After reading the story, we had fun retelling the story by acting it out. We practiced changing our voice during the dialogue of the story as the characters interacted with each other.
We colored the characters from the story and put them in the order that they were introduced. This helps us to retell the story.
We wrote down the names of the characters and noticed that many of them rhyme too.
We studied more about characters and added to our anchor chart notebook. We learned that characters are who the story is about. They can be people, animals or things. Characters talk and can change in the story. We also learned that we can make connections to characters. We worked on character traits of Chicken Little and then we made a bubble map of our character traits.
We compared two characters from the story using a double bubble map. Here is a comparison of Chicken Little and Foxy Loxy.
We made a text to self connection when we compared how we were like Chicken Little.
We dug deeper into setting with our new anchor chart.
We read the book, Red Riding Hood and identified the characters and setting.
We learned that the setting can change. We have to pay special attention to the pictures in the story to know where the setting is. It is a good idea when retelling a story to list the characters and the setting.
Then we applied our learning and drew the three different settings in Red Riding Hood.
Our writing this week focused on ideas and topics. We used a funnel to help us discuss narrowing our topics down to something more specific. In other words, writing a story about dogs would be too broad. If we narrowed the topic down to poodles, we are being more specific, but that topic is still too broad. If we narrowed it down further to my grandma's poodle, we are beginning on the right track. And if we funneled it further down to a trick my grandma's poodle can do, it would make for a really great story.
Our focus in writing is to write about our memories and things that are more personal. We read the book Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge. This is a story of a young boy who helps Ms. Nancy (a 96 year old with Alzheimer's) find her memory again by bringing in items that are special to him. We talked about souvenirs and ticket stubs and pictures from vacation and things that are precious to us too. They make great topics to write about.
We read the book entitled, All the Places to Love. This book told about a young boy who was shown different favorite places by his family members and then when his sister is born, he wants to do the same thing and show her around. This book helped us think of places that are special to us and times we have spent with family members. Places are also another great thing to write about.
Another book used to help write about memories is When I Was Little. This book is about a 4 year old's memories of her youth. It was written by Jamie Lee Curtis and is a really cute story. The children tried to remember what it was like for them being younger, but also comparing it to what they can do now as they are older. Once again, we try to apply these skills to our writing.
We read another book for pleasure. It is a wordless book called, Once Upon a Banana. We are amazed at how much happened in the story, just because a monkey did not throw his banana peel in the trash.
Short i words were our focus in phonics these last few weeks. We have been making words in the pocket chart, blending sounds and finding rhyming word families. We learned that when a word ends in e, the e is silent and causes the vowel to say it's name. We will be learning more reading strategies next week. We worked on the "ide" word family this week and practiced making long i words.
Our sight words this week were be, run and ride. Other sight words we've learned in first grade so far are: jump, not, up, it, over and too. We work on these words during our Word Work time. Please make sure your child knows these words. You can make flash cards at home to help as we add new words weekly.
We began our spelling words this week. Each student has an individual list that is sent home to practice every other week. They also have a folder at school, so they get out their folder and work on their spelling words in class. They stamp them out, they write them on white boards, they spell them with magnetic letters, and many other ways too. I introduced them to spellingcity.com. This can help your child practice spelling words at home and it also can count as part of their spelling homework too.
Mrs. Pustka knows how much we love Pete the Cat. We got to see a clip of the new Christmas book coming out. You can watch it by clicking on the link below.
Pete the Cat Saves Christmas
Mrs. Phillips visited our classes and talked read a book about filling people's buckets. We brainstormed ways that we could do so in the classroom and at home.
On Friday, Mrs. Langham's class visited Mrs. Armstrong's 3rd grade class. We were excited to meet our buddies this year. We paired up and got to know each other. We are looking forward to reading and doing many activities with our buddy class this year.
Happy birthday Johnny Appleseed! We celebrated this special day all week by completing many activities that focused on apples. We saw a short video about his life and then we read and added color to a mini book. We tasted different kinds of apples and graphed our favorite. We completed a diagram about the parts of an apple. We read a story about all the many products that come from apples and then we graphed our favorite yummy apple treat. We colored in coordinates and created an apple tree. One of our Math stories was about Johnny Appleseed. We heard Aliki's biography of Johnny Appleseed and put the story in sequential order.
This week in Social Studies we started a conversation about culture. After reading a book we made a list about what we think culture means. We also saw a video about customs and food from different cultures.
In Mathematics we read Rooster's Off to See the World and then figured out how many animals followed Rooster.
Also, we read Eat Your Peas and then drew different combinations for 7 peas and carrots.
Quick Images is a game we play to look for patterns and combinations.
Zero the Hero made an appearance on the 20th day of school. We read a funny book about nothing. We completed a number 20 page and played Elevator Ride (a game about getting to the 20th floor). We also made a design using 20 pattern blocks.
In Health we learned about the importance of eating fruits and vegetables.
In Science we talked brainstormed what we think we know about matter. In our Logs we recorded where we have seen water and how we use this resource. We observed Sammy eating a red apple. We think he prefers the skin.
Remember ... book club orders are due Friday.
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