Sharing Love with our Grandfriends

What a special day with our grand friends!  We brought them each a valentine and spent time visiting while enjoying cookies.  We also helped them with an art project that will be on display at their art show.  Your child's high quality drawing of his/her grand friend will be on display. 

The grand friends are so excited to spend time with their special first grade friends.  Please join us at the Lincoln Meadows art show on Saturday, February 21st.

100th Day of School

We are 100 years old!  To celebrate 100 days of first grade, we came to school dressed like we were 100 years old.  We had a parade with the other first graders.  We read a poem with 100 words and wrote 100 words we know.

Next we got to make a yummy snack of 100 things (10 of each of the 10 different donated items).  A big thank you to all of you who donated snacks and to Mrs. Lyle and Mrs. Ellis for staying to help with our fun day.

 We played a fun 100th day money exchange game and kept track of rolling a dice using 100 tally marks.

We collaborated together to count 100 things by 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s.  We wrote about what we would and would not want 100 of.  The best part of today was reflecting on what we got smarter at after 100 days of 1st grade!

Genius Hour with Animals

This week, we started our animal research through Genius Hour. 
1.  Think - What animal do you want to study?
2.  Research
We checked out books about an animal of choice and on Friday, our 4th grade buddies supported us with online research at www.kidrex.org.  Please support us at home by doing at home research online (we love National Geographic for kids and Kid Rex) or going to the public library to check out a book to read about your child's animal.  Thanks for the support!


3.  Learn - The first grade experts are taking notes on their animal. This week we will use non-fiction text features to write a book all about the animal to include a table of contents, glossary, bold words, labels and diagrams. 

Guiding Questions
~How do non-fiction text features (such as a glossary, bold words, diagrams, labels) help us as a reader and writer?
~How is my writing different as a fictional author and a non-fiction reporter?

Asking Questions

Good readers ask questions!
We are now deep into our study of non-fiction texts.  We are learning a lot, but more importantly we are curiously asking LOTS of questions.  As readers, we are learning that we ask questions before, during and after reading.  Each day, we are reading both non-fiction and fiction books to practice asking questions.  We realize there are many ways and sources of information to answer our questions to include:
~texts
~websites - www.kidrex.org
~experts (we have e-mailed many of our Community Worker experts to ask specific questions)
Students will begin a non-fiction animal report of their choosing to apply their knowledge of non-fiction reading to their writing.
 
We wrap up our Unit 4 in math this week and the unit test will be coming home.  This math unit was all about data collection and analyzing data.  Students started with a survey question and then collected data.  Once the data was collected, we began to ask questions:
~What does the data show us?
~Why is this data important?
~When we compare this data, what do we notice?
~What math statement can we say about our data?  Students used math vocabulary to include greater than and less than

We wrapped up our social studies unit on Community.  We will now be learning about maps and globes. 

Is this the job for me?

We continued our work on "Jobs in our Community".  

Our essential questions we are focusing on are:
~How do jobs impact our community?
~What tools help a community worker do his/her job?
~What is a good or service?

This week, we had a visit from a nurse, local restaurant owner, mail carrier, baker and farmer.  The students asked great, curious questions.  We will finish up our small group study of community workers this week. 
We hope you can visit or contact some of these local businesses:
~Hideway Bar and Grill
~ABC Cakes LLC

Community Workers

In social studies, we have started a case study about Communities.  This week, we invited parents in to discuss their community jobs.

Mr. Lupher came to talk about the tools he uses as a firefighter and how he helps the community.  Ms. Bundy came to talk to us about being a hair dresser and brought tools and compared working for someone, being self employed and working at your home vs. working in a salon.  Lastly, Mr. Arnone came to discuss how police officers provide the service of safety and protection.  We loved getting to have real life experiences with the community workers and hearing about the importance of their jobs and their tools.  Students had a lot of opportunities to ask questions.  What curious first graders!

This week we studied a teacher as a class.  We are using multiple sources of information (books, videos and interviews) to help us research these community jobs.  Next week, we will collaborate in small groups to study a community job.  In addition, we have a baker, a restaurant owner, nurse, mail carrier and farmer to teach us about their important community jobs.
Questions to discuss:
~What is a good?  What is a service?  
~What jobs are important to our community? Why?

Welcome 2015

Welcome to 2015!  This half of first grade will be full of more learning and fun.

We will be working on the following targets:
 
ELA (English Language Arts)
~Recognizing non-fiction texts
~Understanding and using non-fiction text features in both reading and writing
   *table of contents, index, captions, labels, photographs, bold words, facts and information
~Asking questions before, during and after reading
~Increasing our reading and writing stamina (reading independently 20+ minutes and writing 4+ sentences)
~lowercase letter formation, capitalization at the beginning, ending punctuation and spaces

Math
~describing shapes and items using attributes
~comparing and contrasting items by their attributes
~collecting and analyzing data

Social Studies (case study on community)
~comparing/contrasting families
~discussing needs/wants and goods/services
~analyzing jobs in our community
~describing and understanding the importance of America's National Symbols
~comparing maps/globes to include water vs. land including continents