Goodbye First Graders! Happy Summer!

Our last week of first grade was AMAZING!
We performed our plays!



We finished James and the Giant Peach and watched the movie version on the book...

We read all the chapter books we'd been dying to get our hands on all spring...

We celebrated Mr. Urban and thanked him for all of his help this year...

We got a visit from our groundhog friend (who we found out has 3 babies!!!)...

We 'cleaned' the tables with shaving cream...

We ended the last day with the students making wishes for their second grade school year on their new wish bracelets.  May ALL your wishes come true, second graders!  Thank you for spending the year with me! Happy summer!

We had a fabulous beach day on Tuesday! Thank you to all the family members who helped us have such a fun day! Check out the photos in our slide show...



On Thursday, some high school students visited our classroom and read us some great stories. Thank you, high schoolers!

 A friendly reminder: Our class plays will be next Wednesday at 9:45 and again at 1:00!  See you there!

Though this last week of May was a time for wrapping up many loose ends, the big highlight of the week was the mask making process for our plays. Here is a sneak peek at some of the hard work the Golden Eagles are putting in to make these productions magical...

 Join us on June 12 to see four AMAZING plays 

starring the Golden Eagles!

(9:45am and again at 1:00pm)

Tuesday, June 4 is beach day!  The Golden Eagles need to be wearing RED shirts for this field trip.  If you are joining us as a chaperone, you will need to attend the safety meeting with Ellen in the gym at 8:15.  Remember to pack your child a lunch, snack, drinks, and sunscreen for the big day!

What has 10 eyes, a pointy tail, and is a cousin to spiders?!

HORSESHOE CRABS!

As part of our ocean unit, Mrs. Steingart and Mrs. Lyon came to visit us and brought all of their horseshoe crab knowledge with them!  They also brought along some special friends. Check out the slide show to see our up-close encounter with some pretty awesome creatures!

Portfolio Celebration Confirmations

Please check your child's folder this afternoon for a slip of paper confirming the time and date of your child's portfolio celebration!

Oceans of Information!

Our last scientific unit of study for the school year is OCEANS!  We jumped into our new unit by creating a chart of everything we already know about oceans. 

We've also started a new writing unit:  Informational Writing.  The Golden Eagles are experts on lots of topics, and are very excited about sharing their knowledge with others!  Not only are they learning to write facts and create teaching pictures, they are also learning how to organize the information with a table of contents to make their books easy to read and understand.

The annual ice cream social is right around the corner and all the classrooms at Rowe School have started collecting items for the big basket raffle!  Our classroom's basket theme is Hike and Bike.  If you'd like to donate an item to help fill our basket, you can send it in with your child or drop it off at the office.  Thank you for your donations!

*Important Dates*

We have SO much to celebrate as the year winds down!  Here are a few special events to put in your calendars for June:

Our student led portfolio celebrations will take place after school on June 6th and June 10th.  You should have received a sign up sheet for date and time in your child's folder this week.  At your scheduled time, you and your child will meet with me to go over the continua.  Your child will then share with you his or her first grade portfolio packed full of amazing first grade learning.  A date/time confirmation will be sent home with your child next week.

On JUNE 12th, the Golden Eagles will perform 4 plays for you!  Students will spend the next couple of weeks reading and practicing scripts, making their masks and constructing all the props for the performances.  We will have 2 showings on June 12th: 9:45a.m. and 1:00 p.m.  We look forward to seeing you in the crowd!

Please not that students will be practicing lines here in the classroom.  They do NOT need to memorize lines or buy costumes.  Your job is to simply show up and enjoy!

Poetry Celebration

Here is the final celebration of our poetry writing unit.  Check out the video below to see and hear a poem by each student in our classroom.  They all worked very hard writing, revising, and illustrating their poems.  Fabulous work, Golden Eagles!


Happy weekend and happy Mother's Day!

Hello, May!

What a week!  We've got lots to share with you!

This was the last week of our poetry unit.  Students chose one of their poems to publish and share.  Check them out in the hallways here at school, or here on the blog next week.

We also rehearsed and created movements for a poem that we acted out for the entire first grade!

In readers' workshop, our kindergarten buddies came in to read with us.  It's always one of the highlights of the week!

In math, we've been solving tricky number grid puzzles, comparing measurements, and becoming symmetry pros!

On Thursday Rowe School celebrated ACES Day (All Children Exercising Simultaneously).  Mr. Lipman, Mrs. Gooch, and Mrs. Saxe led our community meeting.  We learned more about the 5-2-1-0 initiative and had fun exercising as a whole school community.  But, the highlight of the meeting was a whole school Harlem Shake!  Afterwards, our class just couldn't get the music out of our heads.  So...we created our own Harlem Shake video!  It was a blast, and we laughed long and hard over the final result.  I hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it!

Welcome Back!

As students trickled back into the classroom from vacations this week and shared stories of adventures from April Break, we realized we had lots of material for poems!  On Monday, Ms. Honan and the first grade teachers shared many different kinds of poems, and invited students to try their hands at some of the styles.  Here are just a few of the styles we talked about:

Nonfiction
Shape poems
Alliteration
Comparisons

We've also used the beautiful weather we've been having as inspiration for poetry.  We created an observation window in our classroom where students can look out and then jot down a poetic line about what they see on a paper leaf.  The leaves then get hung on our poetree!

In readers' workshop, students have been working hard on comprehension and are starting to sound like second graders when talking about the books they are reading!  We've been focusing on rereading pages, sections, and even whole books to better understand the story or topic.  Students have also been acting as directors, and have been creating movies in their minds to visualize a character's facial expressions, actions, and thoughts.  This work helps them with retelling, answering comprehension questions, and inferring- all work that will continue in second grade.

In science, we've been mixing our scientific knowledge with creativity to create sand sculptures and clay beads! 

 

In math, we've started a new unit.  Unit 9 will focus on:
-Patterns on the number grid
-Adding and subtracting tens
-Adding and subtracting other 2-digit numbers
-Fractional parts of the whole
-Comparing fractions

Have a sunny, fun weekend, everyone!

April is Poetry Month!

First grade has the most magical poets!  We kicked off our poetry unit with Ms. Honan in the library.  Armed with clipboards, we all had time to brainstorm some poetic words about spring and together  wrote a collaborative poem.  Here are some shots from our special meeting:

As you all head into April Vacation, I will leave you with some of the voices in room 108 reading their original poems.  

Hello, April!

We celebrated the arrival of April by taking science outside! Students journeyed around the school grounds to find objects made of the earth materials we've been studying. Students found structures and objects made of clay, silt, sand, gravel, pebbles, and even boulders on their walk. They took field notes as they observed and used that information to create a class chart to show where we saw the different earth materials being used.

In math, we've been practicing buying and giving change. Students overpaid when buying school supplies. Their partners then had to give them back the correct change. We've been practicing the 'counting up' method to make change (if someone bought a 72 cent pencil and paid with 3 quarters, the partner would count up from 72 to 75 to make the correct change). This is a skill that benefits from lots of opportunities to practice, and is easy to turn into fun math games at home!

In Readers' Workshop, we've been focusing on strategies that help us figure out tricky words, now that we are reading more difficult texts where the pictures don't always give us clues.  Check out this VIDEO to learn more!


Have a great weekend, everyone!

Time For Time

Telling time is so tricky!  Earlier in the year, students mastered the art of telling time on an analog clock to the nearest hour and half hour.  But, now that we've thrown telling time to the minute into the mix, you might have noticed that your child seems less sure about his/her time-telling abilities.  Though we continue to practice telling time here in the classroom with a variety of activities and games, I thought I would share this LINK with fun clock games your child can do at home to reinforce skills they are learning here in the classroom.  

Having fun exploring the site with your child!

Shapes, Storytellers, Snow, Silt, and Spring!

S was the letter of the week! 

Snow kept us out of the classroom on Tuesday, but we didn't miss a beat when we gathered again on Wednesday!

We continued to study shapes this week, and have started a 3D shape museum in our classroom!

Students learned about symmetry and even made their own creative and unique symmetrical shapes.

In science, we've left balance and motion behind and have returned to our study of pebbles, sand, and silt.  This week, students experimented with unwashed sand and water in their vials.  This experiment stretched over 3 days as students observed the changes in their vials each day.  On day 2, students noticed a new layer in their vials: SILT! 

Even with fresh snow on the ground, we ushered in spring by creating a mural.  Check it out in the hallway!

A big highlight of the week was getting to meet and talk with Matt Tavares, a great children's author and illustrator from Maine.  Students have been reading his books in library over the past month and were very excited to meet the man behind great stories like Becoming Babe Ruth and Helen's Big World.  Check out Matt's website HERE.

During his presentation, Matt shared his editing process with us.  When he asked the crowd "What is publishing?', the answer he got was: "Publishing is laminating your book cover and stapling it all together!" Perspective is everything!

He also showed us the process he goes through when creating an illustration.  He even did an impromptu sketch of one of the students!  We were all thoroughly impressed and inspired!

Back in the classroom there was a collective cheer during writers' workshop when it was announced that students could choose any genre to write in for the next couple of weeks!  Some went back to realistic fiction, how-to's, and persuasive writing, but most couldn't wait to get the paper of their choice and start writing fantastic fiction stories complete with super heroes, aliens, and talking animals!  These authors are overflowing with creative story ideas!