100th Day

If you need some ideas for dressing up on Friday, you can check out some of the costumes my first graders had last year. Just click the label on the right (of the blog homepage) that says "100th day" and scroll down through last year's entries see some other kids all dressed up. I can't wait to see everyone- we are going to have such a fun day!!

Ways to Make 10

We needed a fun way to finish up this crazy busy week! Can you believe we are scheduled for MORE snow this weekend?! Yesterday, we used candy hearts to show off all that we have learned about decomposing numbers. We used our hearts to record all different ways we can add to make 10. Then, students chose their favorite way and modeled it by gluing their hearts on to a paper plate to display. They also wrote the number sentence that matched the model. We had a great time with this!

Decomposing Numbers

I hope everyone is enjoying their snowy day. I can't believe how much snow has fallen in the past two weeks!

I wanted to share some pictures with you from our math lessons last week. We have been working on decomposing numbers. In the lesson below, I gave students 12 counters and allowed them to explore and work together to figure ways to break down the number (for example, 6+6 or 4+4+4). This a great way to build number sense and build "math talk". They love doing it too and were very motivated to find as many ways as possible.

Nonfiction Books..and Some Dates to Keep in Mind

This week in Reader's Workshop, we worked on differentiating between fiction books and nonfiction books. We talked a lot about nonfiction text features and worked with partners to find some of these features in our "just right" nonfiction books. 

As of now (if we have no snow days in the next few weeks), our 100th day of school will fall on February 6th. Our Valentine's Day celebration will take place on on February 13th. Be on the lookout for more information about both coming home soon! :)

Word Study

In word study, we have been doing a lot of work around beginning blends. Blends are two letters that stick together in a word and to make a blended sound, like "st" in the word "stem". Students at this development stage often only use one sound in their writing, so doing a lot of word work around blends helps students become more aware of both sounds when they read and write.

We have been using our sort cards to play word games, along with our usual weekly word study actvities, to build our awareness of blends in words. Please continue to encourage your child to really stretch out and write each sound they hear when working on a writing activity!

Partner work with words that start with the consonant blends sc, sw, and sn.

Fact Families

In math this week, we did a lot of work with fact families. We used what we learned about fact families to find related facts too. This is a great way for students to build their number sense! 

Launching our Nonfiction Unit

Hello all!

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had wonderful vacations. From what I've heard from the kids, it sounds like everyone had loads of fun!

This week, we are launching a big nonfiction unit in reader's and writer's workshop. Today, we did a lot of work around finding the main idea and details in a nonfiction piece of writing. We read an article about grizzly bears and discussed the main idea. Then, students went off with their partners to write some details, or important facts from the text, onto a graphic organizers to support the main idea. Check out a few pictures of us at work!