Monday, October 22, 2012

A great start to the week!

It was a busy, productive day of school and I took a lot of photos. So, I figured I should take a few minutes to give you a glimpse of some of our activities today in first grade. The details are in the captions...

We had 10 iPads from the school iPad cart today. Students used an app called Montessori Words to move letters to make words in our newest word families, -in and -im. They worked in partnerships.
The most exciting thing about this activity was practicing how to "mirror" to the whiteboard. Whatever is on a student's iPad can be shown via the Apple TV in our classroom. This is a fantastic tool, and we are fortunate to have it. 
I am not sure which partnership is "mirroring" to the whiteboard via their iPad right now, but whatever is shown on their iPad screen is now up there for everyone to see. Cool!
This is a class full of wonderful writers. Students have been doing great with their writing partners. Writing is more fun (and productive) with a teammate!  
Happy writers!
Sharing is an extremely valuable part of our Writing Workshop. I have seen students become inspired in so many ways through  seeing/hearing their peers' stories. Students have started to write more, with more detail, and about so many different topics. Miss Dube has been doing a great job in her Writing Workshop mini-lessons. She started teaching writing about a week ago. 
In math, we have been doing some pumpkin-themed activities. We finished our pumpkin math stations today that we started last Thursday. The pumpkin glyphs (shown above) will be displayed in our room soon. Students followed a code to color their jack-o-lanterns to tell about themselves. 
Pumpkin Jumble is one of my favorite seasonal math activities for several reasons--it's fun, it reinforces tallying/data collection, and it is a good way to review the names of pattern block shapes. 
We are now into Unit 3 of our Everyday Math program. You should have received the family letter about this unit today. Our first lesson was about visual patterns. Our district how has access to the Everyday Math online resources, which include great activities for the interactive whiteboard. 
Students could manipulate the sticks to make patterns and then label them with letters.
At math station time, one of the stations was math fact practice. Students had three choices--a subtraction fact page, an addition fact page, or a mixed-fact challenge page.
Working in the math journal is a regular part of our math station time during math workshop.
Students learned a new game called "Before and After."
I already posted some of the iPad tutorials created on the ShowMe app, but this is a picture of the creation in progress. Great collaboration, girls! 
We took a photo of our pattern, then labeled it with letters, and then recorded an explanation of the pattern using ShowMe.

2 comments:

  1. Very impressive first graders! Technology is exciting and fun, but you also need lots of patience so nice job. Can't wait to hear/see more!

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    1. Thanks, Erin! Gavin is having some rotten luck with recording his. He's made some great patterns, but the recording just doesn't seem to be working for him. We'll try again tomorrow! Third time's a charm, right?! Thanks for your blog comments!

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