Awesome Math Thinkers!

Today's math mini-lesson focused on the importance of familiar numbers (i.e. 5 or 10) and how those familiar numbers can make our math work so much easier.  I rolled six dice at a time under the document camera.  Students had to figure out the total and explain which numbers they added first, second, etc... It was great to see students 'unpack' the number 10 and look for efficient ways to add lots of numbers.  Good work first graders!

Snow!

It is always an incredibly exciting moment when snowflakes start to fall for the first time during the school day!  Today we took advantage of all the excitement and ran outside for a quick moment trying to catch snowflakes!  If your child mentions we did this without our coats and hats...they're right.  Shhh...don't tell. :)

Oobleck!

Today students continued to explore the properties of solids and liquids by creating Oobleck!  The big question was "is it a solid or a liquid?"  The answer is both!  Without pressure the mixture acts as a liquid, but when pressure is applied it shows properties of a solid.  Unfortunately, my hands were a bit dirty and full so I couldn't video/photograph much of our experiment, but I found this video that shows what happened.

The one photo I was able to get!

Ticks

Over the course of the last week our school nurse has removed several ticks from different students.  Hopefully, as the weather begins to cool down this will no longer be an issue.  However, in the meantime Nurse Kelly encourages parents to check their child's skin (especially if they've been playing in leaves or tall grass) and pay attention to areas where your child complains of soreness or pain.

Student Bloggers?!

Yes. You heard it right!  We are now all blogging!  This week first grade students wrote their first blog post.  For right now we are focusing on logging in, creating a title for our posts, and getting our ideas typed.  We hope that you will visit our blogs often (as the year progresses students will add more than just text to their blogs) and leave comments.  Our hope is to really drive home the fact that writers write for an audience.  Please don't worry that there are misspelled words and strange formatting...we'll get there!

Building with Solids

This afternoon as a part of our study on 'solids and liquids' students had an opportunity to build structures using a variety of solid objects.  The purpose was to encourage students to discuss the properties of solids and how those properties would affect what they were trying to build.  The first graders did a great job with both building and scientific thinking!  They also had a lot of fun doing it. :)

Writing workshop

We have worked really hard since the start of school to create a writing environment where children feel confident, successful, and independent.  We still have room to grow, but I think this is a pretty impressive video of first graders hard at work!

Go Noodle!

We take many movement breaks throughout the day in first grade.  Recently, students have become 'hooked' to a site called, Go Noodle.  Although I don't want them to use our class site at home (we are earning points all together) it is very easy to set up an account.  I promised some eager first graders I would provide the link so here it is:  Go Noodle!

Reading Mini-Lessons: Character Traits

First grader readers did an incredible job this week when it came to analyzing character traits.  We read many fun books together and had some great dialogue about whether certain words were truly a character trait or were they simply an emotion that the character had due to an outside event.  I know...major thinking for first graders!

Spelling Choices

Today, students were able to choose from a variety of stations to practice their 'red words'.  These can be tricky (especially since they need to be memorized).  The more students practice these words both at school and at home the faster they will master them!

Math Monsters

Last week we all made 'math monsters'.  This was a fun Halloween activity that really made students focus on place value (i.e. ones place, tens place, hundreds place).  I was very impressed with both the creativity and counting!

Homework this Week

If your child came home and told you that he/she only has math homework this week - he/she was correct!  There is not a new list of spelling skills for this week.  Due to Halloween and a very busy day on Friday we are finishing up our SWR Proficiency test and will then review for the remainder of the week.  Thank you!