Saturday, October 22, 2016

October 17-21

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Monster Bash 2016! Those two cuties on the right are my twins!


And here they are close up!
Hello Families!
I hope many of you were able to come out for the Monster Bash! I was here for the first hour handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters, and it was a blast!

Here's a sneak peek at our week:

This week during our morning Brain Bins, one of our activities was decorating our "tree cookies" from the Retzer Nature Center. We turned them into beautiful necklaces!




In Writers' Workshop this week we tried out craft moves that we noticed George McClements do in Night of the Veggie Monster. We then explored other favorite books to see if we noticed other craft moves that we'd like to try in our writing. We discovered that we can learn A LOT about writing our own books from books that we love! 
Noticing what Mo Willems does in his Elephant & Piggie books.


Mo Willems also wrote the Knuffle Bunny books. He used more interesting craft moves in those books, too!

We found craft moves we'd like to try in Ted Arnold's Fly Guy series.

Pete the Cat author James Dean does many things in his writing to keep his reader interested!

POP OUT words are a class favorite!

We then selected our most special piece to revise and edit for next week's publishing party. Here we are making two piles: books that are ready to be published and books that aren't...

During our editing process, we learned all about trying a word three ways on our dry erase boards. Each time we write the word, we try to listen harder for each sound that we hear: 


In Reader's Workshop this week, we continued our focus on Good Reader Habits. We learned that readers don't give up; they try, try again! We paid special attention to vowels in tricky words and tried vowel sounds two different ways - short and long sounds. We also looked at the soft and hard sounds that c and g make. 

Partner readers learned that they can introduce their books to each other with a sneak peek...
and they learned not to tell their partner what the tricky words are. Instead, they should help them solve them by suggesting strategies! 

Partners give book introductions!
Finally, we talked about how, just like we do when we read independently, partners can do something at the end of their books: retell, reread, read a favorite part, talk about a connection to the book, etc. 

In Math Workshop this week we did a lot of work with representing and solving addition story problems. We also learned that it's much faster to COUNT ON rather than COUNT ALL when solving an addition equation. Have your mathematician show you what this means by solving this equation: 2 + 7 = ___

We had our first Star of the Week!
Sharing a special talent!

Sharing a photograph and a story!
In Science Lab this week, we learned more about air; this time through an investigation about parachutes! We became engineers and built our own parachutes.


After building our parachutes, we tried them out in our classroom...


in the hallway off the balcony...





and outside!




Ask your engineer what s/he learned about how parachutes use air. New vocabulary words:
parachute
push
wind
air resistance

Next week we'll continue to ready our books for our publishing party, Mrs. French will join us for guidance on Wednesday, and Friday will be our parade and celebration.

Until then...
Michelle Mullen

Star of the Week Schedule

Solveig – October 24th - 28th
Athena – October 31st – November 4th
Ben – November 7th-11th
Lexi – November 14th- 18th
David - November 28- December 2nd  
Madelyn – December 5th-9th
Cameron - December 12th-16th
Giselle - January 9th-13th
Oscar – January 23rd - 27th
Alex P. – January 30th- February 3rd
Evy – February 6th -10th
Josh – February 13th-17th
Eleonore – February 27th- March 3rd   
Darius – March 6th-10th
Alex M. – March 13th-17th
Brayden – March 20th-24th


Mark Your Calendars!

Wednesday, October 26: Early Release
Conferences: 3-6:30pm

Thursday, October 27: Conferences 4:30-8:00pm

Friday, October 28: Halloween Parade & Celebration

Tuesday, November 8th: Picture Retake Day

Tuesday, November 22: Music Concert (Last Names A-M at 10am/Last Names N-Z at 2pm)

Wednesday, November 23: Early Release Day

Monday, December 5: Report Cards Come Home

Wednesday, December 14: Early Release Day

Friday, December 23-Monday, January 2: Winter Break

Wednesday, January 11: Early Release Day

Monday, January 16: NO SCHOOL

Wednesday, February 8: Early Release Day

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

Wednesday, March 8: Early Release Day

Wednesday, March 22: Early Release Day

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

Thursday, June 8: Last day of First Grade! 
See you later, Second Grader!

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