Thursday, February 17, 2011
Saturday, February 12, 2011
The 100th Day!
Boy were we busy on Friday celebrating the 100th day of school! We began the special day by wearing fun glasses and coloring in a flag to show that we are now 100 days smarter. The students also brought in projects having to do with the number of the day and got a chance to show their work to Ms. Kate's students and also take a trip to her classroom to see the many wonderful projects in there as well. After viewing the projects we met in our classroom and made a 100th day gorp with the collection of snacks that the students brought in. As we mixed all the goodies we counted by 100's until all the goldfish, M&Ms, marshmellows and other treats were in the bowl. If I am remembering correctly, I believe we made it up to 2,900 pieces of gorp...wow! After snack, our class and Ms. Kate's class mixed to complete special 100th day activities, such as making a design with 100 pattern blocks, making different groups of numbers that equal 100, measuring 100 unifix cubes, and the tasty station...creating a fruit loop necklace. There was also a challenge to write down as many words as you know and see if you could reach 100 and it was really neat to see the students dive right into it. Above is a video of our exciting morning, stay tuned for some more videos very soon, enjoy!
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
2011 Begins!
It's a bit belated, but Happy New Year! I hope that everyone had a wonderful break and a fun time ringing in 2011.
We have been busy and back at it here in first grade. Upon returning from vacation we began a new morning responsibility called Daily Language Review (DLR), which was the colorful language packet you saw in last week's Friday Folders. This is something the students work on each morning when they come in, check it with me, and then make their ease-in choice. They have been doing a great job adding this new step into their routine and really enjoy it as well! It is just another thing that reminds me that this group of students love to learn!
There are many new and exciting things that have begun already this year and this week we will be adding a couple more. First of all, I hope that your children have been talking about our new Social Studies Unit called World Wide Research. We are all very excited about it on Synergy because it is a team research project on different countries around the world. The students in our class are partnered up with a second grader from Ms. Rogers' class and will be working together to learn about the culture, history, and lifestyles of different places. The students will be getting most of their information from a great electronic resource through our library called Culturegrams. Unfortunately, it is a licensed program, so the kids can only access the site while at school, but some even chose to look at it during their ease-in time! It was interesting to see which countries were of interest, Japan and China were big, and the final list of countries that our class is studying is quite diverse. They are really diving in and learning many new things, so don't be afraid to ask them about their country of choice!
Another new and exciting unit that will begin tomorrow is in math. We just wrapped up this past unit with a whale chart, similar to the crab and sea star charts we had made, that is helping us count by 2's for the two flukes on each whale. The students had the option of tracing or creating their own whale and I was quite impressed with their colorful sea creatures and all that they had already known about them. For this next unit, we are embarking on a journey to Antartica (tying in nicely with our study of the world) and will be learning about the many different penguins that live there. Through the study of these amazing creatures, we will be investigating with measurement, weight, and size. The students will be receiving an Antartica passport with their height and weight that will help them understand the height and weight of different penguins. As we dive into the many lessons and fun activities encorporated with this month-long study, your child will not only be becoming a stronger mathematician, but a penguin expert as well! Stay tuned for pictures as we begin our trip to the coldest continent and learn about one of the most resilient animals.
Also this week, we will be participating in a "Kindness and Justice Challenge" to practice and live by the words that Martin Luther King Jr. worked so hard for. The students will be learning more about what these words mean and what it looks and sounds like to act them out. It will not only be my responsibility, but the students' as well, to recognize a peer when they see or hear them being kind or acting justly. We will be keeping a basket of tickets to collect these acts and count them up at the end of the week. I encourage you to "catch" these acts at home as well!
After the K&J Challenge, we will resume our work on C.A.R.E.S. This is another new goal of ours that came with the new year. Along with our Opportunity and Success sticks, the students are working together to earn all the letters in the word cares that stand for Cooperation, Assertive, Respect, Empathy, and Self-Control. Currently, every time I witness a student(s) cooperating they earn a check and after each student has earned 3, that means we are a classroom that uses cooperation and we will have a special celenbration. The goal is to spell the word and hang it in our classroom by the end of the year. The students have been doing a great job showing cooperation, so I am feeling that a celebration is not too far away before we move onto our next letter!
Have a great week!
We have been busy and back at it here in first grade. Upon returning from vacation we began a new morning responsibility called Daily Language Review (DLR), which was the colorful language packet you saw in last week's Friday Folders. This is something the students work on each morning when they come in, check it with me, and then make their ease-in choice. They have been doing a great job adding this new step into their routine and really enjoy it as well! It is just another thing that reminds me that this group of students love to learn!
There are many new and exciting things that have begun already this year and this week we will be adding a couple more. First of all, I hope that your children have been talking about our new Social Studies Unit called World Wide Research. We are all very excited about it on Synergy because it is a team research project on different countries around the world. The students in our class are partnered up with a second grader from Ms. Rogers' class and will be working together to learn about the culture, history, and lifestyles of different places. The students will be getting most of their information from a great electronic resource through our library called Culturegrams. Unfortunately, it is a licensed program, so the kids can only access the site while at school, but some even chose to look at it during their ease-in time! It was interesting to see which countries were of interest, Japan and China were big, and the final list of countries that our class is studying is quite diverse. They are really diving in and learning many new things, so don't be afraid to ask them about their country of choice!
Another new and exciting unit that will begin tomorrow is in math. We just wrapped up this past unit with a whale chart, similar to the crab and sea star charts we had made, that is helping us count by 2's for the two flukes on each whale. The students had the option of tracing or creating their own whale and I was quite impressed with their colorful sea creatures and all that they had already known about them. For this next unit, we are embarking on a journey to Antartica (tying in nicely with our study of the world) and will be learning about the many different penguins that live there. Through the study of these amazing creatures, we will be investigating with measurement, weight, and size. The students will be receiving an Antartica passport with their height and weight that will help them understand the height and weight of different penguins. As we dive into the many lessons and fun activities encorporated with this month-long study, your child will not only be becoming a stronger mathematician, but a penguin expert as well! Stay tuned for pictures as we begin our trip to the coldest continent and learn about one of the most resilient animals.
Also this week, we will be participating in a "Kindness and Justice Challenge" to practice and live by the words that Martin Luther King Jr. worked so hard for. The students will be learning more about what these words mean and what it looks and sounds like to act them out. It will not only be my responsibility, but the students' as well, to recognize a peer when they see or hear them being kind or acting justly. We will be keeping a basket of tickets to collect these acts and count them up at the end of the week. I encourage you to "catch" these acts at home as well!
After the K&J Challenge, we will resume our work on C.A.R.E.S. This is another new goal of ours that came with the new year. Along with our Opportunity and Success sticks, the students are working together to earn all the letters in the word cares that stand for Cooperation, Assertive, Respect, Empathy, and Self-Control. Currently, every time I witness a student(s) cooperating they earn a check and after each student has earned 3, that means we are a classroom that uses cooperation and we will have a special celenbration. The goal is to spell the word and hang it in our classroom by the end of the year. The students have been doing a great job showing cooperation, so I am feeling that a celebration is not too far away before we move onto our next letter!
Have a great week!
Friday, December 17, 2010
Sunday, December 12, 2010
We love Jan Brett!
This past week we started our first author study of the year on Jan Brett. It is the perfect time of year to dive into the winter wonderlands that she creates in books such as, "The Mitten" (my favorite, "The Hat" and "The Three Snow Bears". So far we have learned that Jan Brett knew that she wanted to be an illustrator since she was young. She loved making scenes in books so detailed that what she imagined and pictured in her mind could actually exist. The kids have been learning little facts about her as we read her stories and have been doing a really great job comparing the books to one another to discover what are some similarities and differences between them.
I have added a link on the right side of the blog to Jan Brett's website. There are some online games and interactive and printable coloring pages that the kids may like to investigate.
Have fun!
I have added a link on the right side of the blog to Jan Brett's website. There are some online games and interactive and printable coloring pages that the kids may like to investigate.
Have fun!
Friday, December 3, 2010
We're Back!
We had a great first week back after Thanksgiving!
We've been busy in math beginning a new round of work places about money, trading coins, and writing number sentences. The students are doing a really great job working in partners and teaming up to solve problems. Coming home today is a math game that the students learned the week before Thanksgiving. The game is all about trying to make it as close to 50 without "busting" and going over. You will quickly learn that it is a game of strategy and it has been interesting to hear their different approaches and why they pick certain cards. Ask them to share their reasoning with you!
In reading we are continuing to "Stop and Jot" when we make observations from our books. This week we talked about how readers notice when something unexpected happens in a story. To help us understand this concept, we read "Little Red Riding Hood" and discussed how it is unexpected for a wolf to talk and dress up as a grandmother. It was great to see the students enjoy such a classic fairytale. Coming home today is also an update on the new plan for bringing books home. I would like the students to be able to keep the books for a few days and this way if for some reason we do not meet as a reading group they still have books from school to read. Next week will be the first week that we try this and my goal is that each Monday they can get a new collection of "Just Right" books to share with you. I am trying to keep it simple by having the return day be the same day as Library (Thursday).
Monday was the beginning of a new writing unit and the focus in the beginning of the unit is learning how to write a friendly letter. The kids are doing really well with this and seem to be really enjoying it! They have been writing to friends, family, and even some teachers. A really fun book that we read to help us get excited about writing letters is "The Jolly Postman" by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. I am not sure if you are familiar with it, but the book has actual envelopes and removable letters that the kids had a blast listening to. I can't count how many times I heard, "Read that letter Ms. Stein!".
This week was also the beginning of our new science theme unit on matter. Much like the unit on senses, the lessons are broken down into workshop form. This means that all four Synergy classes are mixed together and rotate through each workshop taught by a different teacher. My station is on mixing a liquid, such as laundry soap or corn syrup, with water and seeing what the outcome is. The students have to make close observations of what it looks like before and after shaking the bottle, as well as after it has settled for a bit. Again, this called for partner work and each student worked with someone from another class and grade. The first graders definitely stepped up to the plate and the second graders are great role models, it is really fun to see them all work together!
We were very busy today with having both Four Winds and Friday Explore. The Four Winds lesson was on prey and predators, which the students loved! They got to see a "live" squirrel and coyote and learn the saying, "Eyes are in front, go and hunt. Eyes on the side, run and hide". They also got to play a tag game and do an acting activity where they played either the prey or predator.
For Friday Explore the students got to pick between making snowflakes with Mrs. Eaton, Food Drive posters with Ms. Rogers, a Tic-Tac-Toe game in Ms. Kate's room, play in the Kiva or spend time outside. Again, it is great to see all of Synergy mix and mingle!
I am keeping my fingers crossed for some snow this weekend--have fun!
We've been busy in math beginning a new round of work places about money, trading coins, and writing number sentences. The students are doing a really great job working in partners and teaming up to solve problems. Coming home today is a math game that the students learned the week before Thanksgiving. The game is all about trying to make it as close to 50 without "busting" and going over. You will quickly learn that it is a game of strategy and it has been interesting to hear their different approaches and why they pick certain cards. Ask them to share their reasoning with you!
In reading we are continuing to "Stop and Jot" when we make observations from our books. This week we talked about how readers notice when something unexpected happens in a story. To help us understand this concept, we read "Little Red Riding Hood" and discussed how it is unexpected for a wolf to talk and dress up as a grandmother. It was great to see the students enjoy such a classic fairytale. Coming home today is also an update on the new plan for bringing books home. I would like the students to be able to keep the books for a few days and this way if for some reason we do not meet as a reading group they still have books from school to read. Next week will be the first week that we try this and my goal is that each Monday they can get a new collection of "Just Right" books to share with you. I am trying to keep it simple by having the return day be the same day as Library (Thursday).
Monday was the beginning of a new writing unit and the focus in the beginning of the unit is learning how to write a friendly letter. The kids are doing really well with this and seem to be really enjoying it! They have been writing to friends, family, and even some teachers. A really fun book that we read to help us get excited about writing letters is "The Jolly Postman" by Janet and Allan Ahlberg. I am not sure if you are familiar with it, but the book has actual envelopes and removable letters that the kids had a blast listening to. I can't count how many times I heard, "Read that letter Ms. Stein!".
This week was also the beginning of our new science theme unit on matter. Much like the unit on senses, the lessons are broken down into workshop form. This means that all four Synergy classes are mixed together and rotate through each workshop taught by a different teacher. My station is on mixing a liquid, such as laundry soap or corn syrup, with water and seeing what the outcome is. The students have to make close observations of what it looks like before and after shaking the bottle, as well as after it has settled for a bit. Again, this called for partner work and each student worked with someone from another class and grade. The first graders definitely stepped up to the plate and the second graders are great role models, it is really fun to see them all work together!
We were very busy today with having both Four Winds and Friday Explore. The Four Winds lesson was on prey and predators, which the students loved! They got to see a "live" squirrel and coyote and learn the saying, "Eyes are in front, go and hunt. Eyes on the side, run and hide". They also got to play a tag game and do an acting activity where they played either the prey or predator.
For Friday Explore the students got to pick between making snowflakes with Mrs. Eaton, Food Drive posters with Ms. Rogers, a Tic-Tac-Toe game in Ms. Kate's room, play in the Kiva or spend time outside. Again, it is great to see all of Synergy mix and mingle!
I am keeping my fingers crossed for some snow this weekend--have fun!
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