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!