September 28 - October 2

Dear Families,
Thank you ever so much! Just look at all the books we added to our classroom library! We're so excited to listen to them and get our hands/eyes/minds on them! I received many wonderful donations from many of our friends, and then purchased more titles with the $56.02 our class raised during the coin drive. OH HAPPY DAY!

On to our week...

In writer's workshop this week we talked about how we read our writing like we read our books. As we're reading our small moment stories and see/hear a mistake, we stop right away and fix it up! We each received our own personal word wall to keep in our writing folders. The first five words we learned were already highlighted, so our writers were in charge of highlighting this week's words. We'll do this with each passing week so that we know which words we are responsible for spelling correctly in our writing. We used our word wall to help us with our fix-ups (editing). We also found that we needed to do some revising if we wanted to add to our story or take something out. All of this was preparing us for our Gallery Walk on Wednesday. After creating a frame for our work, we placed our first writing piece of the year side-by-side with the piece we fixed up.

Preparing our work for our Gallery Walk.

More preparations for our Gallery Walk.

Our two writing pieces are side by side on our frames
and ready for our Gallery Walk!

Then we all walked quietly around the gallery to read each other's work. We paid close attention to how our friends have grown as writers then shared those ideas after our Gallery Walk.

Here is what some of our writers had to say about their fellow writers:

"Her first piece was only a 1-page story. Now all three pages are filled up!"

"I can read her writing now."

"The first story had scribbles on it, but now there aren't any scribbles and he wrote it just right!"

"His first story had blank pages. Now he has a 4-page story."

"I noticed more punctuation."

"He has more words on each page."

"There was only a beginning in her first story. In her new story, 

all the pages are filled up and there is a happy ending."

In reader's workshop this week we talked about dropping bad habits and picking up good habits instead. What a fun time they had with this! Ask your first grader all about it! We also looked at more ways to tackle tricky words...

Have your first grader explain how readers can use these strategies.

During our partner time, we learned that partners can be the teacher. Reading partners don't just sit there and listen to their partners read - they have an important job to do! We have to help our partners use good habits before, during, and after they read. We used these signs to help us be the teacher...

Here we are being the teacher with our partners...

This week's word wall words: are, for, on, was, where
Here we are practicing our new words with the game Roll, Read & Write...

Here are this week's Queens...

We thought of more words with the -ai pattern in them.
Ask your first grader about them. 

We  noticed that sometimes a makes an /u/ sound
like at the end of Ava!

Allison has a lot of words in her name! Ask your first grader about them.

We noticed Kendia's name has the word end in it
and the word pattern -en. We made a list of -en words.
Ask your first grader about them.

Now that our King and Queen routine is done, we'll be adding Keyboarding and Handwriting to our daily routines!

Our math work this week focused on partners of 6, 7, and 8. This is helping us to build our addition and subtraction fact fluency! Thanks to those of you who have been having your first grader get on Dreambox at home to support your child in his/her math development!

On Friday in Science we learned about what a meteorologist does. Then we tried our hand at observing the weather. Here we are outside using four of our senses to make and record our weather observations...

Next week will be another full week for us with lots more learning to come!

Until then...

Michelle

Mark Your Calendars: 

Monday, October 5th We will have a guest teacher as I will be working individually to assess kiddos on their literacy development.

Wednesday, October 7th PICTURE DAY! 

October 14 & 28: Early Release Days

October 22, 23 & 28: Parent/Teacher Conferences

Friday, October 23: NO SCHOOL for STUDENTS

September 21-25

Hello First Grade Families!
Well, let me tell you... we were really excited for our first Monday together! Everyone enjoyed their first trip to the library this year and came back with some great book selections! These book selections offer a great opportunity for you to read to your child. This way, they are hearing fluent reading. Ask your first grader to tell you what you should do before you read a book, while you're reading a book, and after you read a book.

During Writer's Workshop this week we looked to a couple mentor authors to see how they used details in their stories. We looked at The Relatives Came and The Kissing Hand. Have your first grader tell you about the details that the authors added on each of the following pages and how this made the stories more interesting.

The Relatives Came

The Kissing Hand

We also talked about how we can stay in the moment - even at the end of our stories! Oftentimes, we want to end our story by saying, "Then we went home," or "Then I went to bed." We looked at how some of our mentor authors stay in the moment by telling what was the VERY NEXT THING that happened. We looked another first grader's story about her brother's college graduation. The author, Heather, stayed in the moment - even at the end! Ask your first grader to tell you how Heather did that. What did YOUR first grader do this week to stay in the moment at the end of one of his/her stories?

We also set up writing partnerships and learned how we can story tell with a partner. Have your first grader tell you about each of the steps. You could even try this out together at home! When we're working without our partner, we learned that we need to think about what our partner would want to know and what questions they would ask us about our story. Then we try to answer those questions by adding to our writing.

A tricky thing for first graders to do is to stay in the moment at the end of their stories. Many of us want to end the story with "Then I went home," or "Then we went to bed." Instead, we need to ask ourselves "What is the very next thing that happened?"Again, this is very tricky! We'll spend quite a bit of time working on this!

In Reader's Workshop this week we were so excited to bring our Book Briefcases home for the very first time! Please remember to have your child read the book(s) in his/her briefcase. You should then sign the reading log and send it back to school the very next school day. It is very important that your child gets in the habit of spending this time reading to you daily.

Our lessons this week focused on the importance of rereading our books. Ask your first grader to tell you some reasons why rereading is so important and about how we can "scoop up" words.

We reread Ollie the Stomper and looked very closely at
the illustrations. Ask your first grader to tell you what they
noticed about this illustration. How did that help us to
understand better what happened next?

In math this week we began our first Math Expressions lessons and spent time talking about how we are a helping community. We are ALL learners and teachers who help each other understand and explain. We talked about how we thank people who make mistakes because those mistakes help us all learn how to recognize and correct mistakes. We learned, too, that it is brave to ask for help or say, "I don't understand."

We used a new tool in math this week: Stair Steps! Ask your first grade mathematician to tell you what we did with our Stair Steps and how we used them to learn about 1-more and 1-less patterns and partners of 2 through 5.

We also learned about how we can recognize numbers as a group of 5 and extra ones. 

We also used circle drawings to show our understanding of 5-groups and extra ones. Thanks so much for helping your first grader with his/her math homework this week! There will not be math homework on Fridays, but do feel free to have your child spend some time on Dreambox over the weekend. 

On Thursday we had our first round of MAP testing in the computer lab AND we visited the Book Fair! Thank you so much for adding to our coin collection every day! We raised just over $56! This is money I was able to use to purchase books for our classroom, and Scholastic matches this amount for a school in need! Thank you, Scholastic, and thank you as well to all of our Book Fair volunteers. We are so appreciative of their time and energy!

Mrs. Geinopolos joined us on Friday for another guidance lesson. We met "I Care Cat", read the book Odd Velvet, and talked about being respectful of others' differences. Ask your first grader to tell you all about it! We also saw "the most special thing" in a blue mystery box. Hmmm... what was it? Ask your first grader! And finally, we created a self-portrait to add to our Stormonth Time Capsule that most of us began in K4.

Here are this week's Kings and Queens...

We began our Weather unit on Friday! We talked about what weather is, read a couple poems about weather - a funny one by Shel Silverstein and another called Wonderful Weather. We also used our senses to record our observations of Friday afternoon's weather. We'll soon grow our vocabulary for describing the weather! As part of our lesson, we watched a BrainPop video about the four seasons and the type of weather in each.

And finally, our lockdown/reunification drill was on Friday. The kiddos did a great job while in lockdown, while making our way to our first stop, and again on our way to our reunification site.

Until next time...

Michelle Mullen

Mark Your Calendars:

MAP testing continues this week
PALS testing next week (literacy assessment)

October 7: School Picture Day

October 14 & 28: Early Release Days

October 22, 23 & 28: Parent/Teacher Conferences

September 15-18

Hello Families!

What a great way to end our week together - with our assembly honoring our police officers! Each of our friends created a card to say "Thank you for being a friend" that we passed along to the officers along with a poster that we all signed. It was a great way for our entire school community to gather together to say thank you to the men and women who do such a great job of helping to take care of us and keep us safe.

One of our read-alouds this week was Ralph Tells A Story.
Ask your first grader to tell you all about it! What did
Ralph discover about himself as a writer? How can
that help you as a writer?

In Writer's Workshop this week we continued writing our small moments stories. We thought about times when we had strong feelings; these are GREAT to write about! Revision strips or "flaps" helped us to add these strong feelings to stories we have already written. In fact, they were stories we thought were finished, but when we went back and reread them, we discovered that we could add more to them! We began with just adding our feelings and the feelings of others, but then discovered that there were other details we could add to our stories as well! We also spent a couple days on spelling strategies we can use when we come to tricky words. Ask your first grade writer to share with you some of the strategies s/he can use to help him/her spell tricky words. And finally, on Friday we focused our learning on zooming in on one small moment. We compared this to a "watermelon story" as opposed to a "seed story." Ask your first grader to tell you an example of a watermelon story and an example of a seed story.

We began our book shopping routine this week! Your child
has been assigned one day per week first thing in the
morning to choose JUST RIGHT books. Ask your reader
to tell you how s/he  knows if a book is JUST RIGHT.

In Readers' Workshop this week we continued to build our good reader habits by reading more and more. We didn't just read more and more; we also kept track of our reading by using a post-it note to tally how many times we read each book. We soon began to see that the more tally marks we had, the better we were reading the book! Practice, practice, practice! These tally marks allowed us to determine how many books we read in a day. From there we thought it would be a great idea to set a reading goal! Hmmm... yesterday I read 7 books... How many might I read today? What's my goal? So... we began setting goals for our reading time and discovered that we can spread that goal out across our day! We can read in the morning, we can read during the school day, we can read when we go to childcare or get home, AND we can read before bed! That's a lot of reading, and we all know... The more we read... (ask your reader to tell you the rest!).

 We received our first Scholastic News magazine this week and really enjoyed the lesson which included a short video clip, an online version of the magazine with opportunities for us to stop and talk about our learning, and an online activity. These magazines will come home after we have read them in class. Please revisit these with your first grader.

Our new poem this week came from Maurice Sendak's book Chicken Soup With Rice. It was the poem "September." We read it together, found words we learned in K5 and looked really closely at the word September. We clapped the syllables and found the vowels in each of those syllables. We also noticed that there is an -er at the end, and we've been noticing that -er EVERYWHERE!

Ask your first grader how they played
the new game "BUMP!"

Some of our friends have demonstrated understanding
of adding more than two single-digit numbers so they were
challenged with "LOVE BUG BUMP!" where they added
three dice together!

 In math this week we continued to work with partners to practice our math games and learn a new one. We also completed a packet with the numbers 3-9 where students had to come up with many different ways to show a number. These told me so much about your mathematicians in terms of what they know and can do, what is tricky for them, and what they're ready for next. The foundation we have laid the past few weeks will be invaluable as we begin our regular math routines next week. Students have been developing their independence in following the structure and expectations of our math workshop, and I have been learning so much about them as mathematicians in the process!

We were also introduced to our touchscreen Chromebooks! We each learned how to care for them and how to access and navigate on Dreambox.

Please be sure to check your child's Friday Folder next MONDAY as they will have their first Math Expressions math homework! They are all anxious to begin this first grade home routine!

Mrs. Geinopolos joined us for our first Guidance lesson this week. We talked about how there are no bad feelings - all feelings are OK. What's important is what we do with those feelings. She showed us our bin of Calming Tools. Ask your first grader to tell you about some of the calming items and why they might use them.

More fun with Brain Breaks this week to get our brains and bodies ready to learn!

We had another great week of Kings and Queens. Here they are...

Thanks to everyone who was able to make it for our Parent Information Night this past week! If you weren't able to make it and you have questions after reading through the packet that was sent home, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Thanks for stopping by the blog! Next week will be our first Monday together which means LIBRARY DAY - HOORAY! We're so excited!

Until then...

Michelle Mullen

IMPORTANT NOTE: Thank you to Iris' mom for already visiting Dreambox and bringing it to our attention that our iPad code has changed! Mrs. Hogue did some investigating for us and got our new code. Please make note of it: 

shxn/9wwa 

Mark Your Calendars:

MAP testing begins next week

Monday, September 21: Bring your DIMES in for our coin drive!

Tuesday, September 22: Bring your QUARTERS in for our coin drive!

Wednesday, September 23: NO SCHOOL

September 24-26: Scholastic Book Fair!

September 25: Reunification Drill

October 7: School Picture Day

October 14 & 28: Early Release Days

October 22, 23 & 28: Parent/Teacher Conferences