"Peek at the Week" January 22-25

We are officially over half way through the year!! 

We celebrated the 90th day of school on Thursday. We began the day with a guest reader- Mrs. Witkov!  She came and read us half of ABad Case of the Stripes in the morning.

 

 She even dressed the part of Camillia!  After reading the first half of the story, we made predictions on how the story would end.

Mrs. Witkov came back and finished the story at the end of the day.  Many of us made really accurate predictions!  And of course...we talked about the moral of the story which is to always be yourself :)  (It is a great story- I highly recommend adding it to your collection!)

After reading the first part of the story we worked together to complete the morning message, which of course, only had half the letters!

 

Next, we made our half way day crowns!

Our math time was also 'half way day' themed.  The kiddos completed a story about Harry and Dottie.  The focus of this story was on our doubles facts. 

 

There was also a page that had some 1/2 fractions on it which they loved!

Overall, it was a fun day and exciting to think of all we have done together this year :)

Reader's Workshop

 We wrapped up our unit on 'growing stories' that took a look at all the elements that are found in fictional stories.  This week we focused on the setting.  We learned that the setting is the where and when of a story.  Sometimes stories have more than one setting.  The children recorded the setting(s) of their stories on sticky notes to share with the group:

On Friday, each student completed their own story map on a book of their choosing.  Look for these to come home on Monday!

Next week we will begin a short unit on nonfiction!! 

Writer's Workshop

We read another book by our mentor author this week called The Leaving Morning.

 We noticed very quickly that this book had many similarities to Joshua's Nigh Whispers. One of the biggest things we noticed was that Angela Johnson repeated phrases several times.  We call this comeback lines.  

The comeback line holds the main idea of the story.  It gives the story a soft feel as you read it.  After I modeled how to figure out a comeback line for a story, the kids tried it out with sticky notes!

 

 

This wasn't an easy task!  Many students realized it was quite tricky to determine a good comeback line for their story if there was no clear focus. Even so, it was a craft the kids had fun exploring with!

Math Workshop

We wrapped up Unit 5 by working with In & Out boxes. This is a rather tricky concept, but with many opportunities for practice and modeling most of the kids really caught on!  In & Out boxes will continue to pop up in Everyday Math each year!

We took the Unit 5 assessment on Friday.  I hope to send these home by mid week. 

Our next unit is on basic addition and subtraction facts.  We will also begin timed fact tests!!  The goal for first graders is to complete 30 basic addition & subtraction facts with 90% accuracy in 5 minutes.  Once children master this, they will move to the 2nd grade goal (60 facts in 5 minutes) and 3rd grade (100 multiplication facts in 5 minutes).  I strongly encourage you to practice addition and subtraction facts each day with your child!

Flash Light Reading Celebration!

We are reading so so much in 1st grade!!  To celebrate reaching our December goal, we got to read with flashlights on Friday!

 

I hope you had a wonderful weekend!  Make sure you are getting plenty of sleep and stay healthy!

Love,
Ms. Havig

"Peek at the Week" January 14-18

Boy oh boy was this a fun filled first grade week!  We are getting so excited to reach our half way day (90th day) next week Thursday.  I cannot believe how fast this year is flying by!  These little ones are growing up and becoming 'big kids' :)

Here is a peek into our week!

Bedtime Story Hour

We may as well start with the highlight of the week...right?!  All week long I kept hearing "Ms. Havig I cannot wait for the sleepover night!" (I laughed every time!)  The kids had a *blast* listening to stories, eating muffins, and of course wearing their PJs to school!

I apologize for not catching all the kiddos!  I know I missed a few!

Reader's Workshop

I am continually impressed by these little minds!  We continued discussing story elements this week with specific focuses on character development.  We looked at traits characters have, goals, and problem/solution.  We then moved into story events.  All fiction stories have many events, but we only need to use the most important events when we retell.  To help with this we read an old favorite:

 

The kids helped me record all the events in the story:

Then we circled the events that were most important to the story.  We discussed why we only need to tell the important events while retelling, but in order to make stories 'come alive' authors 

s  t  r  e  t  c  h 

their stories to add lots of good detail! (this was also a great tie into writer's workshop!)


Writer's Workshop
We are continued studying Joshua's Night Whispers by Angela Johnson.  We began noticing different techniques authors include in writing.  In this story, Angela uses  ' 3 dots, 3 times'.  We discussed that the dot, dot, dot (ellipsis) tells readers to slow down and that more is going to happen.  It also adds a nice dramatic feature.

Word Work
We continued our study on plural nouns this week.  Right now we are only looking at nouns that have an -s and -es ending.  I really stressed the way each plural ending sounds.  The -s ending has the /s/ sound, whereas the -es ending has the /z/ sound. This is important to think about when children are writing and reading.  We completed two word sorts this week to help us recognize and read plural nouns.

(I knew children were 'getting' it because this week I began reading Mr. Popper's Penguins. After two days of reading, one child raised his hand and asked, "Ms. Havig, in the title the word penguins has an -s so that means it is a plural noun, but there is only one penguin in the story!" LOVE LOVE LOVE these great little minds!)

Math Workshop
We focused this week on difference stories and turn around facts. We will be wrapping up Unit 5 this week and testing toward the end of the week.  Our next unit is on addition strategies.  We will also begin our formal timed addition tests.  I encourage you to start practicing facts with your first grader!

We are working on solving number stories in many ways!

Here we are practicing turn around facts.  These facts are fun because if you know one fact such as 4+3=7 then you also know another fact- 3+4=7!

 Switching the 3 and 4!

We also created turn around facts by placing the sum on the left side!

 (sorry these turned out so blurry!

This was a fun way to visualize this concept.  It is important for children to realize that it does not matter what order the numbers are added in, it will still give you the same sum!

We also worked in math stations.  Here is a look at what we did:

Place Value <,>,= Dominoes 

 BUMP!

Base 10 Exchange Game

 

 Math Journals and Number Scrolls

 

 Scoop & Total

 Here is how we organize it all! While students are working on different math activities, I pull small groups for intervention, extension, or enrichment activities. 

Martin Luther King Jr.
We started studying Martin Luther King Jr. this week.  The kids have a lot of background knowledge on him and how he changed our world.  This week, we continued learning about him by reading many different non-fiction books.  The kids were put into small groups and each read a different book about his life.  Then, we can back together and created a 'tree web' on what we learned. (sorry...I forgot to snap some pictures of this! I will post them next week!)

 After reading many books, one big thing stood out to us.  Dr. King wanted to solve his problems peacefully and not resort to violence.  Although this wasn't always easy, it was much more effective.  We talked a lot about peace and then created a 'peace project' in which we define what peace means to use. 

 Tracing hands to make the wings of the dove.

 The body is our feet!

Our peace doves!

Science
We started our new unit on changes.  We will be looking at the varies states of matter and how they change.  We started by recording what we thought the words 'solids' 'liquids' and 'changes' meant.  We will be keeping a science journal throughout this unit!

Next, each partner group got a 'change card'.  On these cards children predicted what changes would happen next!

Then we experimented with solids and liquids.  Each group was given a solid and a liquid.  They came up with three words to describe each item.

 

 

Then we placed the solid into the liquid to see what would happen!

 We saw that the solid created 'bubbles' inside the water.  Some children realized that this was a gas released into the water.  (In case you were wondering, the solid was an effervescent tablet and the liquid was water.)

We added some new words to our science wall.


I hope you all had a wonderful week!  Remember, there is no school for students on Monday, January 21.  Have a wonderful weekend!

We will have our flashlight read-in on Friday, January 25.  Please send your child with a flashlight this day!  Also, if you could send in any extras you may have for students who forget I would greatly appreciate it!

Love,
Ms. Havig