Mrs. Hogue's 1st Grade Class: "Peek at the Week" December 2-6

Take a peek into our exciting week!

Writers's Workshop

This week we learned how writers make their writing special. We learned different crafts, or techniques, from two authors we know very well.

We know when we read books by real authors that the stories sound so special and exciting. We thought to ourselves, hmm...I would like to try that! We took some ideas from authors and tried them in our own writing this week! It was fun to see children bringing their stories to life in new and exciting ways!

Using Pop Out words!

Reader's Workshop

This week we began an exciting unit- Nonfiction!! You could literally see the excitement bursting out of these 1st graders. Nonfiction is an exciting genre for first graders....they are so eager to learn!

We started with an exploration of many nonfiction books.

We all got to add 2 nonfiction books to our book bins!

After we learned that all the books in front of us were nonfiction, we learned how these books were organized in our classroom library. The books are organized by topic. The topics range from sports to animals to biographies. As you can see, we have many nonfiction topics right in our own classroom!

As we began reading and exploring nonfiction books, we quickly realized that there were many differences between nonfiction and fiction. Nonfiction books have text features such as photographs, table of contents, headings, and diagrams! We searched for text features in our own books and marked them with sticky notes to share!

Toward the end of the week we began to learn how readers read nonfiction books. We have to read these books much differently than fiction books.

First, we learned that nonfiction readers look at the cover. They ask themselves 3 important questions:

1. What do I already know about this topic?
2. What questions do I have about this topic?

3. What do I think I will learn about this topic?

We practiced warming our minds up by looking at the cover and asking ourselves these questions. We recorded our thinking on sticky notes.

We also learned that nonfiction readers must 'put on the breaks' when reading nonfiction. They need to stop and ask themselves, "What is the author trying to teach me?" By stopping and thinking readers can learn more about the topic.

Math Workshop

We began Unit 3 this week on unknown number partners in addition and subtraction. In our last unit, students learned how to find the total when given two number partners. In this unit, students will be given the total and one number partner in order to find the missing piece.

We began by reviewing Math Mountains. This is a very visual way for many children to solve missing partner problems. Children place the total on the top and the partner on the bottom. Then, they solve for the missing partner.

We practiced missing partner problems in many ways. In each method of practice, students were encourage to name the total, and the partner. This helped them organize their thinking while solving the problem.