Current Month

Week 6: September 27th-October 1st, 2021

Math Report: Organizing and representing data was introduced this week. We looked at different shapes, learned that a triangle turned at any angle is still a triangle. We learned that a shape must be closed, otherwise it is just a line. The data collected also involved favorite things from our classmates, which strengthened our classroom community. It was asked of us to organize the data in a way that makes sense to us, to describe our categories (a new word that means groups or sorts), and counting the items in that category. We noticed that some of us used drawings, numbers, tallies, color, or checks or other symbols to represent the data then we were challenged to walk around the room to see how others sorted, categorized and were asked to see if we could look at their data and know how they sorted their data. This built upon our theme of perspective and learning that others see things in different ways. The conversations buzzing around our room were full of life, excitement, and hard work!

Language Arts Report: We were busy reading more and more, keeping track, making goals, and supporting each other as we read! We read lots of great stories out loud together, we read a book all about spiders and learned a great deal more about what makes them so cool! We have been seeing lots of spiders in the classroom and catch and release them outside, so we have been extra curious lately about what they do. Our writing workshop stories were embellished upon and shared on Seesaw. If parents want to hear their stories, please take a look and feel free to comment on your child's work!

Integrated Unit Report: We are moving into our family communities. Everyone in our family has different roles, just like the mice in Leo Lionni's Frederick. This week, we worked on portraits of who lives in our homes. We talked extensively about how families look different in every home. We will work next week on identifying each of our family member roles, illustrating them, writing them, presenting them in a slide and sharing verbally with the class.

More Fun in First Grade!

Week 5: September 20th-24th, 2021

Math Report: Math was super busy this week learning new games and activities. The game, Five in a Row, builds upon skills learned in kindergarten. One of these learned observations is that counting up is the same skill as adding 1 or 2. We can also do the same thing with counting back and subtracting one or two. These observations develop the understanding of sequential counting and building their number sense. Within our time practicing these skills, we discussed the terms sum and difference. These were new terms to us, so it may take more time to truly understand the meaning of these words. Continuing our addition and subtraction fluency practice, we worked on a game called Find the Pair which highlights adding within ten using similar rules to Go Fish! We will continue playing these games throughout the year to build our number sense and confidence in sharing the "How do you know?" answers. We ended the week with a quick check assessment of these skills where we demonstrated our ability to subitize, find the difference and sum, and matching pictures to expressions (this was especially challenging, as it asks to student to exhibit the skill to represent the actions of adding or subtracting). We ended each lesson with adding to our Math Community anchor chart. We packed in a lot of math this week and learned a lot!

Language Arts Report: Our big skill learned this week was that readers have to read more and more and then make a plan to read even more! Learning to read is like learning how to ride a bike, we have to practice every day to become strong readers. We learned new strategies to help up us make a plan to read more. One strategy that reinforces our executive functioning skills and beautifully relates to our social emotional curriculum of the 7 habits, is to use a reading mat. We have one side that is our "to read" pile and the other side is "done." When we finish, we can go through our done pile again and see if we missed anything by rereading, or by talking with a partner, or by revisiting a favorite part. We also wrote out lists of the books we were going to read and check them off as we go along. This way, we can make sure we are reaching our reading goals and we are able to stay on track. Reading books has been a favorite time of day in first grade, with lots of work being completed! We have also worked on our writing workshop. We are starting with writing stories about small moments that really happened in our lives. It is a great way to build our writing community. First grade is filled with talented authors and it will be so exciting to learn more about each other and building our writing talents.

Integrated Unit Report: Our portraits of each other have been completed! They are posted in the hallway at school, so please stop and take a look when you have a chance. We spent a lot of time working on understanding and appreciating each other. We are all valued members of our classroom community. We read a lovely story, Our Class is a Family by Shannon Olsen. It focuses on our unique gifts and supported our social emotional development to truly value one another.

More Fun in First Grade!

Week 4: September 13th-17th, 2021

Math Report: We learned how to engage with several new center games including, "Shut The Box," "Number Race," "Counting Collections," and "Match Dot Cards to Expressions." These games reinforce addition strategies, subitizing, data collection, number grouping, and number sense! We also participated in many discussions, answering the questions "How do you know?" This will support our mathematical thinking and analyzing for future math challenges throughout our mathematical academic career. This is a great question to continue developing at home! We also continued our theme of "community" and discussed what habits we develop in our math community. We talked specifically about student roles and teacher roles. It has been a successful and fun week!

Language Arts Report: We are continuing to learn new reading habits, building our reading stamina, and reviewing phonemic skills. Last week we learned that we take a sneak peek, then check our sneak peek. This week we learned that reading through a book is not the end of our work! We learned that we must "Do Something at the End!" So we could review and summarize what we read, we could reread a favorite part, we can talk with our partners about what we read, we can even reread the whole book! Reading work is never finished--we can always use ALL of our reading time. We are also learning how to work effectively with partners during our reading time. Partners can help give friendly reminders to practice our new reading habits. We can read with partners, we can learn with partners, we can always work as a team because we are a safe, loving, and bright learning community! We have also been working on writing about our weekend, or our day off and thinking about how to find one moment to share!

Integrated Unit Report: We learned a big important piece about community--we are all integral parts of a community and we need each of our special gifts. Our work is not yet completed, but we have started our classmate portraits. We read They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel and discussed the grown up word, "Perspective." We first studied ourselves and shared with the class the important things we find about ourselves, and now our job is to think about what others look like, what they bring to our classroom community, and why we are happy to have them here. We started with a partner interview and then began the portraits. The results are a beautiful work in progress!

Lego Club: We read The Name Jar which is a touching story that highlights the importance of our names and the communities to which we belong. Our challenge was then to build our names in 3-D and share a little bit about ourselves. It was a lot of fun getting to know each other in new ways!

More Fun in First Grade!

Week 3: September 8th-10th, 2021

Math Report: Addition, and Subtraction, and Measurement, Oh My! We started the short week reading Leo Lionni's Six Crows, a beautiful fable that focuses on compromising and problem-solving. This connected us to a rhyme that reinforces the idea of grouping by fives which can support addition efficiency and precision. We then created our own stories with a Seesaw activity. Next, we read The Shrinking of Treehorn by Florence Parry Heide which has a great sarcastic humor. We used this book to introduce measurement. We ordered students from tallest to shortest and talked about "how we know." We got to share with partners, table-mates, and the class as a whole and eventually came to the conclusion that using tools like rulers might be most helpful in tasks like this, especially when students' heights are very close. Finally, we ended the week with a fun addition/subtraction craft after reading and singing Five Green and Speckled Frogs by Constanza Basaluzzo. We rolled our dice and added to numbers to indicate how many speckles will be on our frogs. We created an adorable array of sweet frogs, which went home with everyone.

Language Arts Report: We started the week writing stories about our long weekend, which helps us learn how to summarize and practices our phonetic spelling skills and handwriting. We read On a Magical Do Nothing Day by Beatrice Alemagna (a book we will revisit many more times this year) to inspire us to write even when our weekends seem "boring." We also learned more about taking a sneak peek in our books during reading workshop. We don't just take a sneak peek to see what the book is about, we also check to see if our sneak peek was correct! We include our discoveries in conversation with table-mates about all of our books. It is very important to use up all of our precious reading time to soak up as much of the beautiful literature as possible! We practiced our skills as a whole class with a sweet book, Ollie the Stomper by Olivier Dunrea. Even during snack-time read alouds it was fun to practice our new reading strategies.

We also enjoyed the beautiful weather together at recess, had free choice on Friday, and shared many laughs. Thanks for a beautiful short week First Grade!