Friday Fun

We often refer to Friday as "Fun Friday" in first grade, but really I think every day is fun! I could give a positive name to every day of the week...Marvelous Monday, Terrific Tuesday, Wonderful Wednesday, Thoughtful Thursday...you get the idea. :-) In any case, it was a fun Friday last week, but not in the way I was expecting. Read on...

We begin every day with a greeting, and the ball toss greeting is a class favorite. Ask your first grader to explain the "challenge" ball toss greeting. Friday's greeting went especially smoothly--I saw great cooperation and teamwork! 

Students worked on PicCollage (a favorite iPad app) to show their math thinking about things divided into equal parts (an important concept related to fractions). Most everyone has now posted a collage to his/her Kidblog, so be sure to visit and leave a comment! If  your child does not yet have this new post, it's likely due to being absent a day or more last week. There is a lot of illness going around! :-(

The most recent topics in math have been fractions and equal shares. We have also reviewed counting money (now beyond $1.00) and representing 3-digit numbers with base ten blocks/notation.

What really caught my attention on Friday was the amount of collaboration  between students. They were sharing their ideas freely and helping one another navigate different options within the app. It's neat to watch them take ownership of their learning.

Perhaps the most magical part of Friday was our finish up/buddy reading time. Many students had things to finish, so we took some time after the reading lesson for this purpose. As students finished projects, I told them to read independently or with a partner until it was time to transition to our next activity. Well, the next activity never happened! It was the kind of afternoon that just felt right to "go with the flow." The room was calm and productive for over an hour! It was absolute magic to watch students huddled together with books for such an extended period of time. I didn't want to stop them--they were getting such great reading practice. Reading books together, talking about books, sharing thoughts and ideas--that's some amazing learning! We did end our afternoon with snack and a bit of free choice, in true 'Fun Friday' fashion, before heading off to art class.

Here are some pictures I captured of our magical reading afternoon...

I hope you had a great weekend and enjoyed the sunshine and warmer weather. It looks like spring is really here!