Character Study Posters

Mr. Putter (from the Mr. Putter and Tabby series)

Nate the Great (from the Nate the Great series)

Sam (from the Sam and Bingo series)

Jasper (from the Jasper the Cat series)

Henry (from the Henry and Mudge series)

Character Studies in Reader's Workshop

We have been loving our character unit in Reader's Workshop. The students have been getting right into the minds of their characters to learn and understand more about their feelings, predict their actions, and make inferences. Each student began the unit with a bag of different books all about the same character. After reading and marking scenes, the students partnered up with another classmate who was reading about the same character. The two partners directed and acted out scenes from the book to help visualize the character better. They worked together to think about how act and speak just as the character would!

We then explored some deeper thinking and moved into a book club to get some "juicy" discussion going. Groups of four of five students all reading/studying the same character got together to talk about their character. In our mini lessons, we discussed how we can find patterns across our books. The students were so smart noticing how similar a character can act across different books! This helped us infer what a character might do based on what we had read about him/her in previous books. We also discussed places where we notice the character having strong feelings, and when those strong feelings change. This helped us get to know our character even better and helped us generate a list of character traits that would fit our characters!

To finish up our unit, each book club is creating a character board. First, we used the illustrations in our books to carefully work together and create a life size drawing of our character. These are completely student made- and they are a riot! I am totally impressed with what an amazing job each group is doing! The students are also surrounding their characters with traits to describe what each character is like. This requires group members to really discuss and agree why a character might be responsible, lazy, brave, etc. We have spent a lot of time discussing how we must find evidence in the text to support our inferences. I love hearing group members say "What makes you think that?" or "Can you give an example?" to really encourage good discussion around traits that truly describe each character!

Here's a sneak peek at groups working on their life-size drawings for their character boards. Tomorrow I will post the finished products! I can't wait for you to see them! :)

Writing/Poetry Celebration

A note went home today regarding our Writing/Poetry Celebration next Thursday June 13th. Please be sure to take a peek at it and return the form to me as soon as possible. I am looking forward to seeing everyone. We can't wait to show you all the hard work we've been doing!

Also, it's looking like rain is forecasted for our walking field trip to Pilgrim Hall on Friday. I tried contacting Pilgrim Hall to schedule a new date (if needed), but the person I need to speak with to do so is out of town until Thursday morning. I will keep an eye on the forecast and be in touch as soon as I know more. Thanks to all the parents that volunteered to chaperone- as soon as I get more information on Thursday, I will be in contact with you!

Going Buggy in First Grade!

As we continue with our insect unit, we have been using nonfiction books to deepen our understanding about all sorts of insects. Here, we are working on the rug with thinking boards to record our schema about butterflies prior to reading some nonfiction texts.

We recorded some of this schema onto sticky notes to build our class chart:

After reading many books, we recorded our new learning and wrote nonfiction pieces all about butterflies. Today we created paper butterflies with symmetrical wings to attach to our writing.

We have also been adding to our insect study board out in the hallway. Here's how it's coming along!

We also learned about fireflies and created these little guys to "light up" our classroom:

Please keep an eye out for two important notes coming home this week. One is regarding our Writing Celebration which will be taking place June 13th at 9:45 a.m. Parents and family members will be invited! The other is a permission slip for our field trip on June 7th. Thanks!

Kathy Collins!

What a special day it was!

Kathy Collins, author of these two books, came to visit Nathaniel Morton today! She is an incredible author for teacher books centered around Reader's Workshop and promoting authentic reading experiences in classrooms. So much of what I do in the classroom is based on her work. The kids were so excited when I returned to the classroom to tell them all about what it was like to meet one of my favorite authors and have her sign my books! I hope that one day each of my readers has the special opportunity to meet one of their favorite authors too!

Kathy Collins (middle)

Insects

We have been busy bees these past few weeks learning about insects! We are creating books about insects and learning about all different kinds of insects. Here is the schema chart we created at the beginning of our unit:

We learned about ladybugs and created these adorable compound word ladybugs. A lot of the compound words we wrote on the spots were words we have come across and noticed in our own reading!

We have also teamed up with another first grade class across the hall to create a giant insect display. The students are finding insects to study and learn more about. We are creating realistic drawings of these insects and attaching them to our scene with a label. Here, one student is adding his aphids to the scene, right next to that hungry ladybug of course!

Today we studied dragonflies and tomorrow- fireflies! Stay tuned for more to come later in the week!

Planetarium

We had a great time yesterday visiting the Planetarium! We learned about the sun, moon and stars. We got to see some neat constellations and observe how the starry sky changes over seasons. I only snapped a few pictures because we were so busy stargazing, but we sure had a blast!