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.