https://www.facebook.com/COAYFC/posts/867854979932120
Thanks so much for your generous donations!
When we return from winter break, we'll be reflecting on 2014 and setting goals for the new year ahead. I'm so looking forward to it!
Our new word wall words will be:
been
could
who
very
than
Please be sure to visit www.spellingcity.com to practice these tricky words!
Take care!
Mrs. Mullen
Mark Your Calendars:
January 14: Early Release Day
January 19th: NO SCHOOL - Professional Development Day for Teachers
January 29th: First-Grade Bedtime Story Hour 6:30-7:30pm Please be sure to return a permission slip for this event for our first graders.
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