"Peek at the Week" October 29-November 2

It has been one busy week for these first graders!!!  I don't know how they are feeling, but I am all tuckered out!   There is so much to show you...so grab some coffee, hot chocolate, or latte and snuggle up with a warm blanket! Here is a peek into our week!

3 Little Pigs

How adorable was this puppet show!?  It was fun to see the kids in action reading, singing, and being puppeteers!

Reader's Workshop

We began our unit on retelling this week. This is one of the many comprehension strategies we will explore this year.  We practiced this skill by taking a trip down the yellow brick road!  

The first stop down the yellow brick road is to name the important characters in the story.  After that we head to the setting.  This is where the story mostly takes place (or the most action happens).  The next step is to explain the problem in the story.  In the story Big Pumpkin, the problem was that the pumpkin was too heavy for the witch to get off the vine by herself! 

Then, we describe the beginning events of the story.  We continue down the path by retelling the middle part of the story ('then'  'next').  The final two steps have us explain the solution to the problem and how the story ends.  This is a great visual to help us remember what needs to be included in retelling!

We also tied in retelling by making a fun project to go with Big Pumpkin.  I hope your child was able to retell this story to you!

Word Work

We focused on the long and short u sound this week.  We were given picture/word sorts to cut and short based upon the u sound (short u like cup, long u like tube).

We also enjoyed eating chicken soup with rice to wrap up the month of October.  Then, we added our new November poem to our poetry binders.  It was a delicious treat for such a cold day :)

Writer's Workshop

This week we continued practicing telling our stories across our fingers.  We are working hard as writers to plan a beginning, middle, and end! We met with our writing partners to practice telling our story before we wrote it!

Look at how much writing we are doing! Everyone is working so hard to put as many details as they can into their writing.  

We ended our week creating a class version of Silly Sally by Audrey Wood.  It turned out adorable!

Are you still with me!?  There is still more to come!!  

Math Workshop

We began Unit 3 this week!  Our focus was on visual patterns, odd/even numbers, and finding patterns in the number grid.  We started the week by discussing that patters repeat OR are predictable.  (Not all patterns repeat the same things over and over...for example skip counting by 5s!)

Here are some patterns we made!

We also explored odd and even numbers.  To give us a visual, we charted numbers that could make pairs, and numbers that did not make equal pairs.  To add some fun, we used ourselves to model this concept!

 We also spent some time this week practicing adding by using the number line.  Right now, we are not formally using 4+6 = 10, but rather are asking kids how many hops from 4 to 10.  Later this unit we will begin using addition sentences. 

Halloween!

Can I just say I love having first graders on Halloween!? I know you might think I am crazy...but I just love the excitement and energy they have for this fun holiday! They all looked ADORABLE in their costumes!

We started our day by making Monster Stew.  MMMMM nothing like chicken toes, earth worms, owl eyes, and other creepy ingredients to start the day off right :)

Listing all the ingredients!

 A picture of Monster Stew

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!

After tasting the stew, we took a vote to see if we liked it.  It looks like Monster Stew was a first grade sucess!!

Yikes...one friend thought the gummy worms tasted real ;)

We also got a special visitor...MS. VIOLA SWAMP!!!  (it really was Mrs. Witkov!)

Are you ready to see some costumes?!  Presenting the oh so cute first grade class:

 

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Well I hope you made it through this loooooong post!  It sure was a busy week.  I just have to say that I seriously LOVE my job and cannot be more thankful for the group of kids and families I get to work with this year.  Thank you for everything you do  :)