November 2 - 6

We are still recovering from all the excitement of Dress Like a Book Character Day last week! On Friday we did a lesson using the Patterns of Thinking in which we made distinctions between the characters of Miss Nelson and Miss Swamp, and then studied the relationship between them and how that relationship ("dressed up as" or "pretending to be") was the same between me and Miss Swamp that day! Students were making good connections across the three books about these characters that we read last week. We are in the process of creating a Voicethread that will showcase their ideas:



YOU can add comments! Click on the picture above and you'll see a pop-up asking you to log-in or register. Registering is free and just requires an email address and password. Please try it out and show our students that there is a real audience reading/listening to their work.

This week we have been giving students individualized reading goals to guide them on which strategies they should be practicing during independent reading time each day. A copy of those will be coming home soon! With the whole class we have been talking a lot about using our schema to understand a story better. In other words, making connections between the text and our personal experiences to activate prior knowledge and relevant vocabulary. We're also using poetry to develop fluency (reading smoothly, like we talk):

In math we have been studying ways to make 10 with addition and subtraction, making and continuing patterns, and counting by 2s and 5s. Next week we will continue to work with the "tens facts" (0+10, 1+9, 2+8, 3+7, 4+6, 5+5) and begin to talk about reasonable magnitude (for example, which of these could be your age: 8 or 800). We also made a variety of graphs when we voted on names for our classroom fish! With Election Day this week I wanted to demonstrate the democratic process with something meaningful to the students. After many nominations and a close run-off, the results are in: Cinderella, Hannah Montana, and Michael (as in Jackson). They will live in our classroom library where they will enjoy hearing students read them stories.

In writing we have been building on lessons from our school counselor about problem solving, responsibility, and ways to be a kind friend at school. Before writing/drawing dialogs between characters demonstrating these concepts, we used the Patterns of Thinking method to break down the various places within school (playground, classroom, library...) and then the parts of those places (benches, swings, monkey bars...). This activity led to much more detailed illustrations and a wider variety of examples than I've seen in earlier discussions.

Enjoy these pictures from the classroom this week. Look for our new fish friends, someone's FIRST lost tooth, and TWINS (same shirt).

October 26-30

This week we had two birthday girls, wear red day to show support for making healthy and safe choices, and dress like a book character day!

We started many new reading and math centers. Students began by drawing and writing about the beginning, middle and end of stories we listened to together. This will help them to retell stories with more details. We read three books about Miss Nelson and Miss Viola Swamp, and students enjoyed trying figure out the mystery of just who Miss Swamp really was.

In reading we are also starting to record our reading goals and keeping those with us during independent reading and center times to help remind students what they should be focusing on. I'll be sending a copy of those goals home every few weeks so you can help your child practice those at home, too.

We have started studying addition facts to 10 and making puzzles with number equations. We are also continuing to develop our spatial reasoning and problem solving skills with shape puzzles and pattern block designs.

Thanks to the parent volunteer who came in this week and helped out in the computer lab where we've been making art designs and just started saving our pictures. Next week we'll begin doing more typing and using an online program called Voicethread to record student comments and read alouds. I'm really excited to get that up and running.

October 5 - 7

We got to see children's book author and illustrator Mo Willems talk about how he makes books and read his newest book online this past Tuesday! We have read several of his books in class and students love looking for the pigeon in each one. Special thanks to the teachers at our school who arranged for us to be one of only 200 elementary school sites in the country to get to participate in this exciting event.

During this short week we continued to practice our reading strategy of re-reading a sentence when we don't know a word. We also did a variety of activities with the words on our word rings.

In writing we published our first mini-books which will be in the class library for a few weeks before they come home. Students have really enjoyed reading each other's books and have been learning the importance of making their writing neat enough for someone else to read!

In math we continued to come up with creative ways to make a number using addition, subtraction and pictures. We also practiced counting by 5s to 100 and putting numbers in order through many of the online math games linked on this page.

We went to the Strategies Lab again and learned a new game: Shape By Shape. We will continue to play Sudoku Jr (4x4) after intersession as many students were still unsure of how to play (they were only using the colors to determine where the missing numbers could go instead of checking each column and row). Through these games students have been building stamina for problem solving and learning how to articulate their thought processes.

Thanks to everyone who has been coming in to school for their conferences this Thursday and Friday. Please remember there is no school on Monday (October 12) and then intersession runs October 13 - 23. Students do not need to bring a backpack to school during intersession. I sent home students' reading books and word rings for them to work on at home and then return to school on October 26.

Finally, we welcomed a new student to our class on Wednesday! He did a great job learning our schedule and everyone was a kind friend and good helper to him. We look forward to learning more about him after intersession.

September 28 - October 2

This week we opened up two new centers during reading and math time: computer and Smartboard. At both centers the students have been able to choose from the reading or math links on this website and take turns playing the games. This has provided a lot of practice in not only the reading and math activities, but also in using technology and taking turns. We also went to the computer lab this week where we practiced logging in and started experimenting with Pixie (an art program we will use to create an image for later use on Voicethread).

In reading we practiced the strategy of rereading a sentence when you don't know a word. Students called this "starting over" and we talked about how you may have to read a sentence 3 or 4 times before you can figure it out.

We introduced 5 new sight words we will continue to study next week: we, can, like, is, you. We learned how to do a new word study center that involves using sight words to make mini books, rhyming with sight words, looking for sight words in our books, making sight words with alphabet stamps, making and solving puzzles with sight words, and writing the sight words in many colors. I see some families have kept the copy of the 100 first grade sight words in their child's agenda book or homework folder for extra practice. Let me know if you need another copy of that!

In math this week we practiced making a number in many different ways (addition, subtraction, drawing a picture, tally marks, writing the word...). Students caught on quickly to the patterns and enjoyed thinking creatively to come up with as many different combinations as possible. We also worked on the logic games from the Strategies Lab and discussed more strategies we are using: make a guess then check if it is right, check in more than 1 way, rule out what it can't be, and look for a pattern.

Important Dates:

• Progress Reports will go home on Tuesday, October 6
• Conferences will be next Thursday, October 8
• No School on Thursday, October 8 or Friday, October 9
• Intersession is October 12 - 23

* CONFERENCES *

I sent home a confirmation sheet on Friday with your conference time. Please sign and return the bottom half of that page ASAP. Conferences will take place in our classroom and typically students do not attend but it is OK if you need to bring your child with you. We have a tight schedule so please arrive on time. I look forward to meeting with you to discuss your child's progress during the first quarter of the school year! As always, feel free to contact me with questions or updates about your child anytime via email, phone call, or note.

September 21 - 25

What a busy week! We started out with Field Day on Monday which had first graders rotating through 7 different activities outside and in the gym. Many of these are games you could adapt to play with your family or at a birthday party. Discussing the rules of games is a good chance to talk about how to be a good sport, how to take turns, and how to recall a sequence of steps (first, next, then, last...). Ask your child to explain how to play each of these games:

1. Hungry Hippo (beanbags in the gym)
2. Parachute Play (in the gym)
3. Car and Driver (one person with eyes closed being led by a buddy)
4. Hoop Pass (stand in circle holding hands and move hula hoop around everyone)
5. Ecology Circle (run so fast that newspaper sticks to front of shirt)
6. Pizza Delivery (make circle around someone who is collecting pizza boxes)
7. Ecology Pick Up (relay race collecting "trash" with a buddy)

We studied the following word wall words: the, I, see, me, go and practiced the following reading strategy for what to do when we don't know a word: Think about what makes sense (in the sentence and in the pictures), then check your guess with the letters you see.

In math we played several games that involve number ordering, number sequences and place value. Next week we will work on the concepts of 1/2 and 1/4 with pictures.

This week we also had a visit from one of the school counselors who gave an important lesson about bullies. We learned that bullies do mean things over and over again and they make the other person feel bad. We learned to tell the person to STOP and to get help from a grown-up.

We had our first visit to the Strategies Lab where we learned how to play 3 problem solving games (Clever Castle, Soduko Jr., and Bricky by Brick). I hope students will transfer the problem solving strategies they practice in the games to other situations in reading, math, writing, and playing with friends. We will be making a longer list next week, but so far the students have come up with the following strategies that helped them play the games successfully:

• Don't give up
• Don't worry about what level other people are on

We ended this week with Pajama Day! Thanks to all the families who participated. Students really enjoyed the chance to get dressed up and make it a special day.

September 14 - 18

This week we have been working on using quiet voices during reading and math centers so that I can work with small groups. The class came up with many ideas to help them remember to stay quiet, including playing soft music (if you can't hear the music, you're too loud), having a picture of me going "Shhh" that I can show them, and having to leave the center for a few minutes if it takes more than 1 reminder.

At the reading centers students have been making words with magnetic letters, listening to books on tape, reading a variety of books in the class library, reading and illustrating a color poem, and playing alphabet games.

In the math centers students have been counting to 100 by 2s, 5s, or 10s on a laminated 100 board with a dry erase marker, playing a card game where they look for numbers that add up to 5, making and writing numbers 0 - 10 with paint, and regrouping 1s into 10s and 10s into 100 with base ten blocks.

In writing we have been building our stamina to write and illustrate stories for up to 30 minutes. It has been really interesting to learn about the students' lives through their stories. We also made a class book using "ing" as in "What are you doing?" "I am coloring." Learning to identify chunks of letters that make a sound like that will help the students to become more independent readers.

September 7 - 11

This week we have used the Smartboard to play many interactive games online. These are all linked on the right side of this blog but for easy reference we played these games this week:

1. Spelling Match Game (we did long vowel sounds)
2. Picture Match Game (we did unit 3, higher unit = harder concepts)
3. Piggy Bank (this was too hard for most of the students)
4. Concentration (we did numbers 1-20 with shutters down)
5. Storyline Online (picture books read aloud by members of the Screen Actors' Guild. Turn the captions on!)

In reading we worked on taking a "picture walk" with new books, which involves looking through the illustrations to get an idea of the story and relevant vocabulary before reading the words. We also worked on how to be successful working independently in reading centers while I am working with small groups on guided reading lessons.

In math we learned a card game where students look for a number's "next door neighbor" (a number one more or one less). We also practiced writing and reading number words, and counting up from a number other than one.

In writing we worked on giving a title to a story, on adding words to our illustrations, and on using the alphabet actions chart we made to help us find the right letters for the sounds we hear. You can use the copy of that your child brought home to help with reading and writing activities at home.

Thanks for your support in using the school's agenda books each day. Most of the time your child's homework will simply be "read with family" (at least 20 minutes) and "be in bed by 8:00." Starting next week your child will bring home books from school to read and return the next day, and I will continue to send home a math or sight word activity once or twice a week.