Happy Holidays, Everyone!

We've been celebrating the season all week!

Our class has been celebrating peace week, just like in the book Peace Week in Mrs. Fox's Class.  We've read lots of peace-themed books, chatted about what helps make us peaceful, brainstormed ideas to make our classroom a more peaceful place, and even made our wishes for a more peaceful world into a big chain hanging outside our classroom door.

Here are just a few of our wishes for a more peace-filled world:
"I wish it could snow every day"
"I wish everyone in the world had a home"
"I wish everyday could be pajama day"


On Wednesday, Rowe School had a great community meeting led by Mrs. Troy.  As you can guess, there was LOTS of singing!  Check out a snippet of all of us singing some carols HERE.

On Thursday, the students got their holiday gifts: learning buddies.  Students carefully picked a learning buddy to help them listen, focus, and be the best learners they can be.  We all modeled the difference between using our learning buddies as toys and using our learning buddies as tools.  Students can bring their learning buddies home on vacations and holidays to write stories and read with, but know that they need to bring them back to school in January!

On Thursday, we also participated in the much anticipated first grade publishing party!  Students have been working hard for 2 weeks revising and rewriting their favorite realistic fiction stories.  Ms. Honan met with all of us in the music room to kick off the celebration. Students shared their knowledge of realistic fiction. We then mixed up classes and took turns reading our stories to students from other classes.  It was a complete success!

 On Friday, the celebration continued!  We all snuggled down in our jammies and made some holiday crafts before watching The Polar Express.  It was a terrific end to 2012.  I truly cannot wait to see what 2013 is like in room 108!

Happy Holidays to all of our family and friends!

No Snow!

The Golden Eagles have been rather busy this week.  We've been learning about that tricky silent 'e' that is showing up more and more in the books we've been reading.   We've been learning rhymes and playing lots of games to learn the difference between a sleepy 'e'  and a bossy 'e' (for all of you who might have forgotten: a sleepy e doesn't change the vowel sound up front, but a bossy e makes the vowel up front say its name).  Ask your child if they can explain the difference!

In math, we are trying to strengthen our FACT POWER!  Everyday Mathematics's definition of fact power is: "When students can recite addition fact sums as easily as reading 1-digit numbers, they will  have developed fact power for these facts".  We have started learning about turn around facts and practicing them to help with fact power.  For example, the turn around fact for 6+2=8 is 2+6=8.  Here is a student explaining it in her own words.

The holiday season brings with it the opportunity to learn about how a variety of cultures celebrate during this time of year.  We've been reading stories about Kwanzaa, Christmas, and Hanukkah and were lucky enough to have Beth Lowenstein visit and share some Hanukkah traditions like the dreidel game with us!

But, we noticed one important thing was missing...SNOW! Since mother nature has been holding back, we decided to make it snow everyday! We read The Snow Speaks and then decorated our windows for the season.

Post-Its, Screens, and Measuring Tape

In readers' workshop this week, students have started using Post-Its to mark changes in character feelings in the books they are reading.  Post-Its are everywhere!

We may have measured every single object in our classroom this week!  Students have been using standard rulers, six inch rulers, and measuring tapes to practice measuring to the inch.  We have been trying to:
-Line the object we are measuring up with with the zero on the ruler or tape measure
-Use the half inch marks to get more precise measures
-Avoid gaps or overlapping when we are measuring something bigger than the measuring instrument.
-Use abbreviations like ft. for foot and in. for inch.

In writers' workshop we have been trying to show, not tell in our realistic fiction stories.  Students are using thoughts, dialogue, and actions to show character feelings.  Next week we start publishing!


In science, we have been working with a river rock mixture.  We sorted it using a series of different sized screens and then learned and labeled each size of rock.  Check out 2 students explaining the different names and sizes HERE . We've also been writing about our experiments using correct vocabulary, just like a scientist would!

Goodbye, November!

This month flew by!  During the last couple of days of November we practiced old routines and some new ones, too.


In Readers' Workshop we have been focusing on the characters we meet in our books.  We practiced using sticky notes to mark where changes in characters' feelings happen.  Students helped me use the appropriate symbols to mark the pages of read aloud books where these changes were revealed to the reader.  Next week, students will start using sticky notes to mark character feelings in their own books.  These will be used as talking points when students meet with a partner or adult.

In science we have been working on sorting river rock mixtures using a variety of physical properties.  A few of the favorites were:
Pattern
Shape
Size
Color
Shiny/Dull
Texture

When drawing our experiments in our science journals we have been focusing on using realistic color and labels, just like a scientist would!

At the end of the week, we ushered in the new month by getting our December calendar prepared.  All important events (birthdays, Hanukkah, Christmas) were represented!

 Stay warm this weekend!

We Are Thankful!

Giving thanks and being helpful and kind were the themes of the room this week!  But, lets not forget all of the great work being done in other areas.

We have been practicing making and reading tally charts since the beginning of school.   This week, we started experimenting with line plots:

As you've probably seen on the homelink pages this week, we've added dimes to the mix!  Students practiced counting real coins, exchanged pennies and nickels for dimes, and played games like Coin Top-It to enhance their coin counting skills:

In Writers' Workshop, students have been writing realistic fiction stories.  This week, students started using this checklist to assess their own writing:

We also wrote about what we are thankful for this year.  Check out the  Learning In Action Link to hear and see more!

A BIG thank you to families for helping us not only reach our goal of 100 food items, but exceed it!  So far, we've collected 118 non-perishable food items!  As you can see, we're pretty psyched!

 Wishing you all a happy and healthy holiday!

10 Weeks of First Grade!

Week ten was filled with new learning!

In science, we've started experimenting with rocks.  We sorted a bag of rocks, observed them using magnifying glasses, and experimented with rubbing the rocks together to see what would happen.

In writers workshop, we've started learning about realistic fiction.  We've read lots of realistic fiction stories, and even came up with some stories of our own.  Check one out HERE!

In math, we're learning new ways to practice skip-counting, like using frames and arrows and calculators.

Next week, we will start our school-wide food drive to help those in need in our community.  We will be keeping track of all the food items our class collects.  We voted on a classroom goal of 100 food items.  Help us make it happen!

Snapshots of Week 9

 Here are some highlights from our slightly abbreviated 9th week of school!

We joined the rest of the school in the gym on Wednesday for a community meeting. We learned a holiday song and dance and watched Mrs. Melevsky perform some science experiments, with the help of some willing volunteers:

 

We celebrated all the great learning we've done with owls by making owl masks on Halloween:

And we geared up for our next science unit, Pebbles, Sand and Silt, by decorating our new science journal covers:

 

Here's some brainstorming we did before making our class book of antonyms:

 In writer's workshop, we celebrated all the hard work we've put into publishing our first books by having a publishing party and sharing our stories in small groups:

Week 8 Was A Big One!

This week flew by!  We packed in a lot this week but here are some highlights:

We finished Unit 2 in Everyday Math and took the unit 2 assessment! As we start unit 3, students will be learning:
-patterns: both visual patterns and number grid patterns
-more addition and subtraction techniques
-the frames and arrows routine
-how to count and exchange coins including dimes
-how to use dominoes for addition

In writer's workshop students are in full-blown publishing mode, making a story of their choice into a Big Book:

Our reader's workshop routine is a well-oiled machine!  Students are consistently meeting with an adult to read, share text-to-self connections to their books, and retell stories they've read:

Cathy Wolinsky has been visiting our classroom every Friday afternoon to help roll out a new iPad app.  This week we were introduced to Spelling Magic:

Science dominated the scene in room 108 this week!  We were all very excited for Chewonki's presentation of live owls on Thursday.  Visit the learning in action link on the right side of this page or click here to check out students practicing owl calls and teaching about the owl life cycle.  There are also some videos of Otis, Varia, and Olivia, the owls from Chewonki!  Here are some stills of the students learning about the different body parts of an owl: