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!