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THE BEST DAY EVER!
Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend someUSING OUR 5 SENSES!
After wrapping up our investigation of apples, we dove right into our unit on the 5 senses. Generally, students are introduced to their 5 senses in Kindergarten. In first grade our goal is to teach students how to use their 5 senses to observe the world around themA FOCUSED FALL!
Hopefully this post finds you full and happy after a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation. I know I ate well, laughed a lot and caught up on some sleep. We have been so busy at school it was a much needed break - I am sure you and your child felt the same way :) We have been CLOCKS, GARDENS AND POEMS IN OUR POCKETS! Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation for second grade! It isMEMORABLE MASCOTS!
It was wonderful meeting so many of you at conferences and finally getting to put a face to a name! As you found out last week your first grader is working hard and it is paying off! We have come a long way since September. The best ways to support your child at home are WE ARE READER DETECTIVES! This week, first graders learned that detectives use the clues to solve a mystery therefore we have become reading detectives and are on a mission to use the clues in the text to solve any tricky word that comes our way! The goal of being a reading detective is to have a "detective tool kit" NOVEMBER | 2014 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend some DOJO DOLLAR DELIGHT! Dojo Dollar Delight! September 22, 2014 Uncategorized. hnash2. As I’m sure you heard on Friday afternoon we had our first Dojo Store at school!! First graders got to cash in their hard earned Dojo Dollars for prizes at the store. Each prize was worth a different amount of $ and students had to negotiate whether they wanted one bigitem or a
APRIL | 2015 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM 1 post published by hnash2 during April 2015. With the start of April came more fun in the classroom. So much fun in fact that I am a bit delayed with the latest blog post. MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Our first topic has focused on the foundation of addition. We began by exploring ways to make the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9. Students recognized that each number can be made up of 2 parts. 2 parts when joined together make a whole (or sum). Students then began putting the two parts together into addition number sentences.THE BEST DAY EVER!
Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend someUSING OUR 5 SENSES!
After wrapping up our investigation of apples, we dove right into our unit on the 5 senses. Generally, students are introduced to their 5 senses in Kindergarten. In first grade our goal is to teach students how to use their 5 senses to observe the world around themA FOCUSED FALL!
Hopefully this post finds you full and happy after a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation. I know I ate well, laughed a lot and caught up on some sleep. We have been so busy at school it was a much needed break - I am sure you and your child felt the same way :) We have been CLOCKS, GARDENS AND POEMS IN OUR POCKETS! Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation for second grade! It isMEMORABLE MASCOTS!
It was wonderful meeting so many of you at conferences and finally getting to put a face to a name! As you found out last week your first grader is working hard and it is paying off! We have come a long way since September. The best ways to support your child at home are WE ARE READER DETECTIVES! This week, first graders learned that detectives use the clues to solve a mystery therefore we have become reading detectives and are on a mission to use the clues in the text to solve any tricky word that comes our way! The goal of being a reading detective is to have a "detective tool kit" NOVEMBER | 2014 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend some DOJO DOLLAR DELIGHT! Dojo Dollar Delight! September 22, 2014 Uncategorized. hnash2. As I’m sure you heard on Friday afternoon we had our first Dojo Store at school!! First graders got to cash in their hard earned Dojo Dollars for prizes at the store. Each prize was worth a different amount of $ and students had to negotiate whether they wanted one bigitem or a
APRIL | 2015 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM 1 post published by hnash2 during April 2015. With the start of April came more fun in the classroom. So much fun in fact that I am a bit delayed with the latest blog post. LAUNCHING OUR LEARNING! It is amazing to think we have already been in school for a month and half. It seems like I blinked and we were in October. Already we have grown so much as a classroom community and learned so much! Hopefully you all had a chance to look over your child's progress report. It is WELCOME TO 1ST GRADE! With the first week of school behind us I can safely say we are off to a great start! It has been so wonderful meeting all of my new students and many of their families over the course of the week. For those of you I have not met yet, I look forward to seeingUSING OUR 5 SENSES!
After wrapping up our investigation of apples, we dove right into our unit on the 5 senses. Generally, students are introduced to their 5 senses in Kindergarten. In first grade our goal is to teach students how to use their 5 senses to observe the world around them JANUARY | 2015 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM A snow day is a perfect time to update the blog! I hope everyone is safe, warm and enjoying electricity and the extra day off to play inthe snow.
OCTOBER | 2015 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM October 1, 2015 Uncategorized. hnash2. Leave a comment. The old saying, “Time flies when your having fun!” sure applies to our first month in first grade. I can’t believe it is already October! We have already done so much in the few short weeks we have spent together and our classroom community has blossomed! Students havemastered many
BENCHMARK BUSINESS
A benchmark is a standardized test that measures growth over time. In the primary grades students do not take the MCAS and therefore we have been working hard to create formative assessments that can track student progress in academic areas. This year we are administering a math benchmark three times a year. Students took the first one thisweek.
MAY | 2015 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM 1 post published by hnash2 during May 2015. Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation forsecond grade!
DECEMBER | 2014 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Doubles are an important math tool because they help us solve our math facts more quickly. If we know our doubles facts in a snap then we don’t need to count on a number line, use a tens-frame or ourfingers to solve.
APPLES, APPLES EVERYWHERE! Well I don't know about the first graders, but after this week I am appled out! We sure had a lot of fun with apples and ended the week celebrating Johnny Appleseed day (his birthday, September 26!) Some of the fun we had with apples included watching a AUGUST | 2014 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Welcome to our classroom blog! I am new to blogging so this will be a professional adventure for the 2014-2015 school year. Please check the blog regularly as this will serve as a digital newsletter throughoutthe school year.
MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Our first topic has focused on the foundation of addition. We began by exploring ways to make the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9. Students recognized that each number can be made up of 2 parts. 2 parts when joined together make a whole (or sum). Students then began putting the two parts together into addition number sentences. WELCOME TO FIRST GRADE! Welcome to our classroom blog! I am new to blogging so this will be a professional adventure for the 2014-2015 school year. Please check the blog regularly as this will serve as a digital newsletter throughout the school year. On the blog you will find pictures of your child in the classroom, exciting learning opportunities MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Happy New Year to all! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and a relaxing vacation. It is always nice to have a few extra days after the New Year to rest up before returning to school – I certainly took advantage of it!THE BEST DAY EVER!
Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend some HNASH2 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM | PAGE 3 Something very exciting has started in first grade. can you guess what it is?? READERS WORKSHOP!!. And boy are we excited about it!! Students were introduced to readers workshop in Kindergarten at Jefferson so we were all very excited to see it on our schedule. LAUNCHING OUR LEARNING! It is amazing to think we have already been in school for a month and half. It seems like I blinked and we were in October. Already we have grown so much as a classroom community and learned so much! Hopefully you all had a chance to look over your child's progress report. It is WE ARE READER DETECTIVES! This week, first graders learned that detectives use the clues to solve a mystery therefore we have become reading detectives and are on a mission to use the clues in the text to solve any tricky word that comes our way! The goal of being a reading detective is to have a "detective tool kit"MEMORABLE MASCOTS!
It was wonderful meeting so many of you at conferences and finally getting to put a face to a name! As you found out last week your first grader is working hard and it is paying off! We have come a long way since September. The best ways to support your child at home are NOVEMBER | 2014 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend some MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM It is amazing to think we have already been in school for a month and half. It seems like I blinked and we were in October. Already we have grown so much as a classroom community and learned so much! MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Our first topic has focused on the foundation of addition. We began by exploring ways to make the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9. Students recognized that each number can be made up of 2 parts. 2 parts when joined together make a whole (or sum). Students then began putting the two parts together into addition number sentences. WELCOME TO FIRST GRADE! Welcome to our classroom blog! I am new to blogging so this will be a professional adventure for the 2014-2015 school year. Please check the blog regularly as this will serve as a digital newsletter throughout the school year. On the blog you will find pictures of your child in the classroom, exciting learning opportunities MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Happy New Year to all! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and a relaxing vacation. It is always nice to have a few extra days after the New Year to rest up before returning to school – I certainly took advantage of it!THE BEST DAY EVER!
Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend some HNASH2 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM | PAGE 3 Something very exciting has started in first grade. can you guess what it is?? READERS WORKSHOP!!. And boy are we excited about it!! Students were introduced to readers workshop in Kindergarten at Jefferson so we were all very excited to see it on our schedule. LAUNCHING OUR LEARNING! It is amazing to think we have already been in school for a month and half. It seems like I blinked and we were in October. Already we have grown so much as a classroom community and learned so much! Hopefully you all had a chance to look over your child's progress report. It is WE ARE READER DETECTIVES! This week, first graders learned that detectives use the clues to solve a mystery therefore we have become reading detectives and are on a mission to use the clues in the text to solve any tricky word that comes our way! The goal of being a reading detective is to have a "detective tool kit"MEMORABLE MASCOTS!
It was wonderful meeting so many of you at conferences and finally getting to put a face to a name! As you found out last week your first grader is working hard and it is paying off! We have come a long way since September. The best ways to support your child at home are NOVEMBER | 2014 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend some MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM It is amazing to think we have already been in school for a month and half. It seems like I blinked and we were in October. Already we have grown so much as a classroom community and learned so much! MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Our first topic has focused on the foundation of addition. We began by exploring ways to make the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9. Students recognized that each number can be made up of 2 parts. 2 parts when joined together make a whole (or sum). Students then began putting the two parts together into addition number sentences. ABOUT | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM This is an example of a page. Unlike posts, which are displayed on your blog’s front page in the order they’re published, pages are better suited for more timeless content that you want to be easily accessible, like your About or Contact information. Click the Edit link to make changes to this page or add WELCOME TO 1ST GRADE! With the first week of school behind us I can safely say we are off to a great start! It has been so wonderful meeting all of my new students and many of their families over the course of the week. For those of you I have not met yet, I look forward to seeingTHE FIRST WEEK!
We have officially finished our first week of first grade and from all of the smiling faces leaving Friday afternoon I'd say it was a success! It has been wonderful meeting so many new first grade students and our classroom community is quickly forming. Hopefully you had a chance to read this week's Nash News SEPTEMBER | 2016 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM 1 post published by hnash2 during September 2016. As many of you know this year brought many changes around the school. We have now welcomed Kindergarten back to the building, moved classrooms all around the school and introduced many new teachers! NOVEMBER | 2016 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM 1 post published by hnash2 during November 2016. Hopefully this post finds you full and happy after a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation.BENCHMARK BUSINESS
A benchmark is a standardized test that measures growth over time. In the primary grades students do not take the MCAS and therefore we have been working hard to create formative assessments that can track student progress in academic areas. This year we are administering a math benchmark three times a year. Students took the first one thisweek.
AWESOME APRIL
With the start of April came more fun in the classroom. So much fun in fact that I am a bit delayed with the latest blog post. Hopefully this vacation week is off to a great start and some fun memories have been created! It sounded like many students had some fun plans lined up MAY | 2015 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM 1 post published by hnash2 during May 2015. Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation forsecond grade!
DOJO DOLLAR DELIGHT! Dojo Dollar Delight! September 22, 2014 Uncategorized. hnash2. As I’m sure you heard on Friday afternoon we had our first Dojo Store at school!! First graders got to cash in their hard earned Dojo Dollars for prizes at the store. Each prize was worth a different amount of $ and students had to negotiate whether they wanted one bigitem or a
MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Our first topic has focused on the foundation of addition. We began by exploring ways to make the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9. Students recognized that each number can be made up of 2 parts. 2 parts when joined together make a whole (or sum). Students then began putting the two parts together into addition number sentences.USING OUR 5 SENSES!
After wrapping up our investigation of apples, we dove right into our unit on the 5 senses. Generally, students are introduced to their 5 senses in Kindergarten. In first grade our goal is to teach students how to use their 5 senses to observe the world around themTHE BEST DAY EVER!
Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend someA FOCUSED FALL!
Hopefully this post finds you full and happy after a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation. I know I ate well, laughed a lot and caught up on some sleep. We have been so busy at school it was a much needed break - I am sure you and your child felt the same way :) We have been CLOCKS, GARDENS AND POEMS IN OUR POCKETS! Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation for second grade! It isWE ARE ALL READERS!
Something very exciting has started in first grade. can you guess what it is?? READERS WORKSHOP!!. And boy are we excited about it!! Students were introduced to readers workshop in Kindergarten at Jefferson so we were all very excited to see it on our schedule. We began readers workshop by learning all of the waysTHE FIRST WEEK!
We have officially finished our first week of first grade and from all of the smiling faces leaving Friday afternoon I'd say it was a success! It has been wonderful meeting so many new first grade students and our classroom community is quickly forming. Hopefully you had a chance to read this week's Nash News FEATHERS, FEATHERS, EVERYWHERE! The goal is to expose students to all sorts of strategies and then they can apply them independently when approaching math facts (some strategies work better for some than they do for others). Here are some of the strategies we have tried: Look for friends of 10. Count on from the smaller number. Look for doubles. PALS! | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Thank you all for being patient between blog posts. This time of year is always hectic - both at school and at home - so it just didn't happen last week! Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate and hopefully many of you are finished with your Christmas shopping. It sure is coming quickly! This time MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM It is amazing to think we have already been in school for a month and half. It seems like I blinked and we were in October. Already we have grown so much as a classroom community and learned so much! MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Our first topic has focused on the foundation of addition. We began by exploring ways to make the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9. Students recognized that each number can be made up of 2 parts. 2 parts when joined together make a whole (or sum). Students then began putting the two parts together into addition number sentences.USING OUR 5 SENSES!
After wrapping up our investigation of apples, we dove right into our unit on the 5 senses. Generally, students are introduced to their 5 senses in Kindergarten. In first grade our goal is to teach students how to use their 5 senses to observe the world around themTHE BEST DAY EVER!
Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend someA FOCUSED FALL!
Hopefully this post finds you full and happy after a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation. I know I ate well, laughed a lot and caught up on some sleep. We have been so busy at school it was a much needed break - I am sure you and your child felt the same way :) We have been CLOCKS, GARDENS AND POEMS IN OUR POCKETS! Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation for second grade! It isWE ARE ALL READERS!
Something very exciting has started in first grade. can you guess what it is?? READERS WORKSHOP!!. And boy are we excited about it!! Students were introduced to readers workshop in Kindergarten at Jefferson so we were all very excited to see it on our schedule. We began readers workshop by learning all of the waysTHE FIRST WEEK!
We have officially finished our first week of first grade and from all of the smiling faces leaving Friday afternoon I'd say it was a success! It has been wonderful meeting so many new first grade students and our classroom community is quickly forming. Hopefully you had a chance to read this week's Nash News FEATHERS, FEATHERS, EVERYWHERE! The goal is to expose students to all sorts of strategies and then they can apply them independently when approaching math facts (some strategies work better for some than they do for others). Here are some of the strategies we have tried: Look for friends of 10. Count on from the smaller number. Look for doubles. PALS! | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Thank you all for being patient between blog posts. This time of year is always hectic - both at school and at home - so it just didn't happen last week! Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate and hopefully many of you are finished with your Christmas shopping. It sure is coming quickly! This time MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM It is amazing to think we have already been in school for a month and half. It seems like I blinked and we were in October. Already we have grown so much as a classroom community and learned so much!USING OUR 5 SENSES!
After wrapping up our investigation of apples, we dove right into our unit on the 5 senses. Generally, students are introduced to their 5 senses in Kindergarten. In first grade our goal is to teach students how to use their 5 senses to observe the world around them LAUNCHING OUR LEARNING! It is amazing to think we have already been in school for a month and half. It seems like I blinked and we were in October. Already we have grown so much as a classroom community and learned so much! Hopefully you all had a chance to look over your child's progress report. It is CLOCKS, GARDENS AND POEMS IN OUR POCKETS! Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation for second grade! It isTHE FIRST WEEK!
We have officially finished our first week of first grade and from all of the smiling faces leaving Friday afternoon I'd say it was a success! It has been wonderful meeting so many new first grade students and our classroom community is quickly forming. Hopefully you had a chance to read this week's Nash News WE ARE READER DETECTIVES! This week, first graders learned that detectives use the clues to solve a mystery therefore we have become reading detectives and are on a mission to use the clues in the text to solve any tricky word that comes our way! The goal of being a reading detective is to have a "detective tool kit"WE ARE ALL READERS!
Something very exciting has started in first grade. can you guess what it is?? READERS WORKSHOP!!. And boy are we excited about it!! Students were introduced to readers workshop in Kindergarten at Jefferson so we were all very excited to see it on our schedule. We began readers workshop by learning all of the waysBENCHMARK BUSINESS
A benchmark is a standardized test that measures growth over time. In the primary grades students do not take the MCAS and therefore we have been working hard to create formative assessments that can track student progress in academic areas. This year we are administering a math benchmark three times a year. Students took the first one thisweek.
RAINFOREST RESEARCH
It is hard to believe that we are embarking on our first full week back to school in over a month! Since our first blizzard of 2015 we have endured lots of snow AND lots of missed school so it sure feels good to be back (and I'm sure you all are happy to send A NEW YEAR BRINGS MORE LEARNING! A New Year Brings More Learning! January 11, 2015 Uncategorized. hnash2. Happy New Year to all! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and a relaxing vacation. It is always nice to have a few extra days after the New Year to rest up before returning to school – I certainly took advantage of it! One of the best surprises uponreturning
AUGUST | 2014 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM 1 post published by hnash2 during August 2014. Welcome to our classroom blog! I am new to blogging so this will be a professional adventure for the 2014-2015 school year. MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Our first topic has focused on the foundation of addition. We began by exploring ways to make the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9. Students recognized that each number can be made up of 2 parts. 2 parts when joined together make a whole (or sum). Students then began putting the two parts together into addition number sentences.USING OUR 5 SENSES!
After wrapping up our investigation of apples, we dove right into our unit on the 5 senses. Generally, students are introduced to their 5 senses in Kindergarten. In first grade our goal is to teach students how to use their 5 senses to observe the world around themTHE BEST DAY EVER!
Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend someA FOCUSED FALL!
Hopefully this post finds you full and happy after a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation. I know I ate well, laughed a lot and caught up on some sleep. We have been so busy at school it was a much needed break - I am sure you and your child felt the same way :) We have been CLOCKS, GARDENS AND POEMS IN OUR POCKETS! Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation for second grade! It isWE ARE ALL READERS!
Something very exciting has started in first grade. can you guess what it is?? READERS WORKSHOP!!. And boy are we excited about it!! Students were introduced to readers workshop in Kindergarten at Jefferson so we were all very excited to see it on our schedule. We began readers workshop by learning all of the waysTHE FIRST WEEK!
We have officially finished our first week of first grade and from all of the smiling faces leaving Friday afternoon I'd say it was a success! It has been wonderful meeting so many new first grade students and our classroom community is quickly forming. Hopefully you had a chance to read this week's Nash News FEATHERS, FEATHERS, EVERYWHERE! The goal is to expose students to all sorts of strategies and then they can apply them independently when approaching math facts (some strategies work better for some than they do for others). Here are some of the strategies we have tried: Look for friends of 10. Count on from the smaller number. Look for doubles. PALS! | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Thank you all for being patient between blog posts. This time of year is always hectic - both at school and at home - so it just didn't happen last week! Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate and hopefully many of you are finished with your Christmas shopping. It sure is coming quickly! This time MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM It is amazing to think we have already been in school for a month and half. It seems like I blinked and we were in October. Already we have grown so much as a classroom community and learned so much! MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Our first topic has focused on the foundation of addition. We began by exploring ways to make the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9. Students recognized that each number can be made up of 2 parts. 2 parts when joined together make a whole (or sum). Students then began putting the two parts together into addition number sentences.USING OUR 5 SENSES!
After wrapping up our investigation of apples, we dove right into our unit on the 5 senses. Generally, students are introduced to their 5 senses in Kindergarten. In first grade our goal is to teach students how to use their 5 senses to observe the world around themTHE BEST DAY EVER!
Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend someA FOCUSED FALL!
Hopefully this post finds you full and happy after a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation. I know I ate well, laughed a lot and caught up on some sleep. We have been so busy at school it was a much needed break - I am sure you and your child felt the same way :) We have been CLOCKS, GARDENS AND POEMS IN OUR POCKETS! Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation for second grade! It isWE ARE ALL READERS!
Something very exciting has started in first grade. can you guess what it is?? READERS WORKSHOP!!. And boy are we excited about it!! Students were introduced to readers workshop in Kindergarten at Jefferson so we were all very excited to see it on our schedule. We began readers workshop by learning all of the waysTHE FIRST WEEK!
We have officially finished our first week of first grade and from all of the smiling faces leaving Friday afternoon I'd say it was a success! It has been wonderful meeting so many new first grade students and our classroom community is quickly forming. Hopefully you had a chance to read this week's Nash News FEATHERS, FEATHERS, EVERYWHERE! The goal is to expose students to all sorts of strategies and then they can apply them independently when approaching math facts (some strategies work better for some than they do for others). Here are some of the strategies we have tried: Look for friends of 10. Count on from the smaller number. Look for doubles. PALS! | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Thank you all for being patient between blog posts. This time of year is always hectic - both at school and at home - so it just didn't happen last week! Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate and hopefully many of you are finished with your Christmas shopping. It sure is coming quickly! This time MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM It is amazing to think we have already been in school for a month and half. It seems like I blinked and we were in October. Already we have grown so much as a classroom community and learned so much!USING OUR 5 SENSES!
After wrapping up our investigation of apples, we dove right into our unit on the 5 senses. Generally, students are introduced to their 5 senses in Kindergarten. In first grade our goal is to teach students how to use their 5 senses to observe the world around them LAUNCHING OUR LEARNING! It is amazing to think we have already been in school for a month and half. It seems like I blinked and we were in October. Already we have grown so much as a classroom community and learned so much! Hopefully you all had a chance to look over your child's progress report. It is CLOCKS, GARDENS AND POEMS IN OUR POCKETS! Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation for second grade! It isTHE FIRST WEEK!
We have officially finished our first week of first grade and from all of the smiling faces leaving Friday afternoon I'd say it was a success! It has been wonderful meeting so many new first grade students and our classroom community is quickly forming. Hopefully you had a chance to read this week's Nash News WE ARE READER DETECTIVES! This week, first graders learned that detectives use the clues to solve a mystery therefore we have become reading detectives and are on a mission to use the clues in the text to solve any tricky word that comes our way! The goal of being a reading detective is to have a "detective tool kit"WE ARE ALL READERS!
Something very exciting has started in first grade. can you guess what it is?? READERS WORKSHOP!!. And boy are we excited about it!! Students were introduced to readers workshop in Kindergarten at Jefferson so we were all very excited to see it on our schedule. We began readers workshop by learning all of the waysBENCHMARK BUSINESS
A benchmark is a standardized test that measures growth over time. In the primary grades students do not take the MCAS and therefore we have been working hard to create formative assessments that can track student progress in academic areas. This year we are administering a math benchmark three times a year. Students took the first one thisweek.
RAINFOREST RESEARCH
It is hard to believe that we are embarking on our first full week back to school in over a month! Since our first blizzard of 2015 we have endured lots of snow AND lots of missed school so it sure feels good to be back (and I'm sure you all are happy to send A NEW YEAR BRINGS MORE LEARNING! A New Year Brings More Learning! January 11, 2015 Uncategorized. hnash2. Happy New Year to all! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and a relaxing vacation. It is always nice to have a few extra days after the New Year to rest up before returning to school – I certainly took advantage of it! One of the best surprises uponreturning
AUGUST | 2014 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM 1 post published by hnash2 during August 2014. Welcome to our classroom blog! I am new to blogging so this will be a professional adventure for the 2014-2015 school year. MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Our first topic has focused on the foundation of addition. We began by exploring ways to make the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9. Students recognized that each number can be made up of 2 parts. 2 parts when joined together make a whole (or sum). Students then began putting the two parts together into addition number sentences. WE ARE READER DETECTIVES! This week, first graders learned that detectives use the clues to solve a mystery therefore we have become reading detectives and are on a mission to use the clues in the text to solve any tricky word that comes our way! The goal of being a reading detective is to have a "detective tool kit"USING OUR 5 SENSES!
After wrapping up our investigation of apples, we dove right into our unit on the 5 senses. Generally, students are introduced to their 5 senses in Kindergarten. In first grade our goal is to teach students how to use their 5 senses to observe the world around them WELCOME TO FIRST GRADE! Welcome to our classroom blog! I am new to blogging so this will be a professional adventure for the 2014-2015 school year. Please check the blog regularly as this will serve as a digital newsletter throughout the school year. On the blog you will find pictures of your child in the classroom, exciting learning opportunitiesTHE BEST DAY EVER!
Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend some CLOCKS, GARDENS AND POEMS IN OUR POCKETS! Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation for second grade! It isMEMORABLE MASCOTS!
It was wonderful meeting so many of you at conferences and finally getting to put a face to a name! As you found out last week your first grader is working hard and it is paying off! We have come a long way since September. The best ways to support your child at home are FEATHERS, FEATHERS, EVERYWHERE! The goal is to expose students to all sorts of strategies and then they can apply them independently when approaching math facts (some strategies work better for some than they do for others). Here are some of the strategies we have tried: Look for friends of 10. Count on from the smaller number. Look for doubles. PALS! | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Thank you all for being patient between blog posts. This time of year is always hectic - both at school and at home - so it just didn't happen last week! Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate and hopefully many of you are finished with your Christmas shopping. It sure is coming quickly! This time NOVEMBER | 2014 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend some MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Our first topic has focused on the foundation of addition. We began by exploring ways to make the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9. Students recognized that each number can be made up of 2 parts. 2 parts when joined together make a whole (or sum). Students then began putting the two parts together into addition number sentences. WE ARE READER DETECTIVES! This week, first graders learned that detectives use the clues to solve a mystery therefore we have become reading detectives and are on a mission to use the clues in the text to solve any tricky word that comes our way! The goal of being a reading detective is to have a "detective tool kit"USING OUR 5 SENSES!
After wrapping up our investigation of apples, we dove right into our unit on the 5 senses. Generally, students are introduced to their 5 senses in Kindergarten. In first grade our goal is to teach students how to use their 5 senses to observe the world around them WELCOME TO FIRST GRADE! Welcome to our classroom blog! I am new to blogging so this will be a professional adventure for the 2014-2015 school year. Please check the blog regularly as this will serve as a digital newsletter throughout the school year. On the blog you will find pictures of your child in the classroom, exciting learning opportunitiesTHE BEST DAY EVER!
Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend some CLOCKS, GARDENS AND POEMS IN OUR POCKETS! Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation for second grade! It isMEMORABLE MASCOTS!
It was wonderful meeting so many of you at conferences and finally getting to put a face to a name! As you found out last week your first grader is working hard and it is paying off! We have come a long way since September. The best ways to support your child at home are FEATHERS, FEATHERS, EVERYWHERE! The goal is to expose students to all sorts of strategies and then they can apply them independently when approaching math facts (some strategies work better for some than they do for others). Here are some of the strategies we have tried: Look for friends of 10. Count on from the smaller number. Look for doubles. PALS! | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Thank you all for being patient between blog posts. This time of year is always hectic - both at school and at home - so it just didn't happen last week! Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate and hopefully many of you are finished with your Christmas shopping. It sure is coming quickly! This time NOVEMBER | 2014 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM Guessing from all the first grade feedback I received on Friday, I am guessing many of you already know “It was the best day ever!!”. We had so much fun at the Pumpkin Palooza and I would like to give a big thank you to Robin Mahrouk (Cole’s mom), Catherine Boylan (Riley’s mom), Laurie Bates (Jonathan’s mom) and Brenda Gillan (Lindsay’s mom) for coming in to volunteer and lend someA FOCUSED FALL!
Hopefully this post finds you full and happy after a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation. I know I ate well, laughed a lot and caught up on some sleep. We have been so busy at school it was a much needed break - I am sure you and your child felt the same way :) We have beenBENCHMARK BUSINESS
A benchmark is a standardized test that measures growth over time. In the primary grades students do not take the MCAS and therefore we have been working hard to create formative assessments that can track student progress in academic areas. This year we are administering a math benchmark three times a year. Students took the first one thisweek.
JANUARY | 2015 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM 2 posts published by hnash2 during January 2015. Towards the end of the week we began Topic 6 and transitioned our thinking to subtraction facts up to 20 and how we can use addition facts to help us solvesubtraction.
MAY | 2015 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM 1 post published by hnash2 during May 2015. Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation forsecond grade!
A NEW YEAR BRINGS MORE LEARNING! Happy New Year to all! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and a relaxing vacation. It is always nice to have a few extra days after the New Year to rest up before returning to school - I certainly took advantage of it! One of the best surprises upon returning toschool was
SEPTEMBER | 2016 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM 1 post published by hnash2 during September 2016. As many of you know this year brought many changes around the school. We have now welcomed Kindergarten back to the building, moved classrooms all around the school and introduced many new teachers! APPLES, APPLES EVERYWHERE! Well I don't know about the first graders, but after this week I am appled out! We sure had a lot of fun with apples and ended the week celebrating Johnny Appleseed day (his birthday, September 26!) Some of the fun we had with apples included watching aAWESOME APRIL
With the start of April came more fun in the classroom. So much fun in fact that I am a bit delayed with the latest blog post. Hopefully this vacation week is off to a great start and some fun memories have been created! It sounded like many students had some fun plans lined up SEPTEMBER | 2014 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM September 6, 2014 Uncategorized. hnash2. Leave a comment. We have officially finished our first week of first grade and from all of the smiling faces leaving Friday afternoon I’d say it was a success! It has been wonderful meeting so many new first grade students and our classroom community is quickly forming. AUGUST | 2014 | MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM 1 post published by hnash2 during August 2014. Welcome to our classroom blog! I am new to blogging so this will be a professional adventure for the 2014-2015 school year. MRS. NASH'S FIRST GRADE CLASSROOM A LOOK INTO LIFE IN FIRST GRADE AT MEMORIAL PARK SCHOOL!Skip to content
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A FOCUSED FALL!
November 28, 2016
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Hopefully this post finds you full and happy after a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation. I know I ate well, laughed a lot and caught up on some sleep. We have been so busy at school it was a much needed break – I am sure you and your child felt the same way We have been SO busy in fact that it has been hard to find time to post about all of the exciting learning taking place in first grade. Looking back since the middle of October we have expanded so much as learners – it was wonderful meeting everyone at conferences and showing off all the progress your child is making. Please make sure to take the time to review the conference guide I provided with your first grader so he/she can take ownership over all of the learning that has taken place since September. _Here’s what we have been learning…._ Readers Workshop has focused heavily on learning reading strategies to support students in word solving when reading new text. Once students are able to add multiple reading strategies to their reading “toolboxes” the idea of independent reading becomes a little less scary or overwhelming because they have many ideas for how to approach new words that they have never seen before. I always observe big growth in readers after this unit is complete! Some of our mini-lessons included… * Good readers look at the cover and title and think what the book will be about before reading * Good readers look carefully at who the characters are, where andwhat they are doing
* Good readers are word detectives – they keep the book in their heads to solve new words by thinking “What might this say?” * Good readers match new words to the picture (EAGLE EYE) * Good readers look at the beginning, middle and end of a new word to see what makes sense * Good readers look for a pattern * Good readers use what they know about other words (if you can read MY you can read BY) * Good readers chunk it out (CHUNKY MONKEY) * Good readers flip the vowel (FLIPPY DOLPHIN) * Good readers skip it, and hop back at the end of the sentence (SKIPPY FROG) * Good readers read words they know quickly (trick words) and moveon
* Good readers are speedy by solving words using more than onestrategy
* Good readers can use a partner to help them word solve Our favorite part of learning the word solving strategies was our culminating activity. We got to go to Mrs. Folsom’s kindergarten classroom and teach the kindergartners our strategies. Pairs of students each took a strategy to present and stood up in front of the kindergartners using our class anchor chart. After presenting we got to read books we brought to the kindergartners to show off our skills! After exploring our strategies we also looked at connections. Connections are important when reading because it helps the reader better understand the story. We learned how schema (all the knowledge we already have in our brains) helps us to make connections. There are 3 different kinds of connections…* Text-to-Self
* Text-to-Text
* Text-to-World
We also explored how we can understand how a character feels by putting ourselves in the story. It was fun sharing our text-to-self connections! And in our technology savvy world we developed new understanding that “text” is not just something you can send with your phone – it is another word for a _book_ too! In Writers Workshop we have been busy working on understanding personal narratives and how to add details to our writing. Attached to one of the weekly Nash News was our narrative writing diamond (pictured below). The goal of the Narrative diamond is to provide a visual for students to understand that narrative stories are written in order and have a beginning, middle and end. Also, the middle is the largest portion of the narrative because it provides multipleevents and details.
Using our narrative diamond we began the process of writing 5 page stories. The first page was reserved for the beginning of the story, the 3 internal pages were for the middle and then last page was for the end. Students were instructed to write a true story that really happened because “self stories” are the easiest to write (although imaginative narratives are included in this genre of writing as well). Over the course of a week and a half students concentrated on writing, illustrating and “publishing” their five page stories. Although these stories did not get typed up I was able to conference with student writers and provide feedback. Hopefully you enjoyed looking through your child’s book last week! After completing our 5 page stories we transitioned our thinking to “small moment” stories. The goal for teaching first graders small moments is to model how to zoom in and provide detail. This is an extremely challenging skill and one we work on all year – first grade writers are inclined to list events rather than elaborate on specific details. We discussed how our senses can help us to add detail and tried to use them to elaborate. We will continue to work on adding detail throughout the year. Hopefully you were able to read our small moment writing at conferences! We used audioboom to record our voices reading our small moments. You can check out our audioboomusing this link:
Small Moment Writing Our math groups have been established and provide students with the appropriate mode of instruction (small group, whole class, increased independence). We jumped right into Topic 1 which explores the concept of addition. Students begin by making and recognizing spatial patterns of 6, 7, 8, and 9 on a part part whole mat. This helps them understand the basis of addition – that two parts join together to make a whole. Once this concept is mastered addition number sentences are introduced using a plus and equal sign. Next is stories about joining – students act them out and make mental movies about what is happening in the story to solve. A strategy that is introduced is drawing a picture of the story to solve. Topic 1 concludes by exploring the idea that numbers can be added in any order (the order of the parts does not change the whole). Next we jumped to Topic 3 which continues to explore addition, but adds in the tool of a tens frame. A tens frame is a great tool to use when solving parts of 10. Students can begin to find the missing parts of 10 because after laying out the part they know there are empty boxes left on the tens frame. We got really good at recognizing and making numbers on a tens frame before finding the missing parts of ten. Topic 2 will continue when we return from Thanksgiving break. This topic introduces the concept of subtraction which proves difficult for first graders every year. We began by finding the missing parts of 6, 7, 8 and 9 – we start by knowing the whole and only seeing the part we know. Using this information students need to figure out the part that is missing. This then led to creating subtraction number sentences. An important rule we took away was that a subtraction sentence always starts with the whole and 1 part (the part we know) is taken away. We spent a lot of time asking “Does my subtraction sentence make sense?” to be sure our whole was at the beginning of the sentence. We also explored subtraction story problems – thereare 2 kinds!
TAKE AWAY – Bill had 5 books. He gave 2 to Sarah. How many books does Bill have left? COMPARING – Bill had 5 books. Sarah had 2 books. How many more books does bill have than Sarah? The answer is the same, but the concept is different. We analyzed the language of the stories to decide if it is take away or comparing. Fact families were also introduced and students practiced writing 2 addition sentences and 2 subtraction sentences using the same parts and whole. We will continue working on this after vacation! Morning meeting has continued to help build community in the classroom and provide students with the opportunity to practice speaking and listening skills. We have learned more fun greetings including… * Hello to _______ So glad to see you! (song) * Whisper greeting (whisper hello as you walk around for 1 minute!) * Friends in our Class (song)* Dice Greeting
* Handshake greeting (handshakes for 1 minute!) * We’ll Cheer Hooray! (one of my favorites) * Saying _hello _with sign language * Elbow rub hello around the circle * Stand and Reach up High * Saying _hello_ in Portuguese* Hello, Neighbor!
* 2, 4, 6, 8, Who do we appreciate?! Ask your child to show your family some of our greetings – they are a quick and fun way to make everyone feel welcome Some big ideas we have been exploring in Morning Meeting include… * Being a bucket filler * Making rhymes (singing _Down by the Bay_) * Spelling CVC words* Growth Mindset
* Learning pumpkin facts * Sharing our opinion through graphs and charts * Learning about the election/voting * Practicing scooping sentences * Writing words with digraphs and bonus letters * Understanding Veterans day * Singing fun Thanksgiving songs (“I’m Glad I’m Not a Turkey” and “Five Plump Turkeys”) * Understanding what it means to be thankful * Adding turkey facts to our schema! We love Morning Meeting and look forward to it every day. If you are looking for ways to encourage your child to “talk” about school try to ask them questions about our meeting. I observe students who are so excited to be apart of our daily circles (both at the beginning and end of the day) and I bet they would love to tell you about it Our Memorial Park community has been busy over the past few weeks as well. We earned a fancy lunch for having 5 dust pan awards. We had our Book Character Parade and walked the halls of the school with many creative costumes The school nurse Mrs. Wilson came in to teach us about the reasons to go to the nurse – the 5 B’s! We voted for the class read aloud in our own polling center and votingbooth.
We hosted our fall book fair and many students enjoyed purchasing a new book to bring home! Some students came and enjoyed the Ice Cream Social – I enjoyed scooping unlimited toppings and saying hello to old and new friends We brought in our Social Studies Long Term projects and had fun sharing lots of interesting facts about our classmates. It was special to travel around the school to other grades as well to see projects in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade. We were so impressed and there were wonderful role models in older grades. We had our 2nd and 3rd PRIDE assemblies – Grace got the PRIDE award for being safe and Liv got the PRIDE award for showing whole body listening all month long. We will be working on using FOCUS throughout the month of December! Many of us earned extra recess for having less than 3 tardies andabsences!!
LAUNCHING OUR LEARNING!October 10, 2016
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It is amazing to think we have already been in school for a month and half. It seems like I blinked and we were in October. Already we have grown so much as a classroom community and learned so much! Hopefully you all had a chance to look over your child’s progress report. It is important to remember that we assess students based on end of the year benchmarks. Therefore, your child will be working toward meeting end of the year goals and may not have mastered certain standards yet. The word “yet” is so important because though your child may not be able to do it now, with lots of hard work and support in both school and home he or she may be able to do it by June. Having conversations about this will be happening this upcoming week in school and can be repeated at home. Please celebrate your child as a learner and reflect on goals for Term 2! A video your child will be watching this week about the power of yetis below:
The Incredible Power of Yet Our efforts to build a positive classroom community have continued. We have learned many new ways to GREET our friends when we come to the rug for Morning Meeting. Some of the new greetings include: * Who do you see? (Based on the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What DoYou See?)
* High Fives with a neighbor * Fist bumps with a neighbor * “Micro”waves with a neighbor * Friends In Our Class song * Knock, Knock, Who’s There? * We’re So Glad You Came to Learn and Play Ask your child to teach you some of his/her favorite greetings! We have also spent a lot of time sharing information about ourselves and the knowledge in our brains. Students have enjoyed sharing both in a whole class circle and practicing turn and talk with a friend. Some SHARE topics we have enjoyed are: * Which do you like better: apples or bananas? * Names of the people in our families * Favorite part of school * What we are looking forward to in school for the day * What we want to be when we grow up * A superpower we would want to have * Favorite color (with a color partner) * How many letters are in our names * Best thing we learned in the week* Pets at home
* How many sounds are in certain pictures * Matching lowercase and uppercase letters After observing Morning Meeting now for 7 weeks it appears that our favorite part is the activity portion. Some of the ACTIVITIES wehave done include:
* Learning poems of the week * Singing My Bonny (we stand up on every word that starts with B)* I Spy
* Cooper Says (similar to Simon Says)* Coseeki
* Ball roll (we used 3 balls at one time to practice names!) Our morning messages have begun to include an interactive portion which requires students to answer a question prior to coming to our meeting. Students now need to be responsible and check the morning message as part of their morning jobs. We have learned how to use tally marks, check marks, and numbers to answer various questions. It is wonderful to see students helping each other to read the question if someone isn’t sure what it says! Our Readers Workshop has really taken off. Students have enjoyed filling up their book boxes, finding the best place to read in the classroom and learning what their color is when book shopping! The month of September was dedicated to launching the workshop. Some of our mini-lessons included: * Building stamina as readers (we have made it as high as 15minutes!)
* Respecting the classroom library * Taking care of books * Choosing a book nook to stay focused * The different parts of a reader (eyes, ears, hands, body, mouth,books, etc)
* Making a reading plan * The 2 jobs of a reader * Partner Reading (EEKK) * Making individual reading goals * Rereading a book to notice new things (words, pictures, thinking) * Understanding how stories are put together (beginning, middle,end) * Retelling a story in order Students have also had a chance to work in their literacy centers to practice sight words, listen to stories read aloud, expand details in their personal narratives, partner read with friends and utilize classroom technology. Check out some of our readers below! Our stamina chart and reading goals: R.E.D. folders will begin on Tuesday. Students who signed up will bring home a book to read at home. It is important to provide your child with many opportunities to practice this book before sending it back in to school. This way your child will be _fluent_ and able to read it to me without any help. Encourage your child to read to many people at home to practice his/her story telling voice! Launching our Writers Workshop has also been an exciting focus for the fall. It is amazing to see how much enthusiasm students demonstrate when writing their stories and it never seems like writing time is long enough! We spent a lot of time focusing on understanding what a personal narrative is and created a student definition: _a personal narrative is something the author did in real life. _This has helped us to generate writing topics. Some of our mini-lessons have included: * Good writers always think – draw- write (in a cycle) * How to use a writing folder * Where do writer’s get ideas? (Heart map) * Trying our best as writers to spell a word and then move on * Paying close attention to the picture to tell the story * Writing stories with more than one page * Giving suggestions to peer writers * Using tools around the room to help write * Using labels, thinking bubbles and talking bubbles * Adding a cover to books One of the most exciting parts of Writers Workshop is the chance to share our writing with classmates. Sometimes books will go under the document camera on the big screen and sometimes student writers will sit with a friend and share. In the upcoming weeks we will be thinking about how to expand our stories and zoom in to include many detailsfor the reader!
Math groups have officially begun and students have loved the opportunity to move to other classrooms. This allows students to be paired with a curriculum that matches their current math skills in any given topic. A standardized benchmark test is given 3 times a year to determine what math skills students have brought with them to first grade and areas to focus on to either “catch up” or “challenge” them. Additional screeners provide more information on student knowledge as well. These math groups are fluid so your child may switch throughout the year. Topic 1 in math focuses on understanding addition. Students focus on ways to find missing parts with the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9 and then how to add numbers together to find a whole.We will explore numbers sentences and will practice interpreting stories about joining. One of the trickiest concepts in this topic is the idea that numbers can be added in any order (2+5=7 or 5+2=7). Important vocabulary to use with your child includes:* ADDEND
* PLUS
* EQUALS
* SUM
* PARTS
* IN ALL
* WHOLE
Weekly math homework will support topics being taught in school. Please sit with your first grader to complete assignments in case he/she has any questions! We have completed Unit 1 in our Fundations program. This means that students have been introduced to 26 letters and sounds. Each letter is matched with a picture/keyword that students use to trigger the sound the letter makes. We do a letter sound drill almost every day so students have made a lot of progress demonstrating letter sound knowledge. A unit test determined that we were ready to move onto Unit 2. This past week we have been working hard on blending three letter words (CVC or consonant-vowel-consonant words). We focused on mastering vowel sounds because sometimes it is hard to differentiate these sounds in the middle of words. We stretched them and learned a fun song to help us with the keywords. Students have been using their fingers to tap out words to blend and spell. Have your students demonstrate this for you at home! We will continue to focus on practicing hand writing and using verbalizations in school to support proper letter formation. If you feel your child would benefit from further practice at home beyond weekly homework please let me know and I can supply additional practice sheets. Proper letter formation and grip have been proven to promote writing stamina in later grades so we are focusing heavily on it now in the primary grades. Pencil grip: se_pencilgrip_left_right Some special activities that students have enjoyed included an investigation of apples, having a dance party to celebrate our passports, listening to Joao’s birthday story, writing our favorite memories from the month of September and exploring ChristopherColumbus.
As you can see we have been busy in the classroom. I hope everyone continues to stay dry and please enjoy the rest of this long weekend! A NEW YEAR, A NEW CLASSROOM!September 13, 2016
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As many of you know this year brought many changes around the school. We have now welcomed Kindergarten back to the building, moved classrooms all around the school and introduced many new teachers! The start of school is always exciting but these many new changes added an extra feeling of excitement in the air. Also new for me this year is the perspective of being a parent; I welcomed my son Hunter last October and was out of an extended maternity leave. It feels great tobe back!
Despite all the jitters the first few days bring we have had a great start to the year! We are working hard to build a positive learning community, become independent in classroom procedures and have jumped right into our new phonics program! Building a positive learning community is an important goal for the year. Students are excited to come to school when they feel like they belong, are significant and can have fun. Morning meeting is one way we build up these feelings in the classroom. So far this year in Morning Meeting we have…. * Learned each other’s names * Learned how to say good morning to a neighbor * Practiced using eye contact * Shared what we have heard our friends say * Used a handshake and a high five * Explored turn and talk * Sung a variety of color songs * Learned a hello and goodbye song * Learned our friends favorite animals, food, book, recess activity, indoor recess activity and even how many people live on our homes All this in only two weeks! I can already observe the excitement students demonstrate when they hear our morning meeting song go off in the morning (the signal to come to the rug). If you want to hear our song follow the link: Morning Meeting Song We have also spent a large part of the first few weeks learning classroom procedures and school wide expectations. This is part of an effort of positively reinforce expected choices school wide to ensure all students behave appropriately. We began learning how to do everyday things in the classroom and all around the school. Unpacking our backpacks… Using whole body listening during assemblies and on the rug… Lining up and walking in the hallway… Playing on the playground… Students can earn Dojo points in the classroom when spotted making responsible choices and earn Bulldog paw prints around the school. Soon a Bull dog of the day and a Dojo store will be used as incentives for all the hard work happening during the school day. Week 2 brought an introduction to our phonics program Fundations. Mama Echo and baby Echo have been a big hit and we have already reviewed quite a few letters! The first unit reviews all 26 letters introduced in Kindergarten and how to form lowercase letters. With all of the new materials and activities there is a bit of a learning curve but students have done a wonderful job respecting the tools and followingdirections.
You can expect to see a Unit packet come home in orange folders every time we begin a new unit; this is designed to help you support your child at home. We are also going to use some materials from the program to create homework. We no longer have weekly spelling tests and will instead use in school unit assessments to monitor progress over time. Stay tuned for the home component! We have also begun our Readers and Writers workshops. The workshop model provides direct whole group instruction and independent practice. We are working on building our reading and writing stamina while being independent, responsible learners. Colors have also been a fun focus and we have learned many wonderful songs to help us remember how to spell our color words. Check out the
songs below:
Red song
Green Song
Yellow song
Purple song
Fun activities included making Green Monsters, having a color spinner race, and making purple pictures with magic crayons! Listen to our choral reading: Our Big Green Monster Poem Please continue to encourage your child to get lots of exercise outside in this beautiful weather and remember to read a book every night! Homework will start soonFUN IN SEPTEMBER!
October 1, 2015
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The old saying, “Time flies when your having fun!” sure applies to our first month in first grade. I can’t believe it is already October! We have already done so much in the few short weeks we have spent together and our classroom community has blossomed! Students have mastered many of our classroom routines and demonstrate daily expected choices around the school. It has been amazing to see how many dog paws have been earned by everyone – my Dojo bank is running low! Please make sure to praise your child on all their hard work at the start of the school year As explained at Open House Night, a large part of our day is spent in a workshop model. At this point we have both our readers workshop and writers workshop up and running! We dove into reading a bit sooner than writing as the first few weeks we reserved for handwriting. Below are some of the skills introduced so far in these learning blocks:Readers Workshop:
* We are all readers! * 4 ways to read: read the words, read the pictures, tell a familiar story in your head, look for small words you know * Good readers take care of their books * Good readers warm up and stretch before reading * Expected vs. unexpected reading behaviors * Good readers use stamina (we are up to 19 minutes!) * Good readers respect the classroom library * Good readers use a book bin to keep track of their independentbooks
* Good readers know how to choose a just right book (we all have ajust right color!)
* Good readers know how to take care of their book bin * Good readers use a book nook to stay focused and know when toleave
* Good readers make a plan for reading (dinner books vs. dessertbooks)
* Good readers understand all the parts they use to read * Good readers reread a book many timesWriters workshop:
* Good writers always think, draw or write * Good writers keep their writing in a folder * Good writers brainstorm using things that are important to them (we made heart maps of all the special people and things in our heart) * Good writers find their own tools independently * Good writers try their best to spell a word and then move on * Good writers use tools to help them spell (word wall and personalwriting walls)
Spend a few moments asking your child about some of these mini lessons and see what they added to their tool box! Check out some pictures below from readers and writers workshop!Math groups have officially begun and students have done a wonderful job keeping track of their math teacher. Not only does switching groups allow us to challenge students and meet their learning needs, but it also provides a chance to promote independence and allows your child to experience some alternative teaching styles. Our first topic has focused on the foundation of addition. We began by exploring ways to make the numbers 6, 7, 8, and 9. Students recognized that each number can be made up of 2 parts. 2 parts when joined together make a whole (or sum). Students then began putting the two parts together into addition number sentences. We used + and = signs to join our numbers and record our sum. We will also explore story problems and the concept of adding numbers in any order. Our first topic test of the year will be on Thursday October 8. The best way to help your child prepare for this is to complete nightly math homework. Also be sure to review any mistakes you notice on math pages coming home in
folders.
Before math groups were up and running we also reviewed a few kindergarten concepts to prepare: * Counting using 1:1 correspondence * Skip counting (2, 5, 10)* Number lines
* Number sentences
* Tens frames
* Number stories (additional and subtraction) Check out some math work below:Our spelling groups have also started up and students have been busy in their first week! Each spelling group focuses on a different task. All week your child will work with pictures or words that follow the specific spelling rule or task. On Thursdays you will see a glued sort come home. You will notice at the bottom of your child’s spelling list that it will explain how your child is being assessed during the Friday test. Depending on the list some students may get a word marked correct even if it not spelled correctly based on what is being
assessed.
For example: If your child is working on the first sound in a word, as long as they get the first sound correct the rest of the word “doesn’t count”. You should still practice the correct spelling all week to help your child prepare but just be aware of this for thegrading system!
Since this is most likely your child’s first experience with spelling tests please don’t stress them out, but instead provide a lot of encouragement as the end goal is to see your child utilize their spelling knowledge in daily writing and not just memorize it forthe test!
Below are some pictures from my spelling group:At this point we have reviewed 30 phonemes that your child was introduced to in Kindergarten. These phonemes include the 26 letters of the alphabet and CH, WH, SH, and TH. The goal with our review is to catch up on any summer lapse and get students ready for blending (joining sounds together to read multi-phoneme words). We have also spent time reviewing the 40 sight or heart words introduced in Kindergarten. These can be found on the classroom website and should be practiced nightly. Your child may come home with word cards with 5 stickers – these are words they have mastered. Please hang them in a special spot and keep practicing them! Handwriting has also been a big focus in the first few weeks. We have reviewed all uppercase letters and are working on lowercase letters. Many students are still having trouble adjusting to writing with 2 lines instead of 3. Prompt your child to use the lines as clues and to think about tall letters, in between letters and drop down letters. The handwriting sheet that went home at Open House night should help with this. Below are some hard working hand writers: A few other fun memories from the first month of school: * Learning the color songs * Making our rainbow fish * Starting our literacy centers * Using the rhyming basket * Practicing rhymes in _Down By The Bay_ * Thinking about_ pull ups_ instead of _put downs_ with the book a
_Chrysanthemum_
* Visiting the outdoor classroom * Evacuating the bus* Practicing lock down, evacuation and fire drills * Having Andrew’s and Daniel’s birthday readers visit
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* Learning how to control our mouths that can act like volcanos * Visiting the Dojo Store Don’t forget to tweet me about something new you learned from the blog post – your child can earn 5 Dojo points! WELCOME TO 1ST GRADE!September 8, 2015
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With the first week of school behind us I can safely say we are off to a great start! It has been so wonderful meeting all of my new students and many of their families over the course of the week. For those of you I have not met yet, I look forward to seeing you at Back to School night on Monday Sept. 14th. There is no time to waste in first grade so we are already busy in the classroom. Here is a look at some of the fun activities from the firstweek of school!
_JITTER JUICE_
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In order to get rid of our first day jitters we read this book and a fun poem and got to try some jitter juice! The bubbles did seem to make all the butterflies in our tummies feel better_WILD THINGS_
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We also talked about how we are WILD to learn new THINGS this year in first grade. Using the book _Where the Wild Things Are_ we designed wild things to decorate the wall in our classroom. Our wild things are fun to look at and you will have to check them out at Back to Schoolnight!
_CLASSROOM RULES_
We learned the 5 big classroom rules and some hand motions that gowith them.
* Rule #1: follow directions quickly * Rule #2: raise your hand for permission to speak * Rule #3: raise your hand for permission to leave your seat * Rule #4: make smart choices * Rule #5: keep your dear teacher happy After learning our rules students were introduced to Class Dojo. This is a program used in the classroom to promote expected choices throughout the school day. Students collect dojo points throughout the week for following classroom rules and procedures and they can cash their points in for Dojo dollars at the end of the week. They can spend their dollars at a Dojo store that happens every other week. Students were also introduced to dog paws, a school wide reward program. Teachers all over the school can award dog paws to students. These dog paws are worth 5$ Dojo dollars. I was so impressed with how many students got paws this week! _WHOLE BODY LISTENING__
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Students explored all the parts of their body that they use to listen. You may be surprised to know its not just our ears! We will use the term whole body listening throughout the year so try it at home too! _COLOR SONGS & SIGHT WORDS_ We will spend some time in September reviewing color words and sight words that your child saw in Kindergarten. The first two colors we practiced were _purple_ and _green_. You can find the songs below:Purple Song
Green Song
After learning the songs we did a color experiment and made big greenmonsters!
We also discovered where our classroom word wall is and added the first 10 sight words to the wall. By the end of next week we will have all 40 kindergarten words on the wall! Please practice these words athome.
_SCHOOL EXPECTATIONS_ Over the course of this week and next students will travel all over the school to review expected and unexpected choices. We have learned about behaviors at the:* Assemblies
* Cafeteria
* Playground
* Hallway
We will be learning about the :* Bathroom
* Library
* Learning lounge
* Outdoor classroom
Ask your child what they have learned in all these places and abouttheir passports!
As you can see we have gotten a lot done in 4 days (and I only chose a few things to share!) Please check back regularly to find new blog posts and information about your child’s experience in first grade. If you have not started following me on Twitter yet, please find me @MrsNashGrade1. If you tweet me something you learn from the blog posts your child can earn 5 bonus Dojo points. I hope you all had a fun and relaxing Labor Day Weekend! CLOCKS, GARDENS AND POEMS IN OUR POCKETS!May 18, 2015
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Since returning from vacation we sure have been working hard! We have had many exciting events in the classroom, enjoyed a few school wide activities and have worked hard to build our independence even more in preparation for second grade! It is hard to believe that there are only 25 more days left in the school year. This time of year always seems to fly by so it will be summer vacation before we even blink. Thank you to all the parents who have helped out with some of the school events and more are coming for those who would still like an opportunity to volunteer. One of the most popular school wide events was Poem in Your Pocket day. This was held on April 30 as a culminating activity for April’s poetry month focus. Each a student and teacher at MP selected a poem and put it in his/her pocket for the day. Throughout the day anyone could stop you to read your poem. This was a fun way to celebrate the genre of poetry and provide MANY opportunities to read a favorite poem. It was a big hit in first grade! Check out some poems beingread below:
Another school wide event was our last P.R.I.D.E assembly of the year. We spent this assembly awarding students who exhibited skills in speaking and listening in the month of April and reviewing all of the traits taught this year. The 7 traits included:* Responsibility
* Gratitude
* Communication (speaking & listening)* Honesty
* Perseverance
* Leadership
* Safety (body & words) After our review we had a school wide bulldog competition between the grades. After listening to a scenario students had to decide which trait the child was exhibiting. Teacher recorders showed answers on white boards. It ended up being a 4 way tie between the grades! Whatfun!!
This past Friday the PAC hosted the bubble man who came and did a variety of tricks with bubbles. I unfortunately missed this special event, but I heard it was really cool. Here is a pic borrowed from Mrs. Mack from the show:
In Readers Workshop we have covered 2 major reading skills since vacation: INFERRING & VISUALIZING. INFERRING requires students to be detectives and use the clues in a story to better understand what the author is trying to tell you. A well known expression for inferring is “reading between the lines”. We began understanding the skill of inferring by practicing being detectives and using a suitcase full of items to guess the destination of my trip. This demonstrated that our inferences can change over time based on new clues. Next, we watched a silent movie and students had to infer many things from the action of the characters. The movie was called _Partly Cloudy_ and was a huge hit! If you want to watch it at home follow the below link: www.YOUTUBE.com/watch?v=-a6Pe1ovKHg We then took out wordless book, _Journey_ by Aaron Becker, and used our inferring skills to tell the story of a journey that a girl goes on with a magic red crayon. This is a wonderful book and one that leads to a lot of conversation and discussion. When you are reading at home help your child infer by asking them questions that can’t be answered directly in the book! VISUALIZING is the process of creating a mental image or movie in your head as you read. Students learned that this is very important when you are reading chapter books or stories with no pictures. We practiced recording our visualizations with a poem, _My Neighbors Dog is Purple, _and a short story_ The Green Giant_. Students did their best to listen and record the picture in their brains. We used our privacy shields so that our visualization pictures were not influenced by our neighbors. I was very impressed by students mental images! Next up in readers workshop we will be working on SYSTHESIS. Staytuned!
In our word work block we have been focusing on the sounds of Y since vacation. When Y is at the end of words it can make 2 sounds: E or I. This is why we say Y is a thief because he steals the sounds of these letters. When a word has 1 syllable the Y says I. When a word has 2 syllables the Y says E. See our anchor chart below:
We thought of many words that have Y saying I:* Cry
* By
* My
* Try
* Fly
* Shy
* Try
We thought of many words that have Y saying E:* Baby
* Silly
* Crazy
* Fuzzy
* Funny
* Bunny
* Dizzy
There are tons of words that follow this rule – see if you can find more when reading at home! In writers workshop we continued to work on our poetry after returning from vacation. Students wrapped up their line break poems and learned a new type of poem – color poems. A color poem is focused on 1 color and uses all 5 senses to describe the color. Each student was allowed to pick whichever color they wanted and were encouraged to stretch out the details in their poem. For example: _Short example: _Red is a fire truck. _Stretched out example: _Rec is a screaming fire truck racing to savethe day!
Many poets did really well stretching out their ideas! We then typed up our poems in the computer lab and used the new color printer to print our poem using a font color that matched! In order to illustrate our poem we used donated magazines (thank you!) to look for the objects from our poems. We also found any other objects in the magazines that represented our color too! Crayon drawings we’re used as well. Our color poems are on display in the hallway if you are interested in taking a look! In math we have been busy focusing on 3 topics since vacation: TIME, DATA AND GRAPHING and SHAPES.
TIME is always a a favorite topic for 1st graders. Students leaned how to tell time to the hour and half hour. They also practiced drawing hands on the clock to show time to the hour and half hour. We spent time understanding why the hour hand was _halfway _between two numbers when the minute hand is on the thirty (this is always a hard concept to master) and practiced the direction the hands moved around theclock.
DATA AND GRAPHING focused on reading graphs, collecting data, and creating graphs. We focused on 2 different kinds of graphs: bar graphs and picture graphs. Students spent a lot of time asking questions about graphs that were already created. Some of thequestions included:
* What is the favorite…? * What is the least favorite…? * How many more….? * How many fewer…? Our favorite part of this unit was polling the class on their favorite summer activity. We got to use the data we collected to make a tally chart and then a bar graph. Check out pictures of us polling below:
Our most recent unit had focused on SHAPES. Students begin by learning about plane shapes. Plane shapes include:* Rectangle
* Square
* Trapezoid
* Circle
* Hexagon
* Triangle
Students used patern blocks to determine how many sides and corners each shape had and created shape books. Next we will begin to explore solid figures (3 dimensional shapes). Upon returning from vacation we had one habitat left before sending habitat folders home. We explored the desert. We learned that not all deserts are hot; a desert just has an extremely small amount of rain. We looked at pictures of different deserts all around the world and at some animals that live in deserts. We enjoyed using a table of contents in a desert animal book to jump around to our favorite desert animals during snack read aloud time! Next up was plants! In preparation for our planting party and outdoor classroom garden students had to learn how a plant grows and what all plants need. Check out the plant life cycle below:
Through a fun song students learned that all plants need 5 things:* Air
* Water
* Space
* Soil
* Light
You can check out the song here: www.YOUTUBE.com/watch?v=dUBIQ1fTRzI We used this knowledge to plant sunflower seeds in the classroom which we later transplanted into our garden. Students also learned the parts of a plant and did some labeling. Our favorite activity was eating all the parts of a plant!
We had our planting party this past Thursday. Thank you to all the volunteers who came out for it! We planted many vegetables and our sunflowers. See some pics below:
STEM challenges came back this past week due to the second round of PARCC testing. The first challenge included using 3 different shapes and predicting which would be the strongest. We used books as our weights and stacked as many as we could on each shape. Many students were surprised that the cylinder was the strongest!
Next up was the cup stacking challenge. The goal was to make the tallest tower with cups. We ran into a few challenges and are excited to try this challenge again tomorrow. One group used what they learned about cylinders to build their tower – so impressive!
Our walking field trip to the library was a great success today. Students were very excited and many said they were anxious to return. This is a wonderful (and free!) family activity and one that I strongly encourage, especially during the summer months when reading often gets forgotten! See some pictures below: It has been quite a busy couple of weeks and there is plenty more to come! This time of year it is very important to check your child’s orange folder as many school and class announcements and reminders will be coming home. The end if the year is filled with many special events so it is extra important to stay on top of this. Don’t forget to TWEET me something you learned from tonight’spost!
50
AWESOME APRIL
April 22, 2015
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With the start of April came more fun in the classroom. So much fun in fact that I am a bit delayed with the latest blog post. Hopefully this vacation week is off to a great start and some fun memories have been created! It sounded like many students had some fun plans lined up forvacation!
In the weeks leading up to vacation students were hard at work and there are a lot of updates I have to share. April is national poetry month which means that we spent a lot of the day focusing on this genre (both our reading and writing workshops). Although April is almost over feel free to encourage your first grader to read some poems at home or bring home his/her poetry journal to share with youat home!
In Readers Workshop we wrapped up our unit on fairy tales and folks tales with a unit focusing on the fox as a character. In my last blog post I explained some of the preliminary lessons in this unit. In the second portion of this investigation students looked at the character of a fox in 3 other popular folk tales: * The Gingerbread Man* Chicken Little
* Henny Penny
After determining the character traits of the fox in each of these tales students were posed with the question: DO YOU LIKE THE FOX OR DO YOU NOT LIKE THE FOX? We discussed this questions using evidence from the various texts we had read and students were asked to form an opinion. We then had a class debate and students were asked to take a side. It was very interesting hearing students argue their opinion and defend it. After sharing students then had to listen as well. This was a wonderful connection to our speaking and listening goal of the month. After the oral debate students then completed a written assessment based on the same question. Students used 2 pieces of evidence to defend their opinion. It was a very thought provoking unit and students loved it! Next we transitioned into poetry and have spent the last few weeks focusing on how to enjoy different genres of poems. We talked about how good readers focus on how a poet wants their poem to be read – this includes paying attention to punctuation, line breaks, white space, shape, etc. We had fun practicing this with reading buddies and listening for pauses in our reading. Students also explored a variety of different kinds of poems including: rhyming, acrostic, shape/ concrete, list, and cinquain. After vacation we will be taking a close look at poems and using some close reading symbols to mark up a poemwith our pencils.
April 30th is Poem in Your Pocket day at M.P. which means that students and teachers in all grades will be selecting a poem to put in their pocket and throughout the day on Thursday can be asked to read their poem. We will spend time looking through our poetry journals to select a poem to practice in preparation for this special day. Be sure to ask your child about it after school on Thursday! In Writers Workshop we wrapped up our unit on opinion writing by publishing one writing piece out of our opinion notebooks. You may have already seen the traveling book at your house, but if not your turn is still coming! Students went down to the computer lab and typed up their own writing using all of their skills from computer lab class. We then illustrated our typing and bound it into a class book. It is fun to read students’ opinions about a variety of topics. All opinions have an opinion statement, at least 2 reasons and a closing statement. Many writers found it fun to ask a question! Typing in the computer lab:
After publishing we switched our focus to poetry. We looked at a variety of genres of poetry and noted what we noticed in each one. We then took our observations and created a set of class poems that went on display on the classroom poem wall. One of our favorites was the ice cream shape poem shown below:
After a week of group poems students then had the opportunity to write their own poems! This was very exciting and I was quite pleased to see how many writers tried different poem types. List poems seemed to be the most popular. After a few days of trying poems independently we then learned how to add line breaks to an old story to make it sound like a poem. Students were introduced to new poetry paper that could help with this skill. We will continue to work on these line break poems after vacation. In the weeks leading up to break we were able to get through two more short math topics: measuring and telling time. Topic 12 focused on a measuring unit using non-standard units. Students learned a few fundamental rules for measuring objects: * The non-standard measuring tool has to be the same * You need to start the measuring tool at one edge of the object and go all the way to the other end to be accurate * You need to keep your measuring tool as straight as possible * There can be no gaps between measuring tools Some measuring tools that we tried using were:* Paper clips
* Cubes
* Straws
* Pencils
* Base ten cubes
Throughout the unit students worked on comparing using the language of LONGER and SHORTER. We also focused on understanding the concept of how the size of a measuring tool can play a role in the answer you get. For example, it would take a lot more cubes to find the length of a desk than straws. This was a fun hands on unit! Our Topic 13 focused in learning how to tell time. Students learned that a clock has 2 hands. The hour hand is short and the minute hand is long. In first grade students only have to be able to tell time to the hour and half hour so we spent a lot if time learning the difference between O’CLOCK and THIRTY. Students in my math group with introduced to this cute chant: “When the big hands at the top you know it’s ________ o’clock, but when the big hand goes around and is pointing down its half past _______ o’clock, it’s ________ thirty” The hardest last about telling time to the half hour is determining which 2 numbers the hour hand goes in between. We will continue to work on this the week after we return from break. Below are some pictures from our clock centers:
Our phonics block has focused on a variety of chunks over the past few weeks. The chunks are always reflected in the handwriting sentence that accompanies the homework each week. Chunks have included:* ight
* Irregular digraphs: ph, qu, kn * ow = long o sound at the end of words These chunks are practiced Tuesday – Thursday after students have read nonsense words with their PALS. A few fun activities with theses chunks included an IGHT Easter egg match and an OW pail pass and read. You can always practice these chunks with your child when reading at home! See these fun activities below:
Our egg drop S.T.E.M challenge proved to be a big success! Thank you to all the families who donated recycled goods – we had 12 out of 21 eggs survive the fall! Students had so much fun working in small groups of 3 to make a plan, budget and purchase materials, build containers and then secure the egg before dropping. The team work and communication amongst groups was very impressive and students who’s eggs did break handled the disappointment well. We were very impressed and look forward to making this an annual tradition! Check out a fewpics below!
In preparation for Earth Day (which happens to be today, April 22!) students spent the week before vacation learning about the history of the holiday and it’s purpose. We watched an interesting Brainpop Jr video on the three R’s: reducing, reusing and recycling. We made a list of all the things we could do at home and school to make sure we used the three R’s. We also watched a video on the process of recycling and how long it takes! In addition, we enjoyed the story _The Lorax_ by Dr. Seuss in which the character of the Once-ler did not take care of the Land of the Lorax. We created Truffala trees and inside listed the things the Once-ler did to hurt the land and then thought about what we would do differently. Students completed some creative writing based on this that is on display in the hallway. Feel free to come take a look! Everyone left for vacation quite excited to celebrate Earth day so hopefully you can all think of something special to do today for our Earth!
Below is a catchy song we listened to every day at morning meeting: http://youtu.be/8DJ45Yc3urg We celebrated Riley’s birthday a few days early with a read aloud by her mom. She turns 7 over vacation!
We also attended the April P.R.I.D.E assembly and learned our new trait is communication. Students are focusing this month on how to be good listeners and speakers. Please reinforce this at home! Well I hope you all have a relaxing rest of vacation – don’t’ forget to tweet me after reading! Your child will be grateful at our next upcoming DOJO store!MARCH MADNESS
March 26, 2015
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Our March madness has nothing too do with basketball – sorry to get your hopes up! Instead we have been busy doing so many fun things in the classroom it’s madness!! I apologize in the long delay between blog posts. Report cards and conferences have been time consuming and I haven’t been able to squeeze a post in. It was so wonderful to see so many of you again at conferences and I hope you took advantage of your time at school to see all the wonderful work your child hascreated!
We kicked off March with a celebration of Dr. Seuss and World Read Aloud Day. March 2nd is the late Dr. Suess’s birthday so we always have fun celebrating this special day. Spirit week was a big hit and we had many fun theme outfits. Cole’s mom even helped him make a Catin the Hat hat!!
Our favorite part of this week long celebration was the book swap! Everyone got to visit the donated book collection and swap for a new book to read at home. Hopefully that book has already gotten a lot of use! See some pictures below of students enjoying their new books on the learning lounge bean bags:
After book swapping we got to read some Dr. Suess’s books in a special reading salon in the 2nd grade hallway. What a special treat!! In Readers Workshop we have been working hard on learning about characters. We have use the genre of fairy tales and folk tales to do this. After reviewing the parts of a story and story critical features, we had fun taking a close look at Goldilocks as a character. We learned that all characters… * Change from their experiences * Have feelings that’s change * Have traits that describe their actions Using Goldilocks we explored each of these character features: * Change from their experiences
* Have feelings that’s change
* Have traits that describe their action
We found it was tricky trying to decide between feelings and traits. Next up was developing a better understanding of folk tales. We looked at the features of folk tales and realized two things made them different then fairy tales: * They change of over time as they are passed down from person toperson
* They often teach a lesson We used the game telephone to discover how passing along a story can cause it to change each time it is told. We then read some folk tales to see if we could determine the lessons they were trying to teach. Check out our anchor chart below:
Since we all did a great job take a close look at Goldilocks I challenged the class to work on a table project and each group completed a character study of the Ugly Duckling. This project took a lot of teamwork and collaboration. I was very impressed with the discussions amongst the groups. Posters were on display at conferences but in case you missed it take a look at one below!
This past week has welcomed a new folk tale character – the fox! We began by watching a video called Fox on the Town which was created based on an old song. The song has also been turned in a children’s illustrated book, _The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night_. We have looked closely at the positive and negative traits of the fox in these two pieces of work. Students also worked on a close read of one verse in the song and will explore the role of the fox in other folk tales such as _The Gingerbread Man, Henny Penny _and _Chicken Little_. Staytuned!
Our Writer Workshop has focused on opinion writing for the last few weeks. This unit will wrap up next week with a published piece typed by your first grader in the computer lab! At this beginning of this unit students were introduced to the purpose of writing their opinion: * _To persuade the reader to believe and think the way they do_ After setting a purpose we began by breaking down the steps of opinion writing. Students were given an opinion writing notebook in which they could record their opinion. Over the course of the unit writing prompts were provided so that students could practice the skills taught during mini lessons. We began by learning what an opinion is and that it’s ok to not agree with someone’s opinion as long as you have reasons for your thinking. We used the 2 charts below:
Next, we learned some words to use when expressing our opinion (opinion statement). We used the chart below:_ _
After we practiced using some of the opinion sentences stems, we were ready to focus on how to express our reasons. We added the word BECAUSE to the word wall because it is _very_ important when sharing our reasons. We also explored some other vocabulary to try. We began by just giving one reason, and then worked on sharing two and by the end were adding three or four! Check our some of the vocabulary below:
The last piece was learning how to provide a conclusion (we like to call it a wrap up)! Many students found it fun to ask a question at the end to get the reader involved. Here were some conclusions welooked at:
After learning all the steps separately we put them all together and thought TREE! This helped us remember that every opinion piece needs: * An opinion statement* 2-3 reasons
* A wrap up
You can think TREE at home using the chart below:
A couple fun opinion writing activities we did on the side were: * Choosing a favorite ocean animal and writing what made it the best with our 3rd grade reading buddies * Deciding who was worth more to us than a pot of gold (in honor ofSt. Patricks Day)
Our PALS and word work block have been filled with new chunks! First up was the NK sound. This chunk is found after 4 vowels (similar to the NG) sound. You can find this chunk is words with: INK, ONK, ANK, and UNK. Because this chunk makes a very different sound with each of the vowels we did two vowels on the first day and two vowels on the second day. Students did a great job reading words with each of the 4 vowels. On the 3rd day of practicing students worked at table groups to brainstorm all the words they could think of with each chunk. See the words we came up below:
The INK group certainly had the most options! Next up were some unusual vowel chunks. We looked at 3 different pairs over the last few weeks:* OI VS. OY
* OU VS. OW
* AU VS. AW
Each pair makes the same sound but can be spelled differently. This is so tricky because it is hard for students to decide which spelling to use. We learned that words can’t end in I or U so when you heard the sound at the end of the word always choose the spelling with Y or W. These chunks are definitely easier for first graders to read so we spent a lot of time practicing reading these chunks. We made a long list of OU and OW words and used highlighters with AU and AW words.Check it out below:
It would be a fun challenge to see if your first grader can tell you the stories of all the chunks at home! Math has been focused on the 100s chart, comparing numbers and adding groups of tens. We began by learning how to use the 100s chart to find 1 less, 1 more, 10 less and 10 more than a number. An important shape helped us in this process- the plus sign. Students learned quickly that the number to the left and right were 1 less and 1 more and the numbers on the top and bottom were 10 more and 10 less.
After mastering this skill students then investigated how to compare numbers. We learned a helpful trick that the alligator always wants to eat the biggest number. So when we made our greater than and less then sign his mouth has to open to the greater number. Students picked up this skill very quickly and even had fun adding alligator teeth!
Next up was learning how to add groups of ten. We learned when adding tens that we really didn’t have to worry about the ones and could focus on the tens since groups of ten always have a 0 in the ones spot. We learned ways to add ten using the 100s chart, base ten blocks, and mental math. This unit was filled with double digit numbers and students did a great job! We even had an introduction to regrouping which was tricky! Here are some pics of us using base ten blocks and regrouping:
This week we began topic 11 and used what we learned when adding tens to begin subtracting tens. This topic involves a lot of subtraction skills and many first graders do not have their subtraction facts within ten memorized. Please practice these at home! After leaving the rainforest habitat we moved on to the ocean. 71% of the earth is covered by oceans so this is a very important habitat to explore! We learned that just like the rainforest there are 4 zones in the ocean (bottom 2 are grouped together).
We also got to see a clip from _Finding Nemo_ where Marlin and Dorey swim down through the zones of the ocean! After learning the zones we also spent some time exploring various ocean animals. This helped us with our opinion writing with our reading buddies! A visitor came to teach us about the rainforest (after a delay from the snow). It was my mom! She traveled through the Amazon 4 years ago and every year brings pictures and artifacts from her trip. It was so fun to share facts we had learned with her.
Another exciting visitor came to visit us on our half day last week. The R_ocket Man_ came in and told us all about the history of the NASA space program and how perservance and an “I Can” attitude can get you very far in life! A fourth grader even got to wear a replicaspace suit!
Finally, we have LOVED our S.T.E.M. Challenges this week. S.T.E.M. stands for: science, technology, engineering and math. The goal is to provide students with challenges that require them use these skill areas to problem solve with peers. We will continue to work on these next week and later in the spring. Here are some pictures from ourtower challenge:
And that wraps up the madness happening in first grade!! Don’t forget to tweet me for some extra dojo dollars at tomorrow’s store!
RAINFOREST RESEARCH
February 24, 2015
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hnash2
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It is hard to believe that we are embarking on our first full week back to school in over a month! Since our first blizzard of 2015 we have endured lots of snow AND lots of missed school so it sure feels good to be back (and I’m sure you all are happy to send your kiddos back to school as well!) Despite all the missed school I have some exciting updates to share from the classroom. Our most exciting project has been our unit on the rainforest. In all this cold weather it has been nice to think about warm, tropical rainforests (you may not know this but there can also be cold temperate rainforests as well!) We took out the globe at the start of this unit and observed that most of the tropical rainforests are found near the equator. This allows them to stay warm all year round. Students got to see the invisible line that runs all the way around the globe! Next, we zoomed in on the rainforest and learned that there are 4 different layers. The bottom layer is the FOREST FLOOR, then the UNDERSTORY, then the CANOPY and finally at the top is the EMERGENT LAYER. We had a chance to draw these layers and label them for our habitat folders. After exploring the forest we moved onto the animals that live in them. We learned that 50% of the worlds animal species live in rainforests so we decided to narrow it down a bit. Each student chose one animal to do some research on. We wrote a fact box about our animal and spent some time in MP’s Creative Classroom drawing our animals using scientific pictures. Check out some picturesbelow:
Next, we brought our animals back to the room and spent some timecutting them out.
And today we were ready to start cutting trees out to make the rainforest habitat for the animals.
We are adding our animals to the rainforest habitat tomorrow so feel free to swing by and take a look! Due to the snow our special visitor who has traveled to the rainforest has postponed her visit until later in March so stay tuned! In readers workshop we have put the genre of expository text to the side and have transitioned into a unit on fairy tales and folk tales. Your first grader will be exposed to a variety of stories within this genre and will do some careful post reading thinking using these texts. So far we have learned that all stories have a structure that fits within a diamond. The top tip is the beginning, the middle fills the majority of the diamond and then the end is in the bottom tip. We used sentence starters including: * “In the beginning…..” * “In the middle…..” * “At the end…..” Students learned that it’s important for stories to have a structure and to stick with the structure when retelling. We also talked about story critical elements. We learned that CRITICAL means _the most important_ and after reading _Little Red Riding Hood_ askedourselves:
* WHO? (Story critical character) * WHERE? (Story critical setting) * WHAT? (Story critical object) Examples from _Little Red Riding Hood_ included: * WHO? Little Red Riding Hood * WHERE? The forest * WHAT? The basket of food Next we will move on to identifying the features of fairy tale and folk tales, we will compare and contrast similar stories and start exploring character traits! Your first grader may have come home yesterday and told you all about _Walk to Read_. This is a new part of our reading block and students have been assigned a READING TEACHER (very similar to a math teacher) and will walk with his/her book bin between the first first grade classrooms. This will help us meet the many varying needs of first grade readers. Some other teachers who will be helping during this time are Mrs. Killinger, Mrs. Jenkins and Mrs. Doyle. So far it hasbeen a big hit!
Our word work before vacation focused on the suffix “ed”. Students learned that we use this suffix when we want to use an action word that happened in the past. This suffix is tricky because it makes 3 sounds: “D“, “T” and “ED“. We had lots of practice reading words with an ED suffix and even learned the rule that you have to double the last letter when the word only has 1 vowel! This was a hard chunk to learn but we used our perseverance and stuck with it! This week we have moved onto the NG sound. Students know the N is a nose sound and the G is a gulping sound. The story goes… When these 2 letter are next to each other the nose sound wants to try some of the gulping girl’s juice. To make this sound students put their tongue at the back of their mouth and open their mouth up. Their throat almost makes a choking sound. We also learned that 4 vowel superstars can be in front of this chunk: ANG, ING, ONG and UNG. In writers workshop we had the chance to share our published informational All About books with our reading buddies! What a special day it was for all our writers! Our 3rd grade buddies we’re nice enough to leave compliments on our books.
After completing these books we moved onto How To books which are designed to teach the reader _how to_ complete a task. Some interesting topics included: * How to brush your teeth * How to make a ice cream cone * How to get dressed * How to ride a bike * How to make popcorn * How to build a campfire * How to make a PB and fluff sandwich These books always force first grade writers to think small and include a lot of details so the reader can follow step by step. Our publishing date is tomorrow so be on the look out in your child’sbackpack.
In math we have been focusing in on tens and ones. This is the first step to understanding place value and a topic that always proves tricky! The goals of this unit include: * Introducing base ten blocks (ten rods and ones cubes) * Understanding the tens digit and ones digit * Understanding that groups of ten can be written in expanded form(4 tens = 40)
* Using expanded form to created a number sentence (ex. 5 tens + 6 ones = 56 is the same as 50 + 6 = 56) * Using expanded forms and patterns to find al the sys to make anumber
Due to snow days this unit was quite disjointed so we will continue to practice these skills to achieve mastery! We had a wonderful time celebrating the 100th day of school and an early Valentine’s day. As the saying goes ” a picture is worth a thousand words” so take a look in case you missed them on Twitter! (A big thank you to all the families who donated arts & craft supplies for our Valentine envelopes!)
And finally we celebrated a 7th birthday and a summer half birthday so far this month (Jacob who is a leap year baby is still to come!) It was so fun to have birthday readers come visit!
If your child completed the February break reading challenge the dance part will take place during indoor recess this week so make sure to check in after school with you 1st grader! Thank you to all who readover break!
Hopefully you have learned at least 1 new happening in the classroom – TWEET me for some bonus DOJO points.A SNOW DAY POST!
January 28, 2015
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hnash2
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A snow day is a perfect time to update the blog! I hope everyone is safe, warm and enjoying electricity and the extra day off to play in the snow. We have been busy in the classroom over the past week (despite all the blizzard hype!) so I have a lot to share. Our informational books have come a long way since the last blog post! After creating our table of contents using the 5 facts we shared about our topic, students were ready to add headings and page numbers to to their books. Each page received a heading that correlated to the table of contents and a page number. By creating the table of contents first it was very easy for students to plan the layout of their five pages (a task that had proved difficult for first graders in years past). Next, students were challenged to use their fact sheets that they had created in the planning stage to write 1 fact on page of their book. I was very pleased to see students carefully stretching out details in their sentences and really thinking hard about all of the details they could include about their topic. After the facts were recorded, students were given a marker and were asked to create 2 bold words in their books. We had previously learned that bold words are often the most important vocabulary in the book that a reader might need to know more about. After selecting the bold words, students then created a glossary at the end of their book. The final step was sketching scientific drawings that would teach the reader about the fact on the page. Labels and fact boxes were included in order to provide even more information. The final publishing step was visiting the computer and having all of the writing typed up. Students have been working tirelessly on the final copy illustrations so that books can get bound together. Our original publication date of Friday, January 30 may be pushed back by a day or two due to the storm, but many author’s are very close to being finished. Check out a sneak peek of some bookcovers below:
In Readers Workshop we have almost wrapped up our study of informational text. We spent the final week of our unit exploring the process for reading this genre and created an anchor chart outlining the before, during and after steps that good readers use. Each day we explored one step in the process and practiced with informational text. As a culminating activity we explored a variety of different genres of informational text – books, magazines and articles – and students worked with a partner to practice using a kid friendly article on penguins. Check out our anchor chart below: The most important part of the process of reading informational texts is the AFTER STEP: saying the fact again in your own words. Students learned this is so important because once they are able to do that then they “own” the fact and its part of their schema. This is something you can practice at home if your child brings home an informational text in his/her book bag! Our word work focused on the growling dog again this week, but two new vowels were in front: A and O. The stories with these two vowels areas follows:
When the growling dog walks with a (the apple) he decides that he wants to eat the apple instead of growl so he opens his mouth up wide and say “r” as we eats the apple. Students learn that words with r sayings its name need an AR. When the growling dogs walks with o (the cute baby) he thinks at first, “I shouldn’t growl at the baby (because its just a baby), “OR” maybe I should?”. Students learn that words with the sound “or” need an OR. Coming up next are the three sounds that “ed” make – ed, d, t. Due to the snow days this practice will continue into next week aswell!
Our enrichment block has had a duel focus over the past week – Martin Luther King, Jr and penguins. Due to the holiday, I always find it important to spend time learning about Martin Luther King, Jr and the work he did for our county. This is always an eye opening conversation for first graders because many of them find it hard to believe that there was once a time when black people and white people couldn’t do the same things. Brainpopjr has a very kid-friendly video that explores this topic so students began by watching that and afterwards had a wonderful discussion where students were open to ask questions. We then read a short book about the holiday and why we celebrate it and created the fold-able that you saw come home in your child’s backpack. One of my favorite read alouds to use during thistime is:
It has many wonderful quotes said by Martin Luther King, Jr. that I find first graders can relate to on a basic level and can be inspired to become leaders in their communities. My favorite quote of the book is “Everyone can be great”. In our exploration of penguins we have learned a lot. After delving into the different types of penguins the week before we spent a lot of time completing a penguin QR code quest that taught us about the behavior, communication, diet and social features of penguins. Some of our favorite facts included: * Penguins each krill, fish and squid. * Penguins live in colonies or rookeries of thousands of penguins. * Some penguins like warm climates. * Each penguin has a unique call that they use to communicate withtheir families.
* Penguins mate for life. * Penguins lay one or two eggs at a time. * Penguin parents cough up food into the baby penguins mouth. After widening our schema on penguins students got to choose their favorite fact and record it on the belly of a penguin. These paper penguins will be up on display in the hallway soon – come by andtake a look!
In math groups we used this week to wrap up Topic 6, which focused on subtraction strategies and related facts and have been Topic 8. Some math groups have been working on special creative projects that addressed fact families. My math group produced “The Fact Family Bunch” – a knock off of The Brady Bunch. It will be up on Youtube for viewing soon so make sure to check Twitter! Topic 8 focuses on tens and ones and understanding place value. We have been working on this all year during our morning meeting while we keep track of the days of school. Each day the calendar clerk puts one green dot on a tens frame. When the tens frame is full it moves to the tens column so show a group of ten. Many students made this connectionas began Topic 8.
We were introduced to a new tool that we had not seen before… Base ten blocks! We will use these to practice finding the tens and ones in a number (ex. 45 is 4 tens and 5 ones). We call the ones the leftovers. We figured out that we can’t have more than 10 left overs because that would make another group of 10! Next week, we will practice finding tens and ones using both base ten blocks and the 100’s chart. We will explore the fact that 1 less and 1 more than a number are on either side of the number on the 100’s chart and that 10 less and 10 more are on the top and bottom of a number (it makes a plus sign on the hundreds chart!) We will also learn how to write expanded numbers and make organized lists to figure out a mystery number. Stay tuned! This month’s trait is perseverance and as a school we are working to set academic and school driven goals that we can achieve this year. Students worked on writing their goals on footprints which will be hung around the school. In Nash News I included a link for a cute Youtube video, but if you were unable to find it click the links totwo videos below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksiob6KVPDw – 1,000 Steps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWp6kkz-pnQ – Don’t Give Up byBruno Mars
A new wonderful word that we added to our wall this week was ENORMOUS. We learned that enormous means really, really big and we practiced thinking of examples using the sentence stem, “A ______________________ is enormous!” After using our turn and talk strategy, we went out into the hallway to measure a blue whale which is an enormous ocean creature. We used unifix cubes and figured out a blue whale is 1,878 cubes long! WOW! A bus evacuation drill was carried out this week in the hopes of preparing all students for an emergency situation if ever riding on the bus. The bus driver began by talking to all of first grade on the bus. We then got to find the emergency exits, set off some loud alarms, and then practiced exiting the bus out the back door. It was certainly fun, but also a great reminder about how important it is to be educated in case of an emergency. First grade usually takes a field trip in the spring on a bus so this was an important lesson for allstudents.
And finally we celebrated Ava’s half birthday on January 23 (as she has a summer birthday!) Her mom and sister came in as birthday readers and we enjoyed a Pete the Cat book. Happy half birthday Ava!POST NAVIGATION
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