February 16-19

I can think of almost no better way to start the day than with a good friend and a book!

Hello Families!
We had a short week due to parent teacher conferences and staff development on Monday, but despite it being short, we sure accomplished a lot! And speaking of conferences, I have so enjoyed having time to speak to each of you about your first graders, sharing their successes, their challenges and their goals. I so appreciate your support at home! It truly does make a world of difference. On to our week...

During Writer's Workshop, we continue to focus on writing reviews. Specifically, we were busy adding supporting details to make our reviews more convincing, adding small moment stories as a means of persuasion, hooking our reader with interesting introductions and catchy conclusions, and working with partners to give each other writing check-ups. 

We have our very own mentor authors who share their great work with us!

We LOVE learning from our in-house mentor authors!

"Dr. Carroll" writing a prescription for her writing partner.

Prescriptions included compliments...

and prescriptions - or ways to improve our writing!

Proud "doctors" shared their prescriptions with each other!

Writing partners looking over each other's writing very carefully so that they can let them now what they're doing well and what they can work on next.

"Dr. Kaczor" providing specific feedback.

In Reader's Workshop we have been busy making our reading sounds its very best by paying attention to punctuation, characters and the story line. Partners have been practicing and critiquing their best reading by recording themselves on www.vocaroo.com. You can have your reader do this at home as well! It's a really easy tool that has been extremely motivating to our readers!

One of our Words Their Way groups focused on short e patterns with the nasal _nt. 

Our word was focused on short & long /e/ patterns. We're noticing that there are MANY long /e/ patterns. Examples are e_e, ea, y, ee, e, ei, and ie! This is a pretty tricky one, particularly in terms of spelling and knowing which pattern to use when we're writing. The more we read and experience these patterns and the more we begin to use them in our writing, the better we'll get! As I shared with you at conferences, I've set up a Spelling City account where your child can practice these vowel patterns as well as our first grade Word Wall Words. Here's the link again http://www.spellingcity.com/mrsmullenspellingcity/.

In Math Workshop this past week we were busy with solving teen addition and subtraction number stories. We persevered through a pretty tricky strategy where we used the make a ten strategy to solve teen subtraction. I'm amazed at what these first graders can accomplish together!

We observed our salt crystals very closely.

In Science, we revisited our solids (gravel, tissue, salt) and discovered that the salt really was still in the water after we stirred it in our last session! We discovered it changed a lot!

Our salt crystals changed A LOT!

Next, we experimented with sugar grains and sugar cubes. Ask your scientist to tell you all about the experiment and what we discovered.
    

We observed our sugar grains and sugar cubes very closely as well, then used a Venn Diagram to share our observations.

One partner held the cups while the other stirred for our "Dissolving Race." The same person stirred both cups, because "what one hand does, the other follows!" This helped ensure a fair race.

Next Tuesday we're looking forward to having Mrs. Geinopolos join us for a guidance lesson!

Until then...

Michelle Mullen

Reminders:

Please turn in BOX TOPS for EDUCATION to school as we're in the midst of a contest right now! We're hoping to take the lead for the first grade class with the most BOX TOPS returned!

We seem to be at a lull with BOOK BRIEFCASES. Many of our friends haven't been bringing in a signed BOOK LOG each day. These are an extremely important part of your child's development as a reader and an important habit to build as this expectation will continue in second grade and beyond. Thank you!

Mark Your Calendars!

February 18th: Conferences in PM

February 24: Early Release Day/Conferences

March 9: Early Release Day

March 14: Report cards 

March 25-April 3rd: Spring Break
 April 13: Early Release Day

April 19: Schlitz Audubon 

April 22: No School for Students

April 27: Early Release Day

May 11: Early Release Day

May 25: Early Release Day

May 30: No School

June 9: Last day of first grade

February 8-12

One of our friends brought this wonderful book to share this week. We LOVED it! 

Hello Families!
I hope this finds you all staying warm in the midst of this deep freeze! We had a busy week wrapped in love! Here it is from beginning to end...

In Writer's Workshop we finished up our opinions about our collections in small groups on Monday. 

This slide began the excitement about writing reviews!

On Tuesday we began writing reviews to persuade others. We have been thinking about restaurants, movies, games, toys, etc. that we know well and have been writing reviews about them - what fun! Each reviewer received a Tiny Topics Notebook to collect his/her ideas.

Please help your writer to think of more movies, toys, restaurants, museums, waterparks, etc. that s/he can review!

Your writers are SO engaged with this writing, and boy is it ever fun to witness! We read a couple of reviews by young writers and had a look at what they did to convince their readers. We also listened to a couple first graders share their book reviews. Next, we gave those strategies a try in our own writing. 

A first grader reads her review of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. 

Another writer reads her review about My Life as a Chicken.

We also learned about how in our reviews we should imagine that our reader is right there, and we're talking right to them! We pretended to be radio announcers while sharing our plan for our review. Here we are practicing with our friends:

 

We added to our reviews by making comparisons. For example, one of our reviewers was writing a review of Key Lime Cove and told why it was better than Blue Harbor. We shared our writing with our partners and got some suggestions right on the spot for how to make our reviews even more convincing!

We even talked about how we can talk back in a friendly way to others who disagree with our opinions:

In Reader's Workshop, we've been busy talking about ways to understand our books. Here's our anchor chart of strategies we've focused on so far: 

We're also focusing on fluent reading by using all that we know about solving tricky words to get the job done quickly! We listened closely to a first grader read a book review and a dad read a chapter from Frog and Toad to his daughter. We created a chart of what we noticed that these readers did while they were reading. Here's what we noticed: 

Now we're practicing these skills every time we read in preparation for being reading stars for an audience! We'll be recording ourselves reading one of our book reviews which we'll begin writing in the next couple weeks! Our book reviews will be posted on our blog for our grown-ups to read, and we'll also post QR codes with the link to our book reviews on the bulletin board outside our classroom for an even wider audience! We're SO EXCITED!

We completed unit 4 in math and completed our unit assessment. I have to say, I was mighty impressed by how well everyone performed on this test. They did a great job of demonstrating some pretty hefty learning from this unit! Next, we began unit 5. Our first lesson really challenged us, so we'll be taking 2 days for it. Homework for 5.1 came home on Thursday. We'll be doing part 2 of the lesson on Tuesday, and on that day a set of purple Make a Ten cards which were explained in the parent letter that also came home on Thursday will come home. Those will be your child's homework. Please KEEP THESE AT HOME TO PRACTICE WITH.

Making a 10 to find the unknown partner. 

Our word study focus this week was on short and long /o/. Next week's vowel focus will be short and long /e/ and our word wall words will be:

our

mother

come

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! XOXO

Friday afternoon we celebrated Valentine's Day by decorating Valentine bags, decorating cookies, playing Valentine math games, reading our Valentines, and watching A Charlie Brown Valentine. What a fun, relaxing time together and great way to end our week. Thanks to everyone who was able to donate to our celebration - we LOVE you!

Our class would 'knot' be the same without you!

Next week is a four-day week due to staff in-service and parent/teacher conferences on Monday. Until then...

Michelle Mullen

Mark your calendars!

February 15: No School for Students/Nicolet Partnership meetings for staff/Conferences in PM

February 18th: Conferences in PM

February 24: Early Release Day/Conferences

March 9: Early Release Day

March 14: Report cards 

March 25-April 3rd: Spring Break
 April 13: Early Release Day

April 19: Schlitz Audubon 

April 22: No School for Students

April 27: Early Release Day

May 11: Early Release Day

May 25: Early Release Day

May 30: No School

June 9: Last day of first grade

February 1-5

Hello Families!
This blog post is for the past couple weeks - so sorry for the delay! I've been a bit busy on the weekends with our Panamanian exchange student - what a joy he is!  On to our learning...

We began writing about our collections then, this past week, we finished up our pieces. The kiddos had a great time judging and writing not only about their own collections but about their friends' as well. As we always do at the end of a particular focus of study, we had a close look at our opinion writing checklist, celebrated what we are doing well, and set goals for areas of focus. Expect to see your child's opinion piece at our upcoming conference!

A helpful judge judged my Beanie Boo collection to find the Best in Show!

 

It's hard work deciding on the best one!

So many beautiful shells, but which one is the best and why?

 

The winner!

Judging each other's collections. Sometimes we agreed; sometimes we disagreed.

Finally, we judged our own writing! Which was the best and why?

Sharing our opinion pieces about our collections with others.

 

Friends even asked for more information about collections. What a great help this is to our writers when they go back to edit and revise!

Our word work focus this week was on the short and long vowel sounds for i. Our week culminated with a poem called Winter Inside. We then wrote our own pieces about what winter is inside. You'll see our finished projects outside our classroom when you come for conferences. They're beautiful!

Here's one of our friends busy at work on her "Winter Inside..." project.

In Math Workshop we have been busy practicing 2-digit addition with decade numbers and mixed addition with tens and ones.

In Science this week we used last week's experiments to separate solids from liquids. In our observations, we discovered that the salt changed the most. We filtered our solids, but we didn't see that any salt was left behind in the filter - only the gravel and tissue stayed behind. Next, we poured our salt wanter into a petri dish. Hmmm... I wonder what will happen when the water in the uncovered petri dish evaporates... Ask your first grader to tell you what s/he thinks will happen.

We used a sieve and funnel to separate our solids and liquids.

We observed very closely!

Our solids - gravel, tissue and salt - in the liquid - water. 

Tuesday was pajama day and Bedtime Story Hour - what an amazing time we had! We were so thrilled to see so many of our students here at Stormonth for such a special event!

Next week's word wall words:
because
man
I'm 
going

Our vowel focus will be on long and short /o/.

We're looking forward to our Valentine's Day celebration on Friday. Thanks to everyone who was able to sign up to bring donations!
Until then...
Michelle

Mark Your Calendars!

February 10: Early Release Day 

February 11: Conferences in PM

February 12: Valentine's Day Celebration

February 15: No School for Students/Nicolet Partnership meetings for staff/Conferences in PM

February 18th: Conferences in PM

February 24: Early Release Day/Conferences

March 9: Early Release Day

March 14: Report cards 

March 25-April 3rd: Spring Break
 April 13: Early Release Day

April 19: Schlitz Audubon 

April 22: No School for Students

April 27: Early Release Day

May 11: Early Release Day

May 25: Early Release Day

May 30: No School

June 9: Last day of first grade