Literacy Night- I hope to see you there!

Literacy Night is this Thursday night at our school from 6:30-8:30. I would love to see my first grade families there! I will be doing a read aloud and some other teachers will be too. There will be some story telling for families to listen to and author Jerry Pallotta is going to be there too. I have many of his books in my classroom. I am very excited to meet him! If you can make it for all or some of the time, please just send in the form or write me a quick note. Hope to see you there!

Valentine's Day Update

Hi everyone!

I wanted to give a quick update about Valentine's Day this year. We will celebrate it on Friday February 14th, the day before vacation. Just a few things to keep in mind:

• The students are allowed to bring in valentines to pass out to our class only. Due to the school's food policies, please try to send in valentines that do not have candy attached. We also have several allergies this year too. Valentines with stickers, pencils, or erasers attached are a great alternative to candy!
• I will send home a class list at the end of the week with a list of names. Passing out valentines is optional, however I do ask that if your child chooses to bring in valentines, please make sure he/she brings one in for each person in the class.
• Please send your child's valentines in already labeled with names. All valentines should come to school in a sealed Ziploc bag. We will be making decorated valentine bags for everyone to bring their valentines home in. 

I would also like to run some craft workshops from 9:15-10:15 that Friday morning. If anyone is interested in coming up with a simple Valentine's Day craft and running a station, please email me and let me know!

Math Workshop Update

In Math Workshop, we have been working on relation symbols and using phrases like "greater than" and "less than" when we compare numbers. 

Today, the students practiced using relation symbols during their seat work and while playing the hands on game with a partner.

I also did some differentiated teaching with each group on the rug. We worked on using the symbols and reading our comparisons out loud using "greater than/less than/equal to".

How To Books

In writer's workshop the past two weeks, we have been working to finish our how-to books. We have been learning about how everyone can be an expert at something. Writers can put what they know into a book to teach others! After choosing a topic from our brainstorm sheet, we starting sketching and planning out our steps. This took a lot of thinking work as we sketched our steps carefully in order and revised them many times. 

The students met with their writing partners several times during the process. Partners read their writing while the other partner acted out steps to make sure they were clear enough! Here's some writing partners in action: 

Once our steps were set, it was time to start working on our books. Last week everyone worked to make their booklets and design a cover page. Some are finishing up this week. Then, we will share our finished books with each other!

Ask your child what they wrote their how-to book about! 

Martin Luther King Jr.

We have been reading and learning a lot about Martin Luther King Jr. this week. We studied several nonfiction/biography books about him. We did some great thinking work and compared how much has changed since the time MLK was living.

Today we made these adorable crafts and had a long talk about the quote attached as well as the meaning behind it. As one student this morning said it best: "I think MLK is teaching all of us to try to make small differences with our words each day- because if we do that, someone else might catch on and do it too." Talk about melting my heart!!

More pictures!

Here are some of our finished winter projects hanging in the hallway!!

Winter is a fun season!

We took some time yesterday to work on a fun project for our snowy hallway scene.

First, we each wrote a paragraph about things we like to do in winter. To do this, we started by brainstorming fun things to do during this season. Then, we planned out our paragraph about why winter is a fun season. We revised our "sloppy copy" to make sure we had capital letters and punctuation. Finally, everyone wrote a neat final copy. I was so impressed! 

After our paragraph writing was complete, each student created a large drawing of themselves wearing snow gear to go along with their writing. Talk about adorable!! :)

I will take lots of pictures of everyone's completed writing/portrait once it's all put up in our snowy scene. For now, here's a few work in progress pictures!! 

New Units!

This week, we are starting new units in reader's, writer's and math workshop! 

In reader's workshop,  we will be focusing on reading nonfiction texts and discussing the different features these informational books have. Today we discussed how good readers get their minds ready to read nonfiction by studying the cover and thinking about what information the book might give them. Good readers also think about words they might see too. 

To practice this, we used white boards and a nonfiction book cover to do some of this great thinking work. 

In writer's workshop, we will be learning how to write our own how-to books. Today we brainstormed things we know how to do well and could teach to someone else, like making a bowl of cereal, doing a cartwheel, or planting a flower. Each of us brainstormed a list of possible how-to topics. Everyone will use their lists tomorrow to choose a topic for their book and begin planning out the steps to write!

Finally, in math workshop, we will be doing a lot of work with place value. Today's mini lesson was an interactive one with the Smartboard and everyone loved it! We used longs (tens) and cubes (ones) to represent different numbers. 

I will keep you updated as we continue to work through all three units!

Happy New Year!

It was great to see everyone today! I enjoyed hearing all about vacations, sledding trips, and holiday events. :)

Just a few quick updates:

- You will notice that reading logs did not come home today. These will start up again on January 10th. Your child's reading folder and books will come home Friday. We skipped the week of 12/13 because it was right before vacation. You can just cross this off on the recording sheet! Please remember to read nightly, whether it be the books I send home or books of choice. I encouraged many parents at conferences to start reading a chapter book to their first grader. This is a great way to model fluent reading and have thoughtful discussions about books with your child.

- I am going to send home pencil boxes over the weekend to be cleaned out and reorganized. Chances are, your child may need new crayons, glue sticks, small erasers, pencils- or just some rearranging of what's already in there. Many of the boxes are starting to bulge! ;) I have supplies in the classroom for everyone to share, but it helps if your child has some of their own to use as well.

- I sent out the volunteer schedule for the new year over the weekend. If you volunteer in the classroom, please be sure to check it out.

- Last, but not least, I just want to say thank you again for all the wonderful cards, gifts, thoughts and emails over the holidays. I appreciate it so much!