Important Dates!

Hi Parents!

Today your child is coming home with a few important notices. Be sure to watch for them! Next week there is a LOT going on, so here's a quick reminder of important dates to keep in mind:

Tuesday March 12th: Our class will visit the book fair. Check the notice that came home today!

Wednesday March 13th: Half Day of School

Thursday March 14th: Family Math Night

Friday March15th: Picture Day

Be sure to mark your calendars! :)

All About Books

Last week, we started working on our own All About books. First, we each made a list of topics we are "experts" on. Then, we chose one topic to write our books about. We reviewed all the different kinds of pages an All About book can have, and then got to work developing our table of contents! This gave us a plan for the kinds of pages we would need to successfully craft our informational book.

Just like with our All About Penguins books, we are learning how to check and add to our pages by using resources. Some students are using books from our classroom library while others are searching for images or answers to questions online (with kid-friendly search engines and my help of course!) It's great to see some students even bringing books from home.

We will keep working on our books for the rest of the week, and will share our books with each other once they are complete!

Just a reminder that book orders are due on Wednesday. You can either order online, which I know some parents already did, or send in the form to me with a check attached. I will be putting in the order Wednesday night. Thanks! :)

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Yesterday we celebrated Dr. Seuss's Birthday!

We spent our time during Reader's Workshop reading some of our favorite Dr. Seuss books:

We read The Foot Book and learned all about antonyms. We created a list of antonyms we found in the book:

We also had Mrs. Wong and Mrs. DeForest come and read us their favorite Dr. Seuss books:

I am off to make some green eggs and ham for my younger cousins- yum! Have a Seussical Day!

Nonfiction Book Clubs

This week during Reader's Workshop, we started our nonfiction book clubs. I put together a bunch of book baskets filled with books about a variety of topics. The students chose topics they were interested learning more about, and together we formed groups based on interests including dinosaurs, butterflies, firefighters, and volcanoes to name a few.

Once the groups were formed, it was time to meet and make a plan for reading! Each group developed a list of questions or areas they wanted to learn more about with regards to their topic. These plans will guide further book club meetings and give students purpose for reading the various books. It is so rewarding to see how excited and engaged the groups are to meet and read together! In the midst of listening in to some great conversations, I was able to snap a few shots of the book clubs hard at work:

I just love watching these clubs in action! :)

Penguin Unit

Our science unit on penguins is by far one of my favorites! It ties so well into our nonfiction units both in reader's and writer's workshop. I use many nonfiction penguin books in reader's workshop to model strategies we are working on. The All About Penguins books we create help us understand the components of all about books. They also set the stage for the students to begin writing their own all about books with self-selected topics.

As always, we began with our schema chart. The students took some time to write down all that they knew about penguins onto their schema sheets. Then, we all chose one thing to write on a post-it and share with the class. 

"I know penguins do not fly. They slide."
"I know penguins are not mammals."
"I know that penguins live in cold places."
"I know that penguins eat fish."

After reading some all about penguins books in reader's workshop, we began studying the texts to determine what kinds of pages we should include in our own All About Penguins books. These covers get me every time- so cute!!

We made a list of things All About Books have, such as diagrams, different kinds page, table of contents, interesting facts page, etc. Then, we got to work creating some of these pages for our own books.

I encourage everyone to use mentor texts to help them with their books! Here are some of us using the different kinds page in our mentor texts to get the details of each penguin drawn just right:

Tell me these aren't some of the sweetest penguin drawings you've seen!

Here's a few more pictures of other activities we did centered around our penguin unit. We sure did love learning all about penguins!

Partners work on can/have/are charts

More partners at work

Interactive Writing: our class created acrostic poem

Valentine's Day

Here's a few pictures from our SHORT Valentine's Day. With the snow delay, we tried to squeeze in as much as possible. We were certainly some busy bees but still had the best day! ;)

Our Valentine Holder Bags

Thank you Mrs. Wong for bringing in crafts for us!

Hard at Work!

Making our bags

Our favorite part of the day- passing out valentines!

Such a great afternoon! :)

100th Day

Hi everyone,

I can't even begin to tell you how disappointed I was not to be there yesterday for the big day. Food poisoning or the stomach flu got hold of me Thursday night and I was so sad when I had to call  in sick on Friday. Ms. Diamond, our classroom aide, is truly amazing though! She stepped in for me and made sure the kids still had a wonderful day. Plus, she snapped lots of photos so I could see how great everyone looked dressed up like they were 100 years old. Thank you Ms. Diamond! :)

The students gathered with all the other grades to make a human 100 to celebrate the day. Great job first grade helping make the number 1!

I have lots more to share from Valentine's Day to our penguin unit. I will be back soon to post more, but for now, it's more crackers and ginger ale for this under the weather teacher. :( Hope everyone is enjoying their vacation so far!