Saturday, February 28, 2015

"Peek at the Week" February 23-27

I can't believe I am writing the last February post for this school year! Even though February is a short month, I always feel like it 'feels' the longest. The weather is cold, the days still get dark early,  and the rejuvenation from winter break has worn off. 

As a school, we have noticed an increase in student reminders about following the Stormonth Way.  We will be focusing on hallway expectation over the next several weeks. It is expected that our hallways have a 0 voice level in order to be respectful of the learning going on in the classrooms. Not only are we holding our students to this expectation, but we as teachers and adults are working on this too. If we expect our students to follow this rule, then we also have to follow it! Our PBIS team has some fun incentives they are working on to recognize classes who model appropiste hallway behavior! Be on the lookout for outstanding line and body basics when you come to Stormonth! 

Here is a peek at our week!

Math Workshop 
We have been very busy problem solvers this week. We wrote, solved, and proved story problems with various unknowns!
We learned that various means 'different kinds'. Sometimes we are solving for an unknown total and other times we are solving for an unknown partner! We even learned that sometimes the first partner is unknown and other times the second partner is unknown! We learned all of this while still building strategies for solving problems with teen totals! Phew!

Here are some number stories we wrote!



Then, we solved each other's problems!


We continue to work on explaining our thinking to others. We got many opportunities this week to be the teachers and explain how we solved problems!



Pretty cool, huh!? I'm so proud of these kiddos!! 

On Fridays, we have started focusing on our fact fluency. We are calling this day "Fact Fluency Friday". (Clever, I know!) We are practicing building our fluency in fun and engaging ways.

5 In A Row- solving facts and trying to get 5 squares in a row!


Power Towers- solving facts on cups and adding them to a growing tower!



Computer games- I have added some websites we know under the websites tab. Be sure to check them out for extra practice at home! 

Reader's Workshop
We contined adding strategies for solving tricky words!  


We added:
Break words apart part by part
This strategy is similar to 'chunking words' but rather than just looking for chunks in one way, readers might try breaking the word apart in serveral ways in order to figure out the tricky word. For example, in the word afternoon, some children might know the words after and noon. Others might need to break it aprt further into af  ter  noon

Think about the kind of word
When we get stuck in a tricky word it is important to stop and think about what kind of word it might be. Is it an action word, a place, a rhyming word,etc.? This helps us think about what will sound right and make sense in the sentence.

Flip the Sound
We know vowels make more than one sound. If a short sound doesn't sound right, flip it and try the long sound! 

Read the story again 
This strategy is so helpful when we don't know exactly what a word means. We read the story Knuffle Bunny Too this week. We realized there were a few words we didn't quite know the meaning to, so we read it again. The second time through we were able to infer the words' meaning because we were already familiar with the story! 

Word Work
This week we started focusing on consonant blends. We focused on the L blends this week: bl, cl, fl, gl, pl, sl.


We started by sorting pictures by their initial consonant blends.

We made words with blends.

We alphabetized blend words.


And during centers on Friday we unscrambled blend sentences!


Our other Friday centers included:

Blend 4 in a Row 

Spelling City (now with PERSONALIZED lists!) Children who knew all the first grade words were given some new high frequency words to study!


Making words 

Science 
We have spent the last two weeks exploring how solids can dissolve in a liquid. We conducted the experiment: The Great Sugar Race.  We we exploring what dissolved faster- a sugar cube, or broken up sugar. 


We saw very quickly that the broken up sugar dissolved quicker. Next, we explored water temperature. Would sugar dissolve quicker in warm water or cold water? Ask your child the results of this investigation!



In other news..

We were invited to the second grade character fashion show! It was so fun to try and figure out which characters they dressed up as! We did a pretty good job inferring characters based on their clues!


The bookfair is coming to Stormonth on Tuesday, March 10. It will be from 3:00- 8:00 in the cafeteria. The cakewalk is also happening that evening. Be sure to check it out! Mrs. Diamond and her crew have been hard at work making sure this will be a great time for your family!
We wi be having a classroom 'Coin War' all next week. The winning classroom will win an ice cream party. Even if we don't win, I still feel like we do since all your coin donations will go towards new books for our classroom! This bookfair always helps me stalk up on great books for our classroom!

Our field trip to the play Ivy and Bean is on Monday, Match 9. We will be eating lunch early that day. I strongly encourage you to send a bag lunch with your child that day. 

I hope you enjoy the weekend!!
Love,
Mrs. Hogue

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

"Peek at the Weeks" February 9-13 and February 16-30

Math Workshop
We started our new unit in math this week! We focused on number stories with teen totals.  We reviewed the words unknown partner and unknown total


We also began looking at strategies to help us solve teen subtraction probelms. 

One way we learned is by counting on from the partner to the total. 


Another startegy we explored was breaking apart the partner to make 10. For example, if you have 14-6 = __, children would break the 6 into 4 and 2. Then they would take 4 away from 14 to get 10. Then take 2 away from 10 to get 8. This strategy sounds tricky, but after some practice it really helps children solve these probelms mentally!

Reader's Workshop
We started our second tricky word unit last week!  In this unit, we will be adding a lot of strategies for tackling tricky words now that we are stronger readers and are reading harder books!


We are learning that readers must ask themselves 3 important questions when solving a tricky word:

Does it look right?
Does it sound right?
Does it make sense?

As we learn new strategies, we are putting them into one of these three categories. 

We are also building our own personal strategy charts to keep in our book bins! Each time we learn a strategy, we add it to our chart!


Toward the end of last week we learned how partners can 'coach' each other through tricky words! When a partner gets stuck on a word, their partner can suggest a strategy to try!



Our goal is to be independent when tackling tricky words while monitoring and self correcting our attempts. So far we are off to a great start!

Word Work 
We wrapped up our study on long and short vowels. We spent time reviewing all the vowel sounds!

We also learned the rest of our word wall words:
Before
Going
Man
I'm
Because
Our
Mother

We practiced our vowels and word wall words in centers this week:

Building word families (long and short vowels)


4 in a Row (review of long/short U)


Mixed Up Sentences (word wall words)


Spelling City (word wall words) 



What a fun two weeks!

It has been a very cold couple of weeks, and our classroom gets very, very cold inside! Please make sure your child is dressed warmly each day or brings an extra sweater/sweatshirt!  Thanks :)

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Valentine's Day

I heart first grade! Last week was filled with lots of laughter, hugs, and of course love! We had so much celebrating Valentine's Day together!


We started the day by learning a fun game called Don't Eat Cupid!  Have your first grader tell you all about this fun game!



Next we made a project to go along with the book Love, Splat. 



We ended our day with a Valentine celebration! We played 'Jingo', ate some yummy treats, and opened our Valentines! 









Happy Valentine's Day!!

Sunday, February 8, 2015

"Peek at the week " February 2-6

Wellllll it looks like we are in for 6 more weeks of winter. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on Monday and ran back inside his hole. That's OK though, because the kids had a blast outside building in the snow this week!


Here is a peek at our week!

Math Workshop
This week we explored how knowing a fact like 5 + 4 = 9 helps us know 50 + 40 = 90. We know that 5 ones + 4 ones = 9 ones, so 5 tens + 4 tens = 9 tens.  Children know that adding a 0 is a 'trick' but we learned that it is important to explain this concepts using the terms ones and tens. This will be easential later in the year when we learn new ways to add 2 digit numbers. 


We also began adding 2 digit numbers to 1 digit numbers. We were able to see that sometimes we can create a new ten group from the ones! We practiced this on a ten frame mat- when children filled a ten frame they exchanged the ones for a ten stick!


Reader's Workshop 
We started a new unit in reader's workshop this week. We will be learning how readers can be brave and solve tricky words independently. A big goal will be learning to hold ourselves accountable for monitoring our own reading. We took a look at our tricky word strategies we learned about at the beginning of the year. Now that we are stronger readers and are tackling more challenging books, it will be important to stop and think about 3 things when solving difficult words: Does it look right? Does it sound right? Does it make sense? 


We sorted our strategies into these 3 categories. Over the next several weeks we will be adding more strategies to our chart. We will have a heavy emphasis on making sure the words we read make sense. 


Science
This week we explored mixtures. First we mixed two solids together- salt and gravel.  




We learned that when two solids are mixed together nothing changes, and it is easy to separate the two solids.

Later in the week we explored mixing solids with water: salt, gravel, and tissue. 


We quickly saw that the salt "disappeared" or dissolved in the water. The gravel sank to the bottom, and the tissue floated to the top. We will be leaving a sample of each mixture out to see if the solids change from being mixed with the water! 

I am looking forward to meeting with all of you during conferences. I am eager to share all the great things your child has accomplished during the first half of the year!

Have a great weekend :)