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!