October
October
This week we read:
Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon
Brave Every Day
Have You Filled a Bucket Today?
The Way I Feel
Chrysanthemum
Frogs
I Don’t Want to Be a Frog!
Seasons
Fall
In ELA we:
Learned how to use the classroom library.
Reviewed the letters we learned in Fundations last week. We also introduced the letter, keyword, and sound for the following letters in Fundations: v, w, x, y, z, and q.
Learned that q has a buddy letter u and we group them together when we do our sound drills.
Practiced putting the letters in alphabetical order.
Practiced reading independently.
Introduced weekend news.
Created informational book covers to match the book Frogs. On the inside of the informational book covers we wrote about the main idea and the author’s purpose. Next week, we will work on the narrative book cover.
Continued to work on our Sentence A Day and focused on using the Fundations lines to write uppercase and lowercase letters, using finger spaces between words, and ending the sentence with a period. We also noted the subject and the action of the sentences.
In Math we:
Continued with Number Corner. This month we’re observing patterns of tallies, popsicle sticks, and ten frames, tracking the days in school, collecting pennies and nickels, and working with a number line!
Continued making observations on our calendar cards in Number Corner. We recorded our observations on a chart. We observed teen numbers as bundles of ten and some more.
Used number racks to show numbers within 10 as well as solve addition and subtraction story problems.
Used our number racks to find all the combinations of 5 and 10.
Matched double ten frame dot cards to an equation (eg. a full ten frame and eight more matched with the equation 10+8=18.)
Introduced two new workplaces: Spin and Write which practices number formation and
In Science we:
Used a straw and a paper towel to investigate the question: what can air do? Students observed that air can make the paper towel move and it can pick the paper towel up. We wrote and drew about our observations in our science notebooks.
Read Seasons and Fall and discussed seasonal changes that occur when these seasons change. We wrote and illustrated a change in our science notebooks.
In Social Studies we:
Did a lesson on listening and connected listening skills to being an effective community member.
Listened to verbal directions and had to color in a picture to match the directions.
Looked at pictures of children who were talking at the same time vs. taking turns and discussed how both options feel. Students noticed that when someone talks over you it feels like they don’t care what you have to say and it doesn’t feel good. We are working on our listening skills to make sure everyone feels like what they have to say is important and heard.
For SEL we:
Read Have You Filled a Bucket Today? and discussed being a bucket filler. We wrote and drew about ways we could be bucket fillers.
Introduced feelings with the book, The Way I Feel.
Began our new SEL curriculum, Wayfinder. We discussed and acted out different feelings.
This week we read:
Be Kind
We Will Rock Our Classmates
I’ll Wait Mr. Panda
Pandas
Everything Will Be Okay
Elmer
Elephants
In ELA we:
Reviewed the letters we learned in Fundations last week. We also introduced the letter, keyword, and sound for the following letters in Fundations: a, g, d, s, e, r, p, j, l, h, and k. We practiced the lowercase letter formation for each of these letters.
Practiced isolating and identifying the beginning sound in words by doing a beginning sound color by code activity.
Introduced narrative and informational writing styles. We read I’ll Wait Mr. Panda and Pandas and compared and contrasted the writing styles. We observed that narrative stories have characters, as well as a problem/solution or beginning, middle, and end, while informational texts share facts. Students observed illustrations vs. photographs in the different styles of texts.
Read a narrative text (Elmer) and informational text (Elephants) to discuss author’s purpose of different kinds of texts. Students observed that the purpose of Elmer was to entertain, while the purpose of Elephants was to teach facts.
Discussed author’s purpose of narrative and informational texts.
Introduced Sentence A Day from Empowering Writers. We looked at a picture, listened to a passage, and made a simple sentence (Dan ran.) We discussed parts of a sentence, capitalization, and punctuation. We also discussed starting the sentence on the left side of the paper and including finger spaces in between words.
In Math we:
Continued with Number Corner. This month we’re observing patterns of tallies, popsicle sticks, and ten frames, tracking the days in school, collecting pennies and nickels, and working with a number line!
Continued to track the number of days in school in Number Corner.
Continued collecting nickels and pennies. We found the total value of the coins we collected this week.
Looked at the PAWS quilt we made last week and observed patterns. We noticed that there are five large squares in each row. We practiced skip counting by 5.
Worked with our work places.
Made our own number racks. We will use these number racks to help solve addition and subtraction problems next week.
Introduced place value in Number Corner with our calendar cards. We observed that the pictures are showing groups of ten and some more (eg. a bundle of ten popsicle sticks and two extra). We are building an understanding of tens and ones. We practiced taking the number of tens and ones turning it into a number sentence. For example, one group of ten and two more would be 10+2=12.
Celebrated the first Decade Day in Number Corner.
In Science we:
Discussed that scientist make observations and ask questions. We observed a picture of an apple and came up with many questions about the apple.
Learned about the ABCD’s of scientific drawings. Scientific drawings should be accurate, big, colorful, and detailed with labels. We made a scientific drawing of the apple with labels, such as skin, stem, and seeds.
In Social Studies we:
Discussed communities and completed a sort on actions that helpful community members take.
For SEL we:
Looked at our list of hopes and dreams for the school year. Then we came up with class expectations we need to have in order to help others reach their goals. We came up with the following: follow PAWS (practice empathy, act responsibly, work hard, spread kindness), be safe, and be respectful of others and our materials. Students all agreed to our class promise by tracing their handprint and writing their name that we attached to the Class Promise poster.
Continued to share summer or family photos.
Continued to play community building games.
This week we read:
All Are Welcome
Ways to Welcome
What If Everybody Did That?
Rosie Revere Engineer
Whoever You Are
Peanut Butter and Cupcake
Jabari Jumps
Routines We Learned/Practiced:
Signing in for lunch
Sitting on the rug
Responding to the chime
Using the code word
Choice Time
Desk clean
In ELA we:
Read and discussed many read alouds!
Introduced the letter, keyword, and sound for the following letters in Fundations: t, b, f, n, m, i, u, c, and o. We practiced the lowercase letter formation for each of these letters.
Practiced isolating and identifying the beginning sound in words by doing a beginning sound color by code activity.
Completed a Guess Who writing activity where we wrote three clues about ourselves. These will be on display at Curriculum Night so you can try to guess which one your child wrote.
Read Jabari Jumps and discussed setting goals and perseverance. Then, we set goals that we’d like to achieve in first grade. We wrote about our first grade hopes and dreams and drew a picture to match.
In Math we:
Continued with Number Corner. This month we’re observing patterns of tallies, popsicle sticks, and ten frames, tracking the days in school, collecting pennies and nickels, and working with a number line!
Continued to track the number of days in school in Number Corner.
Continued collecting nickels and pennies. We found the total value of the coins we collected this week.
Continued with our workplaces. We added a geoboards workplace and square polydrons workplace.
Discussed our school values: Practice empathy, Act responsibly, Work hard, and Spread kindness. We discussed what we could each do to follow those core values at school. We drew a picture to match our idea on a paw print. Then, we made a picture graph of our core values and the number of students that chose each value. We used words like greater than or less than to describe the data in the graph.
Used the paw prints we made to make a class quilt. Next week we will observe patterns in the quilt.
For SEL we:
Continued to build community through morning meeting, closing circle, and community building games.
Discussed our school core values. We watched a Brainpop Jr. video on empathy and discussed practicing empathy at school. We also read What If Everybody Did That and Rosie Revere Engineer to discuss acting responsibly and working hard.
Started sharing pictures of our summer or pictures of our families.
Did another "Find a friend who" activity to learn more about our classmates.
We had a great first two days of school! We’ve spent a lot of time getting to know each other and learning our classroom routines. I’m really looking forward to our year together! Read below for more details about our week!
This week we read:
First Day Jitters
A Letter From Your Teacher on the First Day of School
You’re Finally Here
Meesha Makes Friends
Giraffes Can’t Dance
We Don’t Eat Our Classmates
Routines We Learned:
Arrival
Transition Song
Sitting on the rug
Lining Up
Walking in the hall
Using the code word
Responding to the chime
Stack and Pack
In ELA we:
Listened to and discussed many read alouds!
Read Giraffes Can’t Dance. We wrote and drew a picture of something we can’t do yet. We connected this to having a growth mindset- we may not be able to do something yet, but we can practice and learn.
In Math we:
Students explored the following math manipulatives: pattern blocks, unifix cubes, and dominos. These will become some of our work places soon!
Started Number Corner. Number Corner is a daily math routine where we look at the calendar and do various math “workouts”. We started tracking the days in school and came up with equations to match the total. Some examples for the second day of school included 1+1=2, 5-3=2, and 100-98=2.
For SEL we:
Played Find A Friend Who… games to learn more about our interests.
Played a Stand Up, Sit Down game. We asked questions like Stand up if you like the snow and students could look around and make connections with their peers.
Played Four Corners with would you rather questions.
Played Just Like Me to find commonalities between each other.
Had morning meetings and closing circles to build our community. Building community is the focus for the next several weeks. We will learn best when we feel comfortable and safe in our classroom community!