Happy Holidays

What a great first half of first grade!  Thank you so much for your support and donations to the First Grade sponsored "Scholastic Pajama Project"!  Fox Creek Elementary donated 212 pairs of new pajamas to Douglas County Health and Human Services in Castle Rock.  So many Douglas County residents in need were given a warm, cozy pair of pajamas and a new book courtesy of Scholastic Books.

We had so much fun organizing and counting the pajamas before our winter parties.  The students loved wearing their pajamas and enjoying the movie Polar Express!


Thank you so much for helping us show compassion to our community by contributing  pajamas!

I hope you and your families have a healthy, fun filled holiday!

Pajama Time

First Grade is hosting an all school Scholastic Pajama Drive for those in need in Douglas County.  We will be collecting pajamas until Wednesday, December 17.  For every pair of new pajamas sized newborn to adult that we collect, Scholastic Books will donate one free book to go with the pajamas.  The students are so excited to show compassion to our community by contributing pajamas.  Our school wide goal is 200 pairs.

We will be having our classroom holiday party on December 17 from 9-10 am.  We will wear our pajamas on Wednesday, December 17, to celebrate our donation and to watch "The Polar Express" that afternoon to celebrate the holidays.  Thank you for your support!

Celebrating Our Learning

What a beautiful Celebration of Learning!  The students worked so hard at performing their songs, teaching you about all their learning and presenting all of their high quality work.  Students were so proud of themselves!  I hope you were as touched as I was!

Celebration of Learning

Our Celebration of Learning is Thursday, December 4.  All first graders need to come to the classroom at 5:45 pm dressed up.  Parents, family and guests will go to the gym for our performance to start at 6 pm.  After our performance, please come to the first and second grade classrooms to learn all about our expedition "Everybody Has a Story".  I encourage you to visit your student along with all the other first graders.  They have been working so hard!

Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving Break (November 26-30)!  I hope you enjoy the time off with your friends and family.  May you have time to reflect, listen, relax and have fun.  One of our favorite traditions is listening to others and telling 5 things that you are thankful for.
I am thankful for:
~27 busy, energetic, healthy, curious, happy first graders that bring me pure joy EACH and EVERY day
~a career at a school that allows me to be challenged and grow
~a family that supports me and loves me unconditionally
~a healthy body and mind
~2 dogs that keep me running and love me no matter what

Questions to ask at home:
What are you thankful for?  Why?

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

Peter Pan

We enjoyed our field work at Peter Pan!  We practiced being a respectful audience.  

 In addition, we were looking for good presentation skills to include:
~good volume (Can everyone hear the person speaking?)
~eye contact (Is the performer or speaker looking out at the audience?)
~hand gestures (Did the performers move their hands or their body to make the performance more interesting?)
This will help us to be successful at our Celebration of Learning on December 4th!  The kids enjoyed the performance so much!  Please visit Lone Tree Arts Center Website for other great shows for kids or CYT's Website.

Math In First Grade

We are in unit 3 and are working towards the goals of:
~combining numbers to find a sum
~finding an unknown number in an addition problem
~finding different combinations of a sum (1+9, 8+2)

We used unifix cubes to find different combinations.  Students collaborated together and noticed patterns of turn around facts (3+7 =10 and 7+3= 10).  Our crew loves the hands on math!

Grand Friends at Lincoln Meadows

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children. ~Alex Haley

 

 

 

 

Grand Friends make the best story tellers

This week we started our 4th case study, "Telling Someone Else's Story".  We visited Lincoln Meadows.  Students were patient, kind and respectful as they listened to their new "grand friend" tell a small story from their life.  So much joy was brought to Lincoln Meadows because of the great first grade crew of FCE!  Back at school, we listened to the recorded story on the i-pads and started taking notes.  This week, we will start writing the story and drawing the grand friend's portrait before our next visit.

Pumpkin Fun with Dads and Grandpa

What a great way to celebrate Halloween.  Dads and a grandpa came to help our CREW with some pumpkin fun. 

Small groups of first graders got to work hands on with the guys on pumpkin activities including counting seeds, measuring, weighing, describing and carving.  This was such a special celebration for all of our first graders.








We loved all the pumpkins and a big thank you to all the dads and grandpa who could come!

Sharing Our Small Moments

We concluded our 3rd case study, Writing Our Story in our Learning Expedition "Everybody Has A Story" with a small moment celebration.  Every author has persevered through multiple drafts, editing/revising with our 4th grade buddies from Mrs. Moore's class, editing with our first grade writing partner and typing the piece in the computer lab. 

working with our 4th grade buddies

Each student got to read his her small moment to the entire class.

Each author had to use a strong classroom voice so that everyone could hear.  Our audience practiced sitting quietly and clapping nicely at the conclusion of each reading.  We took an intermission half way through and enjoyed some bubbly (Sprite) back at our tables with a writing partner.

 




While enjoying Sprite, students practiced being good partners by:
~sitting right next to his/her partner
~Listening to the author read
~Ask specific questions about the reading
~Giving feedback by saying
   "I notice....."
   "I wonder...." 





We finished up the remainder of the whole class author readings.  The students are really proud of their hard work.  We will be reading these small moments to our grand friends on Wednesday.  You will get to see this hard work at our Celebration of Learning on Thursday, December 4th from 6-8 pm.

Halloween

Halloween is FRIDAY!  

A special give back opportunity will be happening on that day.  First grade will be collecting and donating gravy (canned or in a jar).  Each grade level is collecting a different item to donate to the local food bank.  

Please have your child wear his/her costume.  We will start with an all school parade.  Please go to the gym to see all the great costumes.  After the parade, please come directly to the classroom for a great Halloween party planned by Stacy Rini and Lauren Arnone.  Everyone is welcome!

We will then be changing out of our costumes and getting in regular clothes before lunch.  After lunch, we will be doing experiments and having fun with pumpkins.  We need dads, uncles, grandpas, etc. to come help.  Dads, etc. please bring a pumpkin with you!

Welcome Back from Fall Break

What a great week!  We reviewed and practiced routines and norms.  
Reading:
We are persevering by applying many reading strategies during our reading.  Sounding out is just one reading strategy.  Students need to use a variety of reading strategies.  Most importantly, they need to make sure their reading:
~sounds right
~looks right
~makes sense
Today, we discussed picking "just right books".  An "uphill" book has 5 or more hard words.  A "just right" book has 1-4 hard words.  A "downhill" book has no hard words. 

Questions to ask your student...
~What is a just right book?
~What is a reading strategy you can try when you come to a tricky word?

In our expedition writing, "Everybody Has a Story", we are working on:
~spaces between words, capitals at the beginning and periods at the end
~making sure our writing flows
~adding details (describing words, action words, feeling words)
Questions to ask your student...
~Why do you add details to a small moment?
~What details did you add to your small moment?

We finished up our shapes math unit.  The students enjoyed and used our math vocabulary:
geometry
vertices
quadrilateral
triangle 
Questions to ask your student...
~What is a quadrilateral?
~Can you describe or explain vertices?

We are so excited for Halloween on Friday!  We hope you can attend the all school parade at 9 am with our in class party immediately following.

Writing Our Small Moment

We had an expert writing teacher, Lori Conrad, come visit us to talk about small moments.  She helped us understand how to determine what is most important when we write a small moment.

After learning from our writing expert, we have begun writing lots of small moments.  As writers, we:
~write the whole time
~stretch out unknown words and keep on writing
~add lots of details

We love to spread out in our classroom to so we can do our best writing.  As you will see, busy first grade writers like to stand, sit, share and lay down!

***Share some small moments in your life (your favorite birthday as a child, a memory of a grandparent, a vacation, a favorite childhood gift)
Questions to ask your first grader:
~What do good writers do?
~Can you tell me a small moment?
~What are some strategies to spell tricky words?

Mathematicians

Our second math unit is all about shapes.  Students will be:
~decomposing shapes using other shapes
~comparing and sorting shapes
~using more and less shapes to fill an outline

Students love using the word geometry in their math conversations with crew mates.

My favorite thing about this unit is how much we collaborate as a crew.  Students are using manipulatives to answer questions and create things out of pattern blocks.
Questions to ask your mathematician...
What is geometry?
How are you using geometry in your math lessons?
How are a square and rectangle different? The same?

Case Study #3 Telling Our Story Through a Small Moment

"The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you" ~unknown

This week we kicked off our third case study "Telling Our Story" in our Learning Expedition "Everybody Has a Story".  We will be working hard as authors to write a small moment.

First, I brought in a watermelon to get them wondering how a watermelon is like a story.  Our life is the watermelon, the slice is something important (a certain family member like Nana or a holiday like Christmas or our birthday), but the seed is the small moment that we will zero in on (the Christmas pickle in my tree, my Nana making me fried chicken).

As you can tell they enjoyed the watermelon and really got the idea of the seed.  Many said "What's your seed?"  We shared our small moment stories orally while we enjoyed the watermelon.
Questions to ask your student..
"What is a small moment?"
"How is a seed of a watermelon like a small moment?"

**Practice telling your child a small moment story...
I remember when my grandpa...
This one time.....
Let me tell you about this one time....

An our expedition work continues....

We have been continuing our work on story elements.  This week we worked in small groups in different texts. 

 It was amazing to see the kids take control of their own learning by working together, solving problems and helping each other finish.  Each group had to present their story and its elements to the class.

Tattling vs. Reporting

This week in CREW, we read "Tattlin' Madeline".  We had a great discussion and compared tattling to reporting.  Here are the points we touched on:

Please ask your child to describe the conversation and ask questions:
~What is tattling?  How does it make you feel?  How does it make your crew mates feel?
~What is reporting?  How does it make you feel?  How does it make your crew mates feel?
In your child's Thursday folder is a sheet of paper for you and your child to review and discuss together.  Thank you for your support!

High Quality Work in First Grade

Our first case study of our Learning Expedition: Everybody Has a Story is finished!  Our self portraits are the completed product and every child has taken the time to share about himself/herself orally and in a 3 sentence writing.  When you stop by Fox Creek, please check out the hard work and perseverance your child showed.  They are so pleased with this work, as they should be.

This Week

Our expert for our expedition, "Everybody Has a Story", this week was a Spellbinder Story Teller from the Douglas County Library.  The kids really enjoyed listening to this tale about the stars.

This week, we have worked really hard on the story elements.  We read the Little Red Hen to practice story elements as a class.  Next week, students will be working in small groups to find the story elements in a small group text.  Please ask your child about characters, setting, beginning, middle and end.  We are working hard on our song for our Celebration of Learning December 4th from 6-8 pm.  

Thank you for the help with spelling this week!  The students scores really improved.  I hope you have enjoyed playing the math games with your student.  We are working hard to combine numbers to find the sum.  We are using equal, greater than and less than when we are comparing numbers.  Questions to ask your student:
"What does sum mean?   What does equal, greater than, and less than mean?"

In Crew, we are working on what a good friend does, says and the way he/she acts.  We also talked about heart prints.  Ask your child what a heart print is and what is a heart print they have received before?

Yoga

Every Tuesday, we incorporate our health standards into our CREW and throughout our day.  We have been working on smart food choices (red light, yellow light and green light foods) as well as making sure we get plenty of exercise each day. 

Today, Coach Wendy (Run Club Coordinator) came in to lead us in yoga.  The kids were really engaged and enjoyed learning new things.  Check out this article on the benefits of yoga in the classroom.  Today's focus was all about stress relief, relaxation and helping us calm down. 

Please ask your student about his/her favorite yoga pose!

Birthdays

We love to celebrate birthdays in first grade!  We know it is a special day.  If you choose to send in a snack, please follow these guidelines:

~single serving, tree nut and peanut free treat (cupcakes, donuts, cookies are fine) or make it healthy and send in a small toy or prize (pencil, stickers, bouncy ball)
~all snacks should be the same (please do not send in variety packs or chocolate & plain as this leads to sad feelings)
 ~no cake that I would need to cut
~please provide napkins
~invitations can only come to school if all children in the class are invited
~these snacks will be served during our normal snack time (1 or 1:20 pm)