February 2020

Reading Report: First grade readers continued working with partners and learned language to use to engage in book talks. It was discussed how important it is to wonder and explore books together. Readers were provided ample time to increase their reading stamina so they could bring more wonderings to the discussion. We did not have our literature circles this week, but still were able to engage in book discussions with partners and small groups.

Writing Report: First grade writers have started to learn from authors in writing. Kevin Henkes is the modeled author to write about and writers have noticed that he writes with dialogue bubbles, he plays around with text size and shape, and he talks a lot about feelings. His books will be read at the start of many of these lessons which will facilitate conversation and support to each student to make their writing look and sound like a particular author. The end of the week ended with the students becoming journalists and created a first grade classroom newspaper titled, "First Grade Things." It was sent home, so take a look at their hard work.

Math Report: First grade mathematicians were hard at work this week. Mathematicians began a new concept of comparing quantities. Comparing quantities and categories within story problems was new this week. There was an introduction of comparison bars which visually represents the quantities similarly to math mountains. We took a nature walk and explored comparing quantities. We built our numbers with unifix cubes and used lanugage like "There are 9 more rocks than sticks" or "There are 6 less birds than fish."

Thematic Unit Report: The fairy tale unit is going so well! First grade thinkers finished the wolf-proof building projects related to the Three Little Pigs. It was challenging to imagine a house, build it, and test it with many mistakes along the way. They worked through the frustration and were able to take their work home this week. The next fairy tale discussed is Cinderella. The first grade thinkers are now given the task of building a "just right" shoe. This was a big hit and without prompting they took out their measuring tape and started working straight away. We will finish these next week. The projects will be completed throughout next week.

More First Grade Pictures

Reading Report: First grade readers engaged in reflective practices where they made a plan for their reading habits as they revisited the strategies for this week. Reading buddies visited the classroom as well so first grade readers got to work on their plans with older students who can support them differently. Readers revisited partner reading and learned how to help one another in big ways to become stronger readers. The week ended with literature circles which were wonderfully successful!

Math Report: First Grade Mathematicians have continued with the data gathering and analysis unit. Mathematicians were able to connect math concepts to stories like Hannah's Collections by Marthe Jocelyn and The Button Box by Margarette S. Reid. These books prompted ways to categorize data and also an exploration of comparison language like most and fewest. First graders engaged in centers that fostered further investigation through a game called Set and more categorization with bottle caps and partner work with recording the number of jumps, graphing it, and then asking comparative questions. It was lots of fun!

Thematic Unit Report: The fairy tale explored this week was The Three Little Pigs. We have read different versions of this story and are working on our own wolf-proof houses using limited supplies. They must first make a plan for their work, record any challenges and how they addressed them, and answer questions about the size and shape of their houses. It takes a lot of thinking and reworking, but through hard work and determination they will succeed!

Fun in First Grade!

Reading Report: We celebrated Valentine's Day this week so much of our work highlighted the importance of love and showing appreciation for important people in our lives. There was a heavy focus on read alouds and engaging classroom discussions. We read stories like A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead, You Belong Here by M.H. Clark, The I Love You Book by Todd Parr. We then were able to talk about where we each belong and what makes us the unique, lovely, wonderful humans we have become. We were also invited to a special treat in the second grade room--a Reader's Theater performance. The first graders had a blast supporting the second grade reading experts.

Math Report: Wow! We had a ton of fun in math this week. We played games, we made math crafts, we got to engage with Valentine's Day math, and we began our unit on gathering and analyzing data. We read two great books to encourage children to find the math in unexpected places like Five Green and Speckled Frogs by Priscilla Burris and Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts. The Five Green and Speckled Frogs prompted a craft challenge to roll the dice to add together to make the speckles on the green frogs, then they had to write their own multiple addend story problem. Those Shoes initiated a conversation about kindness and thoughtfulness, but also began our observations of our own shoes. Their challenge was to make categories of our shoes and others had to guess our categories then we were able to graph and analyze our data collection. We ended the week with Valentine's Day math which included more data collection and analysis and addition and subtraction fact practice.

Thematic Unit Report: We ended our unit on weather and began our unit on fairy tales! The weather unit conclusion consisted of final project presentations. Then the first fairy tale we explored was Three Billy Goats Gruff. The children were then asked to engage in a STEM challenge to build a troll proof bridge. They all had a blast and worked thoughtfully!

Here are a few more pictures from the week :)

Reading Report: This was a fun week with lots of singing and reading! Readers learned how to apply their knowledge of learning how to decode to the new reading strategies to try something, try something else, and then do a triple check to answer; does it make sense? does it look right? does it sound right? First graders sang new lyrics to our song and we practiced our reading stamina and strategies. In phonics we have been working on learning the base word and the suffix s.

Math Report: Wow, what a week! First grade mathematicians engaged in creative investigations. We read some fantastic books about math. First we read the book One is a Snail and Ten is a Crab and then explored multiple addends (which can be extended to multiplication), problem solving and problem creating, and creative manipulation of numbers. We also read the book Baby Goes to Market and made our own fruit salad. This continued our exploration of multiple addends and was a yummy fruit treat during our morning math session. We then concluded our unit with an assessment and riddles with multiple missing addends (a very challenging task that requires lots of trial and error and determination).

Thematic Unit Report: We focused on finishing up our weather unit, but will need one more day to complete our final projects. The final projects include the creative expression of new storm vocabulary words and definitions. We had a blast at the Museum of Science and Industry. Thank you to all the chaperones who accompanied us and provided the group with a successful day! We extended our weather unit and got to see first hand how storms work, how to chase storms, and how sunlight can be used to power cars. We returned to the classroom and discussed our favorite parts and what we learned.

Lunar New Year Celebration: The entire school came together to celebrate the Lunary New Year. We celebrated with our Griffin Buddies, participated in a presentation, activity, and read aloud.

Recess Report: The first graders had a blast in the snow this week :)

We also had a surprise visit from a wonderful violinist who played "guess that tune" with us and showed us the basics of how to play the violin.