This week we continued individual reading conferences. I LOVE learning about your child as a reader and providing strategies to help them grow. In math this week, we worked on solving comparison word problems (How many more? How many fewer?). The students learned two strategies: draw a picture to subtract and use a bar model to subtract. As always, we do the introduction and a couple example problems as a whole group, but most of the work is done in differentiated small groups. These groups are based on a pretest question they were given the day before. In Writer's Workshop, the students generated a list of elements good narratives would have. It was quite a list which tells us that they have learned so much during our narrative unit. I typed up their list for them to keep in their writer's binders. Students selected one narrative that they worked on this month to publish. They used the checklist to self-edit and revise. In case you heard, we did have two visitors this week. Brunswick has a very collaborative staff and we were happy to welcome two teachers this week to observe our MATH rotations and Writer's Workshop. I'm so proud of our first graders and was excited to let others see the great things they are doing! The class is really enjoying the pigeon books by Mo Willems. This week I read the story The Duckling Gets a Cookie. After reading the book the students worked with their table to describe the two main characters: Duckling and Pigeon. They were encouraged to think about characteristics that describe the inside and outside of each of these characters. We also identified the beginning, middle and end of this book. Later in the day I read the book The Pigeon Needs a Bath. We had a discussion about why it is important to take a bath. The students were introduced to writing an information piece. We talked about how writing an information piece is like an oreo cookie. You have the topic sentence on top, all the details are the creamy middle and don't forget to close it up with a good closing sentence. Together we worked on writing an informative piece explaining why it is important to take a bath. We will continue to work on writing information pieces in writer's workshop during the month of October. The class had a great time reading, dancing and walking today. The rain made it extra exciting because they got to jump around and talk as they roamed the halls of Huntington. After a month of hard work, the students decided which of their personal narratives they wanted to edit and publish. Today we celebrated with a little treat as each student shared their story with the class. Great job first graders!!
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This week we began holding individual reading conferences. During these conferences your child and I discussed all kinds of thing related to their reading. We talked about how they feel about reading, what types of books they enjoy, what they like and don't like about reading, what's difficult for them with reading, etc. They chose a book from our library to read to me and we discussed their reading. I shared some of my observations with them from when I'm watching them during independent reading times. I used these observations, our conversation, and all of our assessment data to set an individual reading goal for them. I showed them one strategy that they could begin using and then they practiced using the strategy. We will continue to add strategies in the upcoming weeks. We will talk about these individual goals during small group guided reading and future reading conferences. We still have many students to meet with individually, so we will continue these conferences next week as well. In addition, we are grouping the first graders based on several assessments we did in our first week of school. This instruction block is called IE time (Intervention-Enrichment) and we will be working with Mrs. Kearney's first grade students too as we have several other teachers/instructional aides to work with the groups. For the next couple of weeks, we will have a group working on mastering all 31 letter sounds (those include the digraphs like ch,sh,th,wh), a group working on reading CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, a group working on writing CVC words, and a group doing some extension activities. In writer's workshop, we are continuing to work on writing narratives. We reviewed that a narrative is a story about something that happened to them not just something interesting about them. We read several books and talked about having a strong beginning and a strong ending. Next week we will finish up our narrative unit! They are doing a great job! In math we worked on solving "take apart" subtraction word problems. Students learned to draw a picture and how to use a bar model to help solve this problems. (There are 8 apples. 3 apples are red. The rest are yellow. How many apples are yellow?) Much of our math instruction is done in small groups to better meet the individual needs of the students. Typically, we give a pretest question to see what students already know before we begin our teaching. We do a short whole class introduction to the concept and do a problem or two together. Then students are placed into 4 groups based on the pretest and observations during the lesson. These groups change almost daily and are always based on their understanding of the current skill we are working on. Here is a quick overview of the MATH rotations: M=math facts (Students have flashcards and a game/activity with dice and manipulative.s) A=at your seat (Students work on chrome books on problems involving the skill we are currently working on. They don't have to be "at their seat" though!) T=teacher (Students work with me at our small group table and receive instruction and practice the skill. H=hands-on (Students work on iPod touches on math apps) We have found that are students make great gains when taught in this manner. Students are being instructed at "just the right level." Students are not overwhelmed because they feel lost or bored because it's too easy. They are engaged in learning and it's exciting to see! As part of our writer's workshop the students learned how to add dialogue to their writing. We discussed that dialogue is used in a story to show that someone is talking. I thought it would be fun to use Mo Willem's famous pigeon books to introduce this concept. I read the story Don't Let Pigeon Drive the Bus to the class. After reading we made a list of all the things Pigeon says in the story. I showed the students how quotation marks are used to show dialogue. To practice, the students colored their own Pigeon and gave him a speech bubble. In the speech bubble the students used quotation marks to show that Pigeon is saying something. They could make their pigeon say anything they wanted. They had a lot of fun and I noticed some students even adding dialogue to their personal narratives. We will do more with Mo Willems and the Pigeon books next week in reading and writing! I was so impressed with these first graders this week! They truly were there for each other when faced with so many emotions after losing Wyatt. I saw countless acts of kindness and support.
At the beginning of the week, students worked in guided math groups to review for our unit 1 test. In wrier's workshop, students worked on adding details to describe characters in the stories they tell. This week in writer's workshop we focused on writing about small moments. To help make this concrete and memorable for students, I brought in a large watermelon. We talked about how sometimes when we tell stories about things that happened to us, they are "watermelon stories." I like to think of them as list stories where students just list a bunch of things they did. We talked about how we can narrow it down to smaller topic. This is when I sliced the giant watermelon into slices. We talked about how great stories are sometimes about a small moment (like a seed in a watermelon). Students practiced taking a story from a watermelon story (large topic) to a slice (smaller topic) down to a seed (small moment). For example a big watermelon story/topic would be "My Trip to the Beach." The watermelon slice would be "playing in the sand." And a seed moment could be "the time when my mom and dad buried me with sand so I looked like a mermaid." We will continue working on finding small moments all month as we work on narrative writing. We use mentor texts so students can hear stories from "real" authors that wrote about small moments. The students did a great job and loved eating the juicy watermelon!! What a fun lesson! This week we also enjoyed our first popcorn publishing party (see pictures above). Students have been writing every day in August. They got to select one piece to publish. They shared it with the class while we enjoyed some popcorn. They will be put together in a book in our classroom library. They students did a great job completing their center checklist this week! They enjoyed getting to go to centers. We also have been working in small groups for math so students are receiving differentiated small group instruction based on diagnostic and formative assessments. Today we learned how to identify the characters in a story. We discussed how important it is to think about the internal personality traits as well as the physical traits of the main characters. I read the story Spaghetti in a Hotdog Bun. Together we described the physical traits of the two main characters Lucy and Ralph. Next, we talked about each characters personality traits. We used evidence from the story to prove our reasoning. Ralph, the bully in the story changes and goes from being the bully in the beginning to a buddy in the end. The students thought about themselves as a character. They were able to create a poster describing their physical and personality traits. Encourage them to discuss the character traits they notice in books, tv shows and movies. We are readers and we are writersThe students are working hard at learning the literacy center routine. They are expected to complete 10 minutes of reading, 10 minutes of journal writing, and 5 minutes of handwriting. They have their own timers to monitor themselves and they get to choose the order in which they work. The students also get to chose where they would like to work. This is a lot of choice and a lot of independence for beginning first graders! So it takes some time, but they are doing great. Readers and writers need time to do both and that's just what they get to do. After completing those 3 activities, students go to an assigned center. Once this routine is established, we will be working with small groups of students on reading skills. At the beginning of the week, students worked with the hard th sound (as in feather). We read a fun story called Feathers for Lunch. In math students learned about what happens when zero is added to a number and explored the concept of adding in any order (communicative property of addition). We continued learning about the 4 zones of regulation and we talked about when it is expected that people are in the various zones. We discussed expected and unexpected behaviors for each zone. Their work in writing workshop has been outstanding and they have been so engaged in writing. This week we focused on writing in complete sentences and explored what makes a sentence complete or incomplete. Soft thThis week we reviewed the letter names and sounds. The students learned the sound of hard th heard in words such as this, them, and feather. They also learned the sound of soft th heard in words such as thumb, thin, thud, bath. To give the students a visual of the soft th sound they made a bathtub full of soft th bubbles. To continue the bath theme the students read the story Bath Time. Before reading we looked into our crystal balls and made predictions about what would happen in the story. Good readers ALWAYS make predictions before and during their reading. I was very impressed with their thoughtful ideas. We read the story together as well as with a partner. We hope you got to hear your child read this book to you at home. Beautiful oopsAs the students get comfortable in 1st grade we want to make sure that they understand a very important lesson for the year and in life: everyone makes mistakes. Often times we see children get upset or frustrated with their mistakes. I read 3 amazing books and had great discussions about how mistakes are ok and that nobody is perfect. We talked about how we can learn from our mistakes and make them into something beautiful. The first book, The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes is about a girl named Beatrice who was always perfect. She was so perfect that she never tried new things because she didn't want to make a mistake. After reading this book to the class we talked about how boring it would be if we only did things we were good at. Mistakes are proof that we are trying new things. We should always be willing to try and learn from our mistakes. Beatrice realizes how much fun she can having making mistakes. Regina's Big Mistake takes us into the classroom with a little girl who is given the assignment to draw a jungle. She gets so frustrated because she doesn't know what to draw. Regina is ready to quit. She finally begins drawing and when she is just about done her crayon slips and her sun looks like a lumpy banana. She makes the best of her mistake by making the sun into a moon. Everyone admires Regina's jungle at night. Finally I read the book Beautiful Oops to the class. What a perfect story. Throughout the book the author takes mistakes and turns them into something beautiful. I told the students that I was painting and that I made 25 mistakes. I gave them each a piece of paper with a smudge or spot on it. They turned my mistake into a beautiful masterpiece. It was wonderful to hear the students comfortably pointing out their mistakes throughout the week. Instead of getting upset by mistakes they simply said, "Oops, I made a mistake." This made my heart smile. Hopefully, this message will set the tone for a great year! "Mistakes are proof that you are trying." "No one is perfect. That is why pencils have erasers." ChromeBooksFirst grade has one class set of chromebooks. The students will have the opportunity to use these computers throughout the year to enhance their learning. They have their own Go Math Page and Raz Kid site. This gives them practice with math skills we are learning in class and reading stories at their independent reading level. They also have access to educational games. Working on computers is always a favorite time of the day.
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