Mrs. Hogue's 1st Grade Class: "Peek at the Week" September 9-14

Thank you to everyone who was able to attend parent orientation on Thursday! Here is a look into our week:

Reader's Workshop

This week we continued building our reading stamina. We are very proud of what focused readers we are becoming!

We have built 12 minutes of stamina! This is very exciting because we know it is harder to stay focused in a classroom full of friends and with multiple distractions!

We also learned how to choose "Just Right" books. Ms. Havig brought in some of her shoes to show us how choosing a book is like choosing a shoe!

We know that each shoe serves a purpose. Ms. Havig wears boots for shoveling snow, tennis shoes for running, high heels for weddings, and flip flops for the beach. Just like with books, we need to have a purpose for reading. (Some purposes included learning new things, we are interested in a topic, or enjoyment)

Next, Ms. Havig put on a big pair of shoes. She tried walking around the classroom, but kept tripping because the shoes were too big! This would be like picking a book that doesn't 'fit' you! You shouldn't read books during Read-to-Self time that are too hard or too easy!

Next, we partnered up and tried on each other's shoes! We realized very quickly that our friend's shoe doesn't always fit! This demonstrated that everyone has a different sized foot- just like everyone has a different "Just Right" book level! We talked about how each child needs to read "Just Right" books in order to become a better reader. Wearing the wrong 'shoe' doesn't help!

We ended our week relating our shoe demonstrations to an I "Pick" poster for helping us to choose books.

Word Work

We reviewed 5 words from K5 this week and added them to our word wall. The words were: I, can, at, am, the.

Here are some activities we did to practice these words!

Practicing on white boards.

Rainbow Writing

Using words in sentences for class books.

Our popcorn word wall!

Writer's Workshop

We launched our official Writer's Workshop this week. We learned that authors get ideas from things they have done. The first thing we do as authors is sketch our stories. Then we add words. We have a 'catchy' song for helping to remember. Ask your child if they can sing you the song- Think Think Think, Think Think Think, Sketch and Write, Sketch and Write!

Here are some samples from our first day:

The next two days were spent discussing what to do when we think we are done writing. We learned that in Writer's Workshop when you think you're done, you've just begun! You can add to the picture, add to the words, or start a new piece.

Math

This week we focused on identifying numbers that came before & after. We also reviewed using the number line to count and add on. Here are two new games we learned to reinforce these concepts: