October News

We have been very busy in Class 1M.  We have been busy learning about what a community is, different types of communities, and community workers in Social Studies. We went on a fabulous trip to the Warren Township Municipal Building.  We met the mayor, a judge, police officers, fire fighters, building inspector, and the Superintendent of Public Works.  We learned all about what they do and how everyone works together in a community.  Thanks so much to our chaperones Mrs.  Dimbeng, Mrs. Janardhana, Mr.  Looney, Mrs. DiGirolamo, Mr.  Martinez, and Mr. Zubrycki.  Click on the link to a Smilebox below to see all the pictures from our trip.

http://www.smilebox.com/playBlog/4d7a67794f4455304d544d3d0d0a&blogview=true

In Reading, we have been practicing the strategies that Good Readers use.  We chunked up the words, look for words in words, patterns, and use the pictures and the first letter.  We used reading phones to work on our fluency.  We have also been working on making predictions, comparing and contrasting, and sequencing a story and the short i sound.  We started our guided reading groups this week and the children did a wonderful job.  In our literacy centers we worked on listening skills, write the room for short i, word sorts, ending sounds concentration, making predictions, and some fun phonics card games.  We read different books about community workers and we will continue reading about community workers in our guided reading groups this week.  We listened to a wonderful story called City Kid, Country Kid and another great story called My Street.

Using reading phones

Working with short i word families

Word Sort

Using a word window to look for word chunks

In Writing, we finished up our All about Me books and worked on writing three sentences or more and using proper punctuation and capitalization in our writing.  We also wrote about what we like to do in the fall.  Next week we will begin the writing process!

In Math, we have been busy asking questions, collecting data, and creating and reading graphs! The children loved learning about tally charts, pictographs, bar graphs, and using the graphs to answer questions.  We did a fun activity where the children were paired up and together they came up with a question for their graph and then had to survey their classmates, and then together create a graph.  I "moustache" you to check out our pictures below...

The First and Third Grade classes are working together to learn more about the enviroment and sustainability.  Last week we went outside in the outdoor classroom and we took our apple cores and peels outside and we buried them.  We talked about what we thought might happen to them. Then on Thursday, we went back outside and all 35 cores were gone!  We talked about how they might have decomposed or maybe some animals might have eaten them.

The First Grade has been participating in the Global Read Aloud and reading the chapter book Marty McGuire.  Schools from all over the country and in other countries are all reading the same book!  We have been collaborating with a first grade class from Wisconsin and the children are really enjoying it.  We skyped with them and introduced ourselves.  Then we created popplets based on the book and emailed them to each other.  Tomorrow we will be skyping with them and discussing chapter 5.  We all created movies in our mind to visualize what we heard in chapter 5.  Tomorrow we will be sharing what we visualized via skype.

Skyping with 1st grade class in Wisconsin

 Click on the link below to padlet to see our popplets:)

http://padlet.com/wall/t6qc5t3fd0

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!

 

Please check the sidebar for reminders, upcoming events, and useful links.

April 2013

Happy Earth Day! Today we talked about how wonderful our earth is and we discussed different ways that we can help our earth every day.  We learned about the Three R's, which are recycle, reuse, and reduce.  We wrote poems about the earth and we went outside and measured the circumference of different trees.  Then we were "trash busters" and we went outside and helped to pick up any paper, etc... We went back to our classroom and had a yummy snack... worms in dirt.

Science
We have been working on our weather unit.  We learned all about air, air pressure, air compression, and we made and used parachutes. We also used plastic syringes to do a pushing on air experiment. We had a blast and we learned a lot.  Check out our pictures below...

pushing on air

parachute fun

We also learned about the three main types of clouds, which are cirrus, cumulus, and stratus.  We did a fun activity where we made a cloud in a cup using shaving cream.  Then we used droppers and kept dropping more and more water into our clouds until finally our clouds got so heavy that it started to rain!  See our pictures below.

We learned about the water cycle and we did an experiment to show how the water cycle works.  Ask your child about it.  The children also enjoyed learning a fun song called the Water Cycle.  here is the link to watch it on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YswL4dIDQuk

Once upon a time in Reading and Writing...

We have been having a magical time reading many different versions of Cinderella.  We have been taking a trip around the world in a glass slipper!  We have read Cinderella stories from France, California, Caribbean, India, Middle East, Korea, China, and Japan and we read a funny version called Seriously Cinderella you are so Annoying!, which is told from the stepmother's point of view.  We have been learning about the rising and falling action of a story, story elements of a fairy tale, problem solution, and continuing to work on reading with expression.  We have compared/contrasted all of the characters and elements of each Cinderella tale. We discovered that even though the stories are from different countries there are so many similarities.  Ask your child to share some with you! 

We have been having an enchanting time writing our own versions of a Three Little story.  The children did a great job and we are in the process of recording ourselves reading aloud these stories with expression.  Stay tuned for a special email with the link!!! 

We are now beginning to write our own Cinderella stories.  The children decided what the title would be, the setting, good and evil characters, and today we started to write what the good character's problem is.  We will continue writing our stories this week and then move into the revision and editing stage next week.  They are so creative and it really shows in their writing!

Our class has their very own first grade penpals and we are so excited.  I have a friend that teaches in Sea Girt, NJ and we paired our students up and we started writing letters.  What a fun way to practice our writing skills.

Special News!!!
The First Grade is participating in a special project through iearn.  We sent our teddybear, Liberty to Pakistan last month and we just received the bear from a school in Pakistan.  Her name is Daisy and we have been taking her everywhere at school to show her what a typical day in school is for a first grader in America. Everyone will have a chance to take Daisy home with them for one night and then take a picture and write about what they did.  We will be skyping with the class in Pakistan and we will also be emailing each other too.  I think that the children will enjoy this experience.

Magical Math
We had fun learning all about fractions and comparing fractions. Here is one of the children's favorite activities, which is what fraction of your group can blow a bubble? 

We are presently working on our Measurement unit.  We learned how to measure using nonstandard unit and in inches.  We used rulers to measure various items and we used tape measures to measure circumference.  Check out the pictures below of some fun measurement activities.

Measuring our arm spans!

Exploring capacity