February 2-6

Hello Families!
This week we wrapped up our work with our Realistic Fiction units in writing and reading. Here are just a few of the books we looked at very closely this week to discover what type of person the character was.

We proved our thinking by going back into the story and finding evidence. We discovered that more often than not, we need to use all of the clues that an author gives us to truly determine what type of person that character is. In other words, we need to make inferences based on what the author DOES tell us. 

After finishing up these units, we began our persuasive/opinion writing study by studying our collections very closely. First we had to judge our collections...

We watched a 2-minute segment of a dog show to see how carefully the judges decided on which dog is the best. Then a friend helped to judge MY collection of dogs! She decided the Saint Bernard was the best. Here she is lining the dogs up, comparing them, and then telling us WHY the Saint Bernard was her first place winner.

Then we worked hard to convince our reader...

Here we are judging our own collections: 

Now we're focused on not only including reasons, but including a lot of details for EACH reason. Ask your opinion writer about what we discovered when we highlighted my opinion piece with yellow for the reasons and green for the details. Which color was there more of? Why was that?

In Reader's Workshop we are focusing on how we can be our own teachers by using all of the strategies we know when we come to tricky words. Each day we're highlighting a strategy. I'm using texts from our guided reading lessons with strategies that the kiddos actually used. This makes for some very meaningful teaching and allows your reader to be in the "Strategy Spotlight" by sharing this good work under the HoverCam! In this example, we had a look at two strategies. Our reader was having a tricky time with the word hands, but then he quickly noticed the word "and" in it. This helped him to solve it on the run. He then cross-checked to be sure it looked right, sounded right and made sense. In the second example, our reader was having a tricky time with the word barked. He first thought about what was happening in the story - a bird was about to eat Danny's worm! Danny is trying to get the bird to go away. Danny is a dog... barked! Again, he cross-checked to be sure it looked right, sounded right and made sense. In all of our strategy work, we link everything to MEANING, and I encourage you to do the same at home. Be sure they cross check that it makes sense. Have your first grader show you our movement for checking to see if it 

looks right, sounds right and makes sense.

 

We completed our word wall assessment on all 78 of our words and also completed a vowel assessment. I will share this information with you at conferences. This will help me in determining next steps for your first grader during 

whole class, small group and individual word work times.

In science this week we mixed three different solids with a liquid - water. Ask your first grader to share with you what the three solids were and what s/he discovered.

This upcoming week we will be focused on our final four word wall words. They are 

mother

because (A little trick: sing the letters to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle)

our

come

Tuesday will be the 100th Day of School!

Friday we'll have a Valentine's Day celebration in the afternoon. 

A class list was sent home this past week.

Mark Your Calendars:

February 11: Early Release/Conferences

February12: Conferences 5-8pm

February 16: NO SCHOOL/Conferences

February 25: Early Release Day

February 26: Jump Rope for Heart event

March 9: Ivy & Bean field trip to Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts

March 11: Irish Dancers perform here at Stormonth

March 28: Spring Break begins

January 26-30

What an exciting week it was! Half-Way Day and Bedtime Story Night were the highlights of our week. We had such an incredible time with all of the first grade teachers on Half-Way Day. In each room, first graders participated in an activity related to our special day. Ask your first grader to tell you all about what s/he did with each teacher. In our classroom, first graders selected half of a painting and then created the other half with colored pencils. Here we are showing off our incredible artistic abilities...

 

 

Bedtime Story Night was such fun as well. Each first grader rotated to three different rooms to hear a bedtime story or two. After all of the delightful stories, they headed into the lunchroom for muffins and milk. Thank you to everyone who provided items for this special event and to everyone who volunteered to send in items. Thanks also for such great attendance! We're proud that this Stormonth event is so well attended. 

In Reader's Workshop this week we continued our focus on getting to know our characters. We continue to discover that the more we stop to really think about our characters actions and thoughts and also think about how those actions and thoughts are similar to or different from what we might do or think, the better we understand the book. Sometimes we even discover that there is a lesson for us to learn in the book. Be on the lookout for these lessons in books that you read with your child at home. Also be sure to check in with your reader about his/her understanding of the characters in his/her books by asking, "What kind of person is _____________________?" We spent quite a bit of time with the character Peter in Peter's Chair over the past few weeks. Ask your first grader to tell you what kind of person Peter is as well as what lesson they took away from Ezra Jack Keats' story. 

In Writer's Workshop we continue to work on the finishing touches of our Book Character Series. First Graders have been very busy revising and editing their pieces and putting them in their book series boxes.We each also wrote our "Meet the Author" page for our boxes. Here are a few examples...

 

In math this week we continued our focus on place value by representing two-digit numbers as tens and ones, as well as learning strategies for adding (doubles, doubles +1, doubles -1, doubles +2 and doubles -2). Phew! It was a lot of hard work, but we were all confident and persevered even when it was difficult! 

In science this week we first discussed what we knew about the term mixture. We then observed two solids: salt and gravel. After recording our observations, we mixed our solids together and observed our mixture. We then used a mesh cloth or "sieve" to separate our mixture. Ask your first grader to tell you what we learned from our experiment. 

We hope you enjoyed reading all about our week together!

Mark your calendars:

Book orders were due this past Friday, however, I haven't placed the order yet. If you would like to order, please do so by Monday. 

February 3: Jump Rope for Heart assembly

February 11: Early Release/Conferences

February12: Conferences 5-8pm

Februrary 16: NO SCHOOL/Conferences

February 25: Early Release Day

February 26: Jump Rope for Heart event

March 9: Ivy & Bean field trip to Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts

March 11: Irish Dancers performance here at Stormonth

March 28: Spring Break begins

January 20-23

Hello First Grade Families!
Here's a sneak-peek at our short week:

In Writer's Workshop this week we were busy at work on our realistic fiction series. With our guest teacher Mrs. Lurie, we looked at our narrative writing checklists in order to assess where we are and to set goals for the future. We decided to have a look at the second grade checklist, and guess what? We discovered that we are even working on second grade skills! We really are SUPER SERIES WRITERS! 
We spent time this week working on punctuation and even had a "punctuation party." What party would be complete without a gift? Each of our super series writers received a special punctuation pencil to use while editing for punctuation! We discovered that we can read our work aloud to ourselves to listen for punctuation. This helps us to be sure that we are giving our readers the right orders about how our story should sound. The next day was even more powerful when we had our writing partner read our work to us! For some of us, we noticed right away when something didn't sound quite how we wanted it to sound. We then quickly got out our brand-new punctuation pencils and got to work! Here are a couple examples:

We also began work on our Series Book Boxes. During this upcoming week, we'll create our Meet the Author page to glue on the back.

During Reader's Workshop this week we spent some time with our latest issue of Scholastic News where we made connections to our learning in science: states of matter! It was interesting that the article was about Lake Michigan! This week we also continued work with our character study, paying close attention to our characters in order to not only learn more about what kind of people they are but also to help us understand the story better. We focused on imagining what our characters are thinking and making connections to our characters by thinking about how we are like our characters and how we are different from them. 

During Math this past week we continued our work with place value by visualizing teen addition and learning teen addition strategies. Here is one of our friends showing a new strategy she learned.

During Science this week we continued our focus on states of matter. First we had a look at what happened to the water we put in our petri dishes last week. We discovered that the water that was in the covered petri dishes remained, but the water that was in the petri dishes that were not covered disappeared! Ask your first grader what happened to the water. Our experiment this week focused on condensation. We discovered that when water vapor cools, it can change back to a liquid. We were excited to see the water cycle at work with some of us exclaiming, "It's raining in our cup!" Ask your first grader to tell you about how we set up our experiment and what we observed in each of the cups.

Because of our short week, we'll continue on with another week of our current word wall words. As a reminder:

just

away

came

after 

little

We're also continuing our focus on the long and short sounds for the vowel e. This is a tricky one for kiddos. Point out the different spelling in long e words when you come upon them. 

Mark Your Calendars:

Tuesday, January 27 First Graders will celebrate Half-Way Day! HOORAY!

Thursday, January 29 Bedtime Story Night 6:30-7:30

February 3 Jump Rope for Heart assembly: Be on the lookout for information regarding this Stormonth tradition!

February 9-13 Bus Driver Recognition Week: Thank a bus driver!

February 11: Early Release/Conferences

February 12: Lockdown drill practice in the building

Conferences in the evening

February 16: NO SCHOOL/Conferences

February 26: Jump Rope for Heart event

March 9: Ivy & Bean field trip to Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts

March 11: Irish Dancers performance here at Stormonth

March 28: Spring Break begins

Thank you for stopping by!

Michelle