Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Rainy Day Windsocks


Essential Question that is guiding our learning: 
How do weather changes affect me?

As part of our weather unit, we enjoyed a rainy day activity which integrated science, reading, writing, and creative expression.  To begin with, students drew rainy day pictures.  They were inspired by the pictures in several books we've been reading about rain:
 
To help get the creative juices flowing, the children listened to the following  Epic Rainstorm Audio while they drew.




After competing their fabulous drawings, the children each got strips of paper and were assigned to do the following: write three facts about rain, include their favorite book about rain, and write about what they like and don't like about rainy days.


Finally it was time to put the windsocks together.  Thanks to Mrs. Gustafson for helping with this project.













Monday, March 7, 2016

100th Day Fun!

On the 100th day of school we had a great day of learning across several curriculum areas.  The following are some of the activities in which your child participated:

They entered the classroom through streamers, celebrating being 100 days smarter!




Race to 100
The children each had a 100 box grid.  They took turns rolling a dice and coloring in the appropriate number of boxes.  The first child to reach the 100th box was the winner!

  

Name Mosaics
The children wrote their names repeatedly in a 100 box grid.  Next they assigned each letter of their name a color and colored in all of the letters.  We had a great discussion about the unique patterns which emerged on the mosaics.  Here are a few:



100th Day Crowns
Some children chose to make crowns to wear during our celebration!



100 Is A Lot
Students added another poem to their poetry folders.  In order to practice fluency skills, they read these poems on a regular basis.


In order to reinforce skills learned during Fundations, children were challenged to find words with:

                              glued sounds:    /am/, /an
                                           suffix:     s
                                        bossy r:     /ar/, /er/, /ir/, /ur/, /ur/
                       consonant blends:    /fr/, /tr/, /pl/
                   consonant digraphs:    /ch/, /sh/, /th/

The following videos provide practice for the Fundations concepts we've been working on:

Bossy R
 Bossy R


Consonant Blends


Consonant Digraphs




The children demonstrated much creativity and were very innovative with their 100th day vests!  Click below to view the students' vests.






Our motor break was a special one for the 100th day of school!  The children got quite the workout, repeating a series of 10 exercises 10 times each!

Click below to try at home!




Last but not least, we celebrated Griffin and Finley's birthday!
















Monday, February 29, 2016

Thank you to our Mystery Readers!



Mrs. McKenna and J.J.




Mr. Vale and Lucas




Mrs. Denton and Thomas



Ms. Brooks and Lucas


Judging from the smiles on these faces, it's safe to say that Mystery Reader is a very popular part of the first grade experience.  Thanks for taking time out of your busy days to spend time with us.  :)







Weather


Essential Question:
How does the weather affect living things?

We joined Mrs. Gouzie's students for a science lesson with Mr. Prazar!  The focus of the lesson was on how local plants and animals are affected by the warmer weather.



 Mr. Prazar challenged our students to work together to create the “warmest” water bottle! Each group got to design an outfit for their water bottle using various materials- only 2 materials could be used! After, we put our water bottles in a cooler to see if the temperature would stay the same or drop depending on what we wrapped our water bottles in. :-) Ask your first grader what their group dressed their water bottle in!ll





We also had a fun time playing a game that taught us whether or not snow is useful for animals while hunting! Some students were mice trying to get away from the blindfolded animal. The animal was blindfolded because when there is a heavy snowfall, the animal has trouble seeing or hunting for the mice because they burrow under the snow! They have to rely on their other senses to hunt, which can make hunting very tricky. Which animal do you think found the snow useful- the mice…or the blindfolded fox!?



We returned to the classroom to check on the water bottles.  Check with your child to see whether the water temperature stayed the same, got warmer, or became colder.


We are really looking forward to our next lesson with Mr. Prazar!

Until then, have your child view some of the National Geographic Kids videos on weather:























Sunday, February 28, 2016

Opinion Writing

As part of the Common Core Standards for Writing, first graders should be able to: "Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some
sense of closure."

I have been teaching the children to remember the important elements of an opinion piece with the acronym OREO,
to which they can all relate!!

Here is a graphic organizer used in the classroom to help the children organize their thinking before they start writing.  See if your child can explain to you how OREO relates to opinion writing.



After reading the book Duck! Rabbit!, I asked the children to write about their opinion.  Did they think the creature in the book was a duck or a rabbit? The children organized their opinion piece like an OREO:

O:  State your opinion
R:  Give a reason
E:  Explain your reason
O:  Restate your opinion

The children know to include at least two reasons in order to make the piece stronger.
We also discussed several appropriate sentence starters...


I made this activity that much more meaningful by connecting it to our math chapter which focused on picture and bar graphing.
After writing about our opinions, the children made both picture and bar graphs to organize the data.



Ask your child what his/her opinion was and why.  Be sure they give you at least two reasons.  :)


The following are mentor texts we've used during our Opinion Writing unit.  Click the link below each book to hear it being read.

Red is Best