"Peek at the Week" October 31- November 4

I apologize for my blogging hiatus.  In years past I always blogged on Sunday afternoons during the multiple football games my husband insists on watching.  This routine even worked well last spring when I came back after maternity leave because I could put Lila on her play mat and blog away.  Now she is mobile and obsessed with anything she can't touch - like mommy's computer!  Needless to say my Sundays look a lot different and this blog kept getting neglected.  I'm committed to this communication and giving you a peek into our room each week.  Now that I know this can't get done on Sundays, I am prioritizing it into my week while I'm at school.  I appreciate your patience with me :)

Here is a peek at our week together!

Writer's Workshop
I hope you all had a chance to read your child's small moment story he/she brought home a few weeks ago.  We worked so hard on revising and editing our pieces and were quite proud of the work we did!  I am going to be holding on to many of your child's pieces throughout the year.  They will get these pieces back at our end of the year picnic to share with you.  It is also so fun to see the growth throughout the year!

First graders spent the last two weeks writing How-To pieces.  This procedural writing is a great warm up to our nonfiction unit we will be starting next week!

Reader's Workshop
We have been focusing on retelling our stories.  We are working to identify the setting, characters, problem/solution, and beginning/middle/ending.

We used the 'retelling road' to help us retell stories we read.  Each first grader has a copy of this as a bookmark in their book bins.

Word Work
We have added 10 new words to our word wall:
went
this
are
look
for
get
come
got
play
was

We had fun adding a new way to practice- sand writing!

Math Workshop

 We have continued our focus on addition and subtraction strategies.  We learned a strategy for adding called 'counting on'.  In this strategy, we determine the bigger partner, and count on to find the total.
Children are encouraged to draw dots above the smaller partner to help count on!

We also began exploring subtraction.  We are learning that if we know addition it helps us subtract!  We have focused on proving our thinking by drawing a 'proof drawing'.

We enjoyed exploring a new app called Ten Frame Fill.  You can download this free app to any ipad/iphone.