May 4-8

Hello Families!
Happy Mother's Day! I hope this finds all of our moms enjoying a relaxing day with your families. We sure do appreciate you!

We've had some lovely summer-like days, and I can tell that the kiddos are getting ready for those long, lazy days of summer. We're doing our best to keep focused on both the Stormonth Way and our work habits, so a little extra encouragement and reminders would be very much appreciated.Summer also brings to mind BOOKS! It will be extremely important that your child continues to read daily over the summer. Without this reading practice, children tend to drop back two to three levels in their reading. I'll be sending home Scholastic book orders this Friday. Remember that these aren't the only catalogs you can order from. When you access our online account, you can order from any catalog that Scholastic has out. Stock up now!

Here's a sneak-peek at our week:
During Writer's Workshop this week, we worked on our All About First Grade books. Each student selected one of his/her chapters to include in our class book that we will share with our kindergarten friends when they come to visit on June 8th. We also spent a good amount of time looking at our first and second grade checklists, decided what we were doing well with informational writing, then decided what we needed to work on next. We've been goal setting together so we know where to focus during the last bend of this current unit.

In Reader's Workshop we were very busy with our poster projects. We talked about how illustrations have teaching power and how we can use comparisons to help our readers picture the details about our topics. Finally on Friday we shared our poster projects with our peers. After each presentation, classmates told something they learned about the topic and told the presenter something they liked about their poster.

We also selected our topics for our final bit of research in this unit. Your researcher brought home a note on Friday asking for help with finding 2-3 photos of their topic online. Please be sure to send these in tomorrow (May 11th) so that they can use them for their new chapter books that they'll be writing this week. Thank you!

In math we continue our geometry study. This week we learned about equal shares, and composing 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes. After composing these shapes, we used the composite shapes to compose new shapes. 

During science this week, we explored what happens when soils get wet. We moistened samples of sand, clay and humus and tried to roll each sample into a ball. We discovered that every soil component has a unique feel whether wet or dry and that the way it reacts when moist can help them identify it. On Monday our investigation will continue when we see what has happened to the balls of wet clay, humus or sand that we left out to dry. These simple tests are laying the groundwork for students' comparisons of sand, clay and humus throughout the unit. We also performed what scientists call the "streak" test. If moist soil leaves a smear on paper, it contains clay or humus. We found that sand didn't leave a smear, only the wet particles which fell off when it dried. We also found that a sticky orangish or brownish smear indicates the presence of clay, while a blackish, more watery smear is associated with humus. 

Our grade level was lucky enough to receive 25 Chromebooks! Next week we'll learn how to handle them properly and discover what we can do on them! Please be sure your first grader has headphones at school. We have had quite a few of them break over the past couple weeks. This will be VERY important beginning TUESDAY as we start MAP testing that day. MAP testing continues on Friday. 

Thanks for stopping by the blog!

Mark your calendars:

May 12 & May 15: MAP testing. Please let me know if your child will be out on either of these days. Please check with your first grader that s/he has headphones that are working!

May 13: Early Release

May 20: Pedestrian Safety 2-2:30 - Thank you to Katerina Brickman and Jaime Wooten for volunteering!

May 21: You're Invited to a Mini Music Concert in the 

music room 12:30 pm!

May 22: BOOK ORDERS DUE

May 25: Memorial Day holiday

May 27: Early Release

May 28: Schlitz Audubon field trip

June 4: Lion King musical production 

June 5: Travel to BMS in the morning to see their musical production. Special Interest Day in the afternoon.

June 8: Kindergarten students will visit our first grade classrooms!

June 10: First grade's "Show & Share" family picnic 11-12:10pm

June 12: Last day of first grade

April 27-May 1

Hello Families!
It's hard to believe that this post brings us to May! Our time together in first grade is quickly coming to an end, however, there is still so much to learn and experience together. We're so grateful for all of your continuing support reading with them and listening to them read, your time spent assisting with math homework, and the list goes on! Your assistance really shone through over the past couple weeks as I was assessing each child individually on their reading skills. This is why I love first grade SO much - the growth during this year is absolutely incredible! Thank you, thank you, thank you! 

Here's a sneak peek at our week:
Writer's Workshop this week is something I need to keep under wraps until after next Sunday (hint, hint...). Let's just say I think you're going to be very pleased to see how your first grade writer applied what s/he knows about teaching books to a special writing piece for someone extra special!

In reader's workshop this week, we have been busy compiling all of the information we collected across genres about our self-selected topics. We're all in different places in creating our poster projects to showcase our learning over the past few weeks. It has been so exciting to see how passionate the kiddos have been about their topics. If you were to walk in here first thing in the morning you would see first graders huddled around computers and iPads, showing each other all that they have been learning about their topics on World Book Kids. You can access this from home when you visit Stormonth's website. Your first grader will be able to find it from there. 

 Here they are planning their posters with a partner. First they filled out a planning sheet, indicating all that they planned to include on their poster. Then they shared their plan with a partner, showing their partner very specifically where everything would go on their poster. Their partner then provided them with written feedback and initialed the plan. 

In math this week, we began to look at geometric properties of shapes. So far our focus has been on squares, rectangles, circles and triangles. We're learning that sides and corners (angles) are properties of rectangles (which includes squares!), however, orientation, size and color are not defining properties. 

In science this week we explored three parts of soil: humus, clay and sand. We observed and recorded the properties of each using four of our five senses. Next, we made predictions about what would happen if we planted cucumber seeds in each of these materials. Table groups then planted their seeds and recorded this in their observation journals. We'll observe and record our results over the next several weeks. We also had a chance to see if there were any changes in our compost bags. Our worms are settling in nicely, however, nobody noticed any obvious changes just yet...

Two of our friends putting some water in their compost bag. 

We are in need of one more volunteer for our Pedestrian Safety presentation on Wednesday, May 20th from 2-2:30pm. Please let me know if you're able to join us. Thank you!

Thank you for stopping by the blog!

See you all here again next weekend,

Michelle Mullen

Mark Your Calendars: 

May 12 & May 15: MAP testing. Please let me know if your child will be out on either of these days.

May 13: Early Release

May 20: Pedestrian Safety 2-2:30 - One more volunteer needed!

May 21: You're Invited to a Mini Music Concert in the 

music room 12:30 pm!

May 25: Memorial Day holiday

May 27: Early Release

May 28: Schlitz Audubon field trip

June 4: Lion King musical production 

June 5: Travel to BMS in the morning to see their musical production. Special Interest Day in the afternoon.

June 8: Kindergarten students will visit our first grade classrooms!

June 10: Tentative date for first grade's "Show & Share" family picnic

June 12: Last day of first grade

April 20-24

Hello Families!

Here's a sneak peek at the past week in first grade: 

We spent Tuesday morning busy with some Earth Day learning! In reader's workshop we explored our latest Scholastic News issue "Bag or Jellyfish?" and learned about how our choices affect the environment. Ask your first grader to tell you what happens in these scenarios: 

1. Throw the plastic bag on the ground.

2. Throw the plastic bag in the trash.

3. Recycle the plastic bag.

An even better option would be not to take the plastic bag at all and instead use a reusable bag when you go shopping!

Speaking of which, I hope many of you have been busy during the week checking your child's "Love the Earth Report Card." Please be sure to return this on Monday, April 27th.

On Wednesday, Earth Day, all of the first graders made a difference right here at Stormonth by cleaning up the grounds in the front of our building. Well done! 

Here we are in our Earth Day crowns with the trash we collected outside. We decided that since our trash bag wasn't full, we would just dump the trash into our classroom trash bag and save this larger bag for another time. 

After all, we now know what can happen to these trash bags!

Our time spent with the Scholastic News issue lead right into writer's workshop that day. We created a fun Earth Day project  where we wrote about how we can take care of the Earth. Hopefully the kiddos were inspired to make the world a better place every day by being conscious of what they're doing. 

For the rest of the week in reader's workshop we continued to focus on reading across genres to learn about our topics. In writer's workshop we continued to work on our nonfiction teaching books.

In math we have begun our geometry unit. We have started with telling time to the hour. Ask your first grader how s/he remembers which hand is the hour hand and which is the minute hand. We also created a class book called Time in Our Day where we each selected a time to the hour, wrote it in digital form, then drew a picture and wrote about what we do at that time. It would be very helpful for your first grader to begin focusing on clocks/time outside of school. During the upcoming week we'll begin telling time to the half hour. 

Critter Crunch was a big hit this week! Thank you for supporting the 4th grade's project to raise funds for the Wisconsin Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. 

In science this week we created compost bags with soil, the organic matter we brought from home and some special guests: red worms all the way from California! We'll be observing our bags over the next several weeks. For now, they're tucked away in a dark cupboard so that the worms can get busy!

 One of our bags doesn't have any worms in it. That way we can see what effects the worms have on the organic matter and soil.

It was a fun-filled week!

Thanks for stopping by the blog.

Michelle Mullen 

Mark your calendars: 

April 29: Early Release

May 13: Early Release

May 25: Memorial Day holiday

May 27: Early Release

May 28: Schlitz Audubon field trip

June 4: Lion King musical production 

June 5: Travel to BMS in the morning to see their musical production

June 10: Tentative date for first grade's "Show & Share" family picnic

June 12: Last day of first grade

April 6-10

Welcome back! Everyone returned to school with lots to share about their time away with friends and family. It was especially fun to hear about all of the traveling that our friends did! As for me, I was glad to have time to read two wonderful books and get one of our bathrooms painted.
 Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected by Kelle Hampton is one of the books I read, and it comes highly recommended!

Here's a sneak peek at our week together:

Prior to beginning our new writing unit, we wrote a letter to our grownups telling them about our opinion writing unit. We wrote about what we learned, what our favorite piece was and why and about our writing goals as we move into our next unit. 

On Tuesday our writers were asked to think about something that they could teach someone and write about it. This was a pre-assessment for our new unit. These pieces are helping to guide my individual conferences with your children as they let me know what they already know about informational writing and what they need to learn and strengthen. Many of the kiddos already know a great deal and even put chapters in their first pieces - wow! 

We officially began our new unit on Wednesday and are off and running! Ideas for this unit can sometimes be difficult to come up with, so on Friday your child came home with an idea sheet that I would like you to help him/her with. Please return these on Monday, April 13th. After our first day of writing our teaching books, we had a look at  a kindergarten writing checklist for informational writing. We then looked at our work with a partner and showed our partner all of the things we already know about informational writing by comparing it to the kindergarten checklist. 

On Friday, one of our friends shared her teaching book with us, and we talked about all of the things she did to make this a very informative teaching book.

We also began our new Reader's Workshop unit this week: Reading Across Genres to Learn About a Topic. Each of our readers has decided on a topic that fascinates them and shopped for books across several different genres. We thought about what we already know about our topic and then made a list of things we wonder about our topic. We discovered that we can even find facts about our topic in fictional texts if we're being really good detectives! We've begun collecting these facts and sharing them with our partners. We've also begun collecting new vocabulary as we're "growing our vocabulary!"

In math this week we continued our look at data analysis, focusing on comparison bars. We learned a great trick this week: when we read comparison problems, it's a REALLY good idea to circle the word "fewer" or more as well as the number next to it if there is one. This number then goes in the circle next to the smaller comparison bar. If there isn't a number next to fewer or more, then we know a question mark goes in the circle and that's our unknown. Next week we'll finish up our data analysis unit, take our unit assessment then move onto our new unit: Geometry, Measurement & Equal Shares. 

After a review of our science unit on matter, we explored matter in a delicious way - ROOT BEER FLOATS! YUMMMM! 

Mark your calendars: 

April 15: Early Release (& Tax Day!)

April 20: NO SCHOOL. Professional Development Day for Staff

April 22: Earth Day

April 29: Early Release

May 13: Early Release

May 25: Memorial Day holiday

May 27: Early Release

May 28: Schlitz Audubon field trip

June 4: Lion King musical production 

June 10: Tentative date for first grade's "Show & Share" family picnic

June 12: Last day of first grade