We focused on how to read with a partner this week. Here is an anchor chart that helped to remind us of the things we should be doing when we read together.
We know there are many wonderful books to read, including this one. This book helped to remind us that we need to find a book that interests us.
When talking with partners during shared reading, we learned that there are many things that we can share.
Mrs. Langham showed us how we can mark important parts of our book to share with our buddies by using sticky notes. We have symbols that help remind us too. A heart is something that we liked, an exclamation point is for something we thought was cool, a light bulb is for something that we didn't know and learned when reading, and a face is for something that has happened to me (a text to self connection).
We made our own stick note books so that we can keep them in our book boxes and mark our books when we are reading them. That way we can share these parts with our friends.
We practiced reading to our elbow partners and using some of these techniques.
During Daily 5 time, we practiced our reading, writing, word building and listening skills. We are building our stamina and learning so much!
We learned a new poem called First Grade. It is an A, B, C-D-E cadence poem. We practiced reading it and added it to our poetry folder. Then we read our other poems in the folder too.
Mrs. Langham gave us a piece of clay and told us to create something with it. We had fun mixing the colors and showing off our creations. Then she gave us another piece of clay and we had to add to our creation. After we finished with that, she told us to take off a piece of clay from our creation and give it back to her. Then, we shared our creations at our table and complimented each other's creations. We weren't really sure why we were doing this at the time, but then Mrs. Langham told us how this related to writing. Sometimes, we have to come up with an idea/creation in our head. It can be anything that we imagine. Then we have to write the piece and make the creation, just like we made something with the clay. Sometimes we have to go back and add more to our piece or revise, just like we added more clay. Sometimes, we have to take our a part that doesn't make sense or doesn't belong, just like we took away clay from our creation. Finally, when it is finished, we share it with our class as they give us specific compliments. We love to share our writing with our friends and it feels great when we get compliments. Here are some of our fun creations from this lesson.
We enjoyed the book, Arthur Writes a Story. It helped to remind us that stories that come from our hearts are often the best stories. We've been working on personal narratives.
We brainstormed a list of things that a pet needs and we categorized these needs. Then we read the book, Charlie's Checklist. This is a story about a dog who wants to move to the city. He writes a want ad and has a criteria list of "must haves" in a new owner. We learned that our writing has a criteria too. We are to be writing personal stories, start our sentences with capital letters, put spacing between our words, end with punctuation and we are to write at least 3 sentences before starting a new piece.
The "it" word family was introduced and added to our word families book.
Mrs. Langham's class was proud to receive a Dillo Best award at Friday's assembly from Ms. Ellis. We received this award for our study of character traits using Kevin Henkes books.
Our week ended with a surprise visitor, Mrs. Langham's grandson, Noah, and her daughter Courtney. We were so excited to see him and see how much he has grown. We were surprised at how much hair he now has.
We learned that Noah knows how to high five, so we all wanted a high five from this cool kid.
Here are some really cute students that dressed up for the Sock Hop and also later that night enjoying their friends.
Thank you to all who returned their homework to me on Friday. I only had about 75% return their homework in. It is important that your child is doing their homework each week. Grades will be taken on homework. Look for spelling homework to come home on Monday. This needs to be returned on Friday. The following week, they will have another reading response homework to complete. Thank you for your help with this.
Boy, did we use the Innovation Station this week! We saw a mini movie on Brainpop Jr. that showed us that we (scientists) use our 5 senses to learn about the world. We can record and share our observations. We dropped a penny, feather, and pencil on the carpet and then recorded our observations in our Logs.
Later, we created diagrams of the outside and inside of our eyes. These went in our Logs. After coloring a flag green, orange and black, we stared at it for a minute. Then we looked at a white piece of paper. Guess what we saw? Our eyes and brains are awesome!
We also saw a short video on Helen Keller. What an inspiration!
Afterwards we read and added color to our own mini book on this amazing woman.
In Social Studies, we learned about our country's symbols and Constitution. We sang along to Schoolhouse Rock.
You can sing along here:
Schoolhouse Rock - Preamble to the Constitution
We heard a book that taught us why rules/laws are important and where they come from.
We read a paper about our Constitution and then decided if statements were true or false. To prove our answers, we went back into the text and underlined statements.
After reading ...
... the Preamble to the Constitution inspired us to add our own drawings to go along with those powerful words.
We read a book and found out what the Pledge of Allegiance means.
We made a ribbon festooned with our country's symbols.
We like, like Mathematics ... a lot! We are problem-solvers. Every week we complete at least 2 story problems and then talk about our plans - how we solved them. We can draw pictures, use tallies or use manipulatives. Adding a number sentence shows our thinking, too.
We heard a story about a squirrel who makes all kinds of plans, but finds out plans can be changed.
This story helped us remember what the symbols >, <, = represent. We used them in a new game this week Home/Visitor (football themed).
A new strategy game, 13 is Out, used cuisenaire rods. Get your partner to place the last rod down and you win! We also played Hamster Hotel on the Innovation Station.
We read a funny, funny story about how we need to really think about the "whole picture" - get as much information as we can.
Shoes came off when we met our tally goals! Congrats!
Can you say "air freshener"? It's all good fun!
Add to all of this our first visit to the computer lab where we worked on Learning.com. Oh, and picture day. We all wore big smiles.
We are working on completing the district mandated assessments (these are given individually). In addition, Mrs. Hobbs assessed students on the TEMI - a math assessment given whole group.
