One of the first grade standards asks students to identify the main or supporting details in a fiction text. The following examples show what that means to a first grader. They can find and retell the important parts of a story. Knowing how to choose the important parts of a text is important to helping a child understand the story. We will continue to work on this standard all year long.
In Reading and Spelling this week, we have been working on the short i sound. Tuesday we sorted words according to the word families they are in. We will do lots of word sorts this year. Word sorts help students notice patterns in words, they help them to decode words and to spell words. Word sorts are a powerful tool that help first graders in many ways. At home you can have your child sort their spelling words. Allow them to decide what the groups will be. This forces them to notice things about the ways that words are spelled. Her is an example of the word sort we did on Tuesday.
Each day during Reading Workshop I meet with small groups at the teacher table. Today one of my small groups used images from our story to retell the story together. Then they wrote the story down. Afterward, we sequenced the events. I was so proud of their work and so were they.
Friday we made lady bugs and practiced our math lesson about part part whole. Students put the whole on the ladybug's head. Part of the dots went on one wing and part of the dots went on the other wing. On the ladybug's body students wrote a number sentence to go with their ladybug dots. At Writers' Workshop one young writer was still thinking about those ladybugs. She says "I like ladybugs because they wear Rebel colors." Here is that little cutie's work. You know, besides being the title to a funny country song, a red solo cup can be used as a math tool. This week in Math we have been working on missing parts. The kiddos enjoyed a fun game using 6 counters and a cup. One student put some of the counters in the cup or under the cup and left some of them outside the cup. Their partner then had to figure out how many were hidden (or missing) by counting those they could see. Soon, this will transfer into solving equations such as 2 + ___ = 6. These are early algebra skills that will pay off big later on! Try playing some of these kinds of games at home.We have started a new unit in Science called "What's the Matter?" The students are, of course learning about Matter. We have learned what matter is, the different properties of matter that help us describe objects and we are now learning about the 3 different states of matter. So far, we know about solids and liquids. Solids hold their shape while liquids do not. We conducted some experiments with water to see what happened when we poured it in different shaped containers. The little Scientists loved it! Now they know what it means to say that liquids take the shape of the container! I think Science may be one of their favorites so far! Friday we had so much fun reading the big book, One Red Rooster. It has many number words, color words and little sight words in it. After reading it many times, we created our own class book. The students are so proud of their work. We can't wait for you to see it when you are visiting our room next. We have some very talented artists!
Last school year, the Parent Club worked so hard to raise money for our school to purchase new technology. As a staff, we decided on a tablet for K -3 graders that is designed specifically for use in the classroom. The tablet is called a Learnpad. We began using our Learnpads this week and they are awesome! The students were able to begin learning with them the minute they put their little hands on them. They are that easy! Ask your first grader about using them and see what they have to say. When I asked them what they thought after the first day, I heard responses such as, "They are fun!" "I love them!" and my personal favorite, "They are stunning!" As their teacher, I couldn't agree more. Thank you, thank you, Parent Club!
This week our class discussed what kind of a classroom we wanted ours to be this year. Students suggested many things they thought would be necessary for us to all feel comfortable, safe and happy at school. We then condensed our ideas into four basic rules. Let me tell you, I think they nailed it. These rules could be good reminders for all of us wherever we are. Don't you think you would enjoy spending time with people who do these things?
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December 2015
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