Tally Marks and Data Collection

Students were THRILLED to watch a short video on our interactive whiteboard (the "smartboard") today. Students have been learning about tally marks and collecting data during our math time. This movie is a perfect connection to our learning! After watching the video, students designed surveys to use in a kindergarten classroom tomorrow. Ask your child about his/her survey question. We'll be polling the K students in the morning. Fun! Here's the link to the video, in case you'd like to watch it at home...

http://www.brainpopjr.com/math/data/tallychartsandbargraphs/

Students seemed to enjoy the video!

This student will ask kindergarten students about their favorite flavor ice cream.

These students were exploring how frequently numbers were rolled on the dice and recording their data in a chart in their math journals. Ask your child which number was rolled most frequently. 

Building our reading stamina

Reading Workshop has been going SO WELL in our classroom. Over the past couple of days, students were introduced to their book boxes and their "just right" book bags. Today, students read quietly for four minutes, in an effort to build their reading stamina for "Read to Self" time. I used the example of training for a half-marathon to explain the term "stamina." It takes practice to get where we want to be! Tomorrow, we will try to read quietly for longer. Eventually, the "Read to Self" portion of Reading Workshop will be about 20 minutes long! We're off to a great start!

School Picture Day!

Don't forget--school picture day is tomorrow (Wednesday, September 15th)! Our scheduled time is 10:00 a.m. We will have both individual and a class photo taken. Please send in your child's photo ordering packet tomorrow if you haven't done so already. Thank you! Smile! :-)

Math Workshop

Math has been such a fantastic time in our room! We have been practicing important foundational skills such as number formation, counting up and back, tally marks, comparing numbers, and counting on a number line. Students practice math skills in a variety of ways in first grade--including games, hands-on activities, and our math journals. Last week, students worked in their math journals for the first time. These are workbooks that go along with our first grade Everyday Math program and were not a part of the kindergarten curriculum. We will explain more about math journals and the structure of our math time at Curriculum Night on September 29th. I hope to see you there!

 

Writers hard at work!

I am SO IMPRESSED with our Writing Workshop, and it's only been two days. These students are amazing--this is a group of very enthusiastic and willing writers! So far, students have learned about the structure of Writing Workshop and three ways to get a story on paper. Our Writing Workshop routine is the same almost every day--we begin with a minilesson, which is when I teach students something to help make their writing better. We then move on to "Work on Writing" time, which is when I conference with individuals and small groups. Finally, we gather together for a sharing circle, where we share about writing in a variety of ways. Tomorrow, students will be introduced to important writing tools. I can't wait!

Guidance Lessons

Mrs. McCleary has started her weekly guidance lessons in our classroom. She will be working with us throughout the school year. Today she lead a discussion about escalating and deescalating a problematic situation. Mrs. McCleary talked to the class about how it's normal to have problems with other people sometimes, but our reactions play a large role in problem solving. Our reactions can make a problem bigger or smaller. Students were invited to come up and choose a statement out of a box, which Mrs. McCleary read to the class. Students had to determine if the behaviors described would escalate or deescalate a situation. Some of the "escalating" behaviors were teasing, pushing, tattling, and being bossy. Some of the deescalating behaviors were eye contact, kind words, listening to the other person, and being willing to talk it out. Mrs. McCleary used great posters in this lesson which I will photograph up close and post soon. What a great lesson!

Brown Bag Sharing

I remembered to take photos of a couple of our "brown bag shares" today. These have been great! Thank you, parents, for helping your children select wonderful momentos of their summers to share with the class. I have learned a lot about everyone, and I know that children have enjoyed learning more about each other. If anyone forgot to send in the brown bag share items, it's not too late! We have not yet finished all the favorite book shares...so don't worry if your child's book has not made it home yet...we will continue sharing books again tomorrow. 

It was great have the element of mystery, wondering, "What's in the bag?"

This student shared a song she and her family wrote about a caterpillar!

Students are practicing polite audience behavior--looking at the speaker, raising their hands before asking a question, etc. 

Color mixing and fun with Unifix Cubes...

We had not one, but TWO, free choice/project times today. We continue to work on our self portrait project, which is based on the book The Colors of Us by Karen Katz. It took a couple of days, but now each student has mixed white, brown, yellow, and red paint to create a tone that looks like their own skin color! It was a fun process. Tomorrow, students will draw and cut out the shape of their head and shoulders and glue it to the background paper they created last week. Then, next week we will add facial features, hair, and clothing. It's a time-intensive project, but it's worth it when they're all hanging up in the room to show who's in our class!

  

Unifix Cubes are a wonderful math material and they are more popular than ever this school year. Below, you will see two groups of students and the projects they worked on with Unifix Cubes during free choice time today. It's fun to hear about their creations, and I am impressed with their dedication to their projects and cooperative skills! :-)

(Look way back in this photo--this bridge goes quite a distance!)

I couldn't even fit the whole train into this photo!

Red Words!

Yesterday, students were introduced to "Word Bird," the puppet who introduces our new "Red Words." These are frequently used words in writing and reading, that most often cannot be sounded out. We get our bodies involved when learning how to spell these words, as research shows the more involve movement, the better children remember important information. Today, we made a video so you could see our motions for practicing our first red word, the.

SWR and Reading Workshop

Today marked our first day of SWR (Spelling, Writing, Reading), which is our spelling/phonics program. Students met two feathered friends--Echo and Word Bird--stuffed puppets who help add some pizazz to our learning! They also learned about using their bodies to help them learn "red words," which are sight words that cannot be sounded out. Today we practiced the red word 'the' through "tapping," "fireworks," and "marching" motions. I hope to post a video of this soon! Finally, students practiced correct letter formation of the lowercase 't' and 'h' using our new handwriting notebooks. I posted the pages on our interactive whiteboard to model correct letter formation. We practiced these letters together since they both start on the top line and pull down. Students are taught to start writing their letters from the top rather than bottom up to help form good penmanship habits. 

It wasn't actually this dark in the room, but the photo turned out really dark!

Today during Reading Workshop, a few students shared their favorite books and then met in table groups to browse their book tubs. They were practicing finding books of interest to them--finding a book you WANT to read is key to being a motivated reader!