Math Workshop update

Our math meeting/number of the day and math station routines are in full swing! Recently, we've been working on recording data using tally marks, better understanding of the calendar/date, identifying numbers before and after a given number, and proper number formation. Here are a few recent photos--students LOVE their math journals!

Monday Journals

Students started writing in their Monday Journals on the first Monday of the school year, which was last Monday. These journals are meant to be a way for students to settle into the day each Monday morning, and also a means to share what's going on in their lives. Often, students have many stories to share after the weekend! There is a note to families on the inside cover of each journal, which you probably already saw when your child brought home his/her journal last week. In short, please let your child read his/her writing to you and you can share/discuss it. There is no need to make any revisions--just celebrate your child's efforts! My hope is that this journal will become a fantastic showcase of each student's growth in writing ability throughout first grade.

During our "Monday Journal" time, I am working hard to record each child's lunch/snack drink order for the week, sift through notes from home/other papers, and take attendance. Mondays are busier than the rest of the week because of lunch forms. So, please know that I do glance over each child's writing and listen to them tell me the gist of it, but mostly I'm a cheerleader for them to write as much as they can and feel good about their efforts! My coaching and guidance in writing will occur during our daily Writing Workshop time.

Please help your child remember to return his/her Monday Journal by Thursday each week, if not sooner! Thank you!

Spelling is FUN!

Students have tried several ways of practicing spelling words during our SWR (Spelling-Writing-Reading)/Word Study time each day. Last week, students did crayon resist word writing and rainbow writing, and one day we used an online program to sort words in an interactive way on our whiteboard. I will introduce many ways to practice words over the next week or two, to help children prepare for purposeful work at the Work on Words station during our Daily Five time in the Reading Workshop.

Your child may mention "red words" to you. These are simply words that are frequently used in reading and writing and should be memorized. All of our "red words" are also sight words, but the difference is that children will be expected to be able to read AND spell red words, while they are only expected to read the first 100 Fry Sight Words by the end of first grade. I will explain more about SWR and our red words at Curriculum Night on September 26th.

Students went book shopping at school this week!

As part of our Reading Workshop, students will "shop" for books in our leveled library in the classroom each week. Their "shopping day" is the same as their sharing day. Last week, everyone book shopped on the same day so we could all get going with Read to Self time. I taught students about choosing "good fit" books and taught them the acronym "I-PICK." This means:

I choose my books
P-Purpose--Why do I want to read this book?
I-Interest--Does this book interest me?
C-Comprehension--do I understand what I'm reading?
K-Know--Can I read most of the words?

I will do a lot of coaching around choosing books that are a good fit for each child, and this will be adjusted as time goes on. As students grow as readers, they will choose from different reading levels. I have found that allowing students to choose what they read makes a large difference in their motivation for, and love of, reading. I will choose books to read during our "book club" times (reading groups), and I will continually monitor students to make sure they are shopping for books that are appropriately challenging for them to read during their Read to Self and (eventually) Read to Someone reading times. Everyone seemed to love book shopping!

Read to Self--Day 1!

Students tried "Read to Self" time for the very FIRST time today! The expectations are:

• Find a reading spot quickly
• Start reading quietly right away
• Read the whole time
• Stay in one place

We are keeping track of our reading stamina and the class sustained "Read to Self" time for an entire three minutes today! This may not seem long, but it's crucial that everyone knows the expectations of Read to Self, so we build stamina little by little. Before we know it, everyone will be reading independently for 20 minutes! It's amazing, and it WILL happen! Check out a snippet of Read to Self time today. Amazing--especially on a 93 degree day!

Math Stations

I will write more about Math Workshop and Math Stations as we progress through the year, but I am proud and happy to report that we are already into our official Math Workshop routine. Hooray! Each math lesson begins with our "Math Meeting." During this time, we sing songs about the days of the week, months of the year, money, skip counting, etc. We then look at the calendar and the date, and finally we move into our Number of the Day routine. Number of the Day was a new part of Math Meeting for me beginning last year, and integrating it made a marked difference on growing students' number sense. 

We count the number of school days, and the number of the day is simply that number. So, Friday was our seventh day of school, so the number of the day was 7. Students used white boards to record our activities during the Number of the Day routine on Friday. They recorded the number that's one more, one less, ten more, ten less than the number 7. They also recorded numbers greater and less than seven, figured out whether 7 is even or odd, and worked with me to figure out a number model that equals 7 (3+4, 6+1, etc.). We also recorded tallies for each day and add a coin to our Number of the Day piggie bank and recorded the total amount of money (7 cents, $0.07). I will take a picture of the Number of the Day board soon.

Students during our Math Meeting on Friday.

After these routines, I teach a mini-lesson from our Everyday Math curriculum. We then move into Math Stations, which include four stations: 

Meet with the Teacher

All by Myself

Technology

Hands On

Students go to two stations each day, in small groups. This is my chance to differentiate the activities and materials to meet individual student needs. So far, this hasn't happened--we are focused more on learning the routine and reviewing skills at this point--but soon students will be able to make choices of learning activities based on interest and academic readiness.  

Computers, laptops, and iPads will be used at the Technology math station for a variety of math learning activities.

The All by Myself math station will include many different activities and assignments. Pattern blocks are popular at the moment!  

The Meet with the Teacher station was a game (Top-It) on Thursday/Friday, but it will usually be working in the student math journal that is part of the Everyday Math curriculum. I can adjust the pace and activities according to the needs of each group. 

Playing Penny Dice (another math game) was at the Hands On math station on Thursday and Friday. Once games are learned and practiced with an adult, they will be included on a menu of math activities to choose from at the Hands On or All by Myself math stations.

Sharing Circle

On Friday, I introduced the Sharing Circle portion of our Writing Workshop. We officially "launched" Writing Workshop on Thursday, and students are already amazing me with their writing! Some students, who expressed concern about doing Writing Workshop, said after it was done, "Wow, that actually was pretty fun!" :-) Only one student shared on Friday, as I was teaching the routine of Sharing Circle. I assured the class that everyone will get a chance to share his/her writing, but only 1-3 students will usually share their writing per day. As much as I love to let everyone share, every day, I don't think we'd have the patience to sit through 22 stories (even though they ARE wonderful)!

 

Our self portrait project

We have officially started our self portrait project, which is part of our science/social studies unit, All About Me.

Students have watched a video of last year's project, listened to books related to this theme, and are now ready to begin creating a beautiful self portrait that will hang in our classroom all school year! These will be completed by the Open House on October 3rd. I will continue to take photos as our artwork takes shape!

Soon, we will begin a collaborative project using iPads to compare ourselves to one another and to recognize our similarities and differences. I am eager to begin this part of the unit, as I love teaching with technology and helping students discover how technology can be used in many ways--not just to play games. 

These students decided on a warm color background for their self portraits.

These students decided on a cool color background.

On Friday I showed students how they can blend white, red, yellow, and brown paints to create their own unique skin color. They will create their own blend on Monday.

Shaving Cream!

Each Friday will be "Fun Friday," when we'll do a few extra special, extra fun activities. Yesterday, students used shaving cream to practice letter formation and spelling words during our SWR/Word Study time. It was quite popular, and there were many smiling faces! I was proud of how well they did with being in control and helping to clean up the tables afterward! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Launching the Reading Workshop

Reading Workshop will be a core part of our daily routine in first grade. After all, a major goal of the first grade curriculum is to help every student become a capable and confident reader. Part of generating student motivation for reading is helping them understand the purpose of it. Why do readers read? What purposes do we have for reading? Do they know why people in their families read? Why would they want to read? As adults, we know that reading happens all the time, in countless moments throughout the day. First graders often need to be guided to see this--to understand just how critical (and amazing!) it is to be a reader. We all need "cognitive clarity"--an understanding of why what we're doing is important--to make our learning meaningful to us. They will hear me repeat the phrase, "I'm teaching you this because..." over and over throughout first grade. Setting a purpose for our learning is critical.

Our reading mini-lesson on Friday focused on the question, "Why do people read?" Students had many ideas, some of which are listed on the photo of our whiteboard screen below. We then moved on to the questions, "What do YOU like to read? Why do you like reading it?" By the end of the lesson, many students were demonstrating an understanding that reading can be enjoyable and that we often pick books to read based on an interest of ours or just for entertainment. Over time, students will have the chance to explore many genres and types of text. For now, I was happy to see students smiling while enjoying books, talking to each other about what they found, and being eager to share a book that they found in the classroom that interested them in some way. Our Reading Workshop is off to a great start!

These were some of the ideas students shared in response to the question, "Why do people read?"

I encourage students to talk about books--talking about what we read will be a regular part of our Reading Workshop, as it helps to deepen understanding (comprehension) of what we read. 

I learned that bugs and snakes are popular topics for nonfiction books in our classroom!

Eager readers!

Mo Willems is definitely a favorite author in this class!

We can read to learn about things that interest us...

Focused readers! 

A happy reader!

Look at that intense focus!

Everyone came to the "Sharing Circle" to share a book that they enjoyed reading that day. Students told the class why they liked the book. Sharing Circle will be a daily part of our Reading Workshop. Not every student will share every day, since that would be a quite a long process and a little too much sitting time! :-) 

 

Readers hard at work. For now, students are working at tables. Soon, they will choose their own books for their book bags and will also choose "good fit reading spots."