Class 1M's Happy Campers: Our First Two Weeks of First Grade!

It has been a fun and busy first two weeks of First Grade! We have been busy learning the routines of First Grade and spending time with our classmates. Our classroom theme this year is camping . Here are Class 1M's Happy Campers!

Read S'more Books
In Reading the children have been learning the routines of Reading Workshop. We went Book Shopping and got our very own book boxes to keep our Just Right books in. We have been reviewing our consonant sounds, rhyming words, syllabication, and sight words this week. We listened to the stories ABC I Like Me and I Like Me by Nancy Carlson and we also read Alphabet Mystery by Audrey Wood. We also began to work on alliteration and read the book A My Name is Alice, which is chock full of examples of alliteration. The children began to work in daily Literacy Centers to reinforce the skills that we were working on. Here are some pictures of the children working in centers...

Read the Room

String a Sight Word


Magnetic Letters

String a Sight Word

Beginning Sounds


Stamp the Missing Letter

We also worked on different reading strategies that Good Readers use. We learned that good readers read from left to right, take a picture walk before they read, make predictions, point to the words with their finger, use pictures, and they look at the first letter of a word and the picture to help them figure out an unfamiliar word.

Pointing to the words

Using a Magic Eye pointer to use pictures and 1st letter

Author Study Fun!

We have been reading many of Melanie Watt's Scaredy Squirrel stories. Scaredy Squirrel is a lovable character that is scared of many things. In his books he is scared to try new things at first but learns that once he tries he actually has fun and is not scared at all! We read Scaredy Squirrel finds a Friend and talked about what makes someone a good friend. Then we paired up and drew a portrait of our friend and wrote what makes them a great friend. They had a lot of fun doing this. We also read Scaredy Squirrel, Scaredy Squirrel goes to the Beach, and Scaredy Squirrel goes Camping. The children love these books. They have wonderful illustrations, labeling, maps, and diagrams. Check them out at your local library if you get a chance.

Campfire Stories/Writing

We have been busy working on handwriting, directionality, pencil grip, and spacing. We also worked on three FCAs this week, which were picture as big as your hand, using lines properly, and writing left to right. We began working on our All About Me books. We also wrote alliterative sentences in response to the book A my Name is Alice.

Math Fun!

In Math we worked on number formation, number sequencing, counting by 1's and 5's, and tally marks. We played a fun card game called Top It and we also played a fun game called Dice Tally Roll to practice tally marks. On Friday we bowled in our classroom and tallied the pins that we knocked down. The children loved it!