All month long, students learned about the First Thanksgiving through interactive read alouds, poems, songs, and crafts. Students weaved placemats, made friendship bead necklaces, and created classroom murals of Plimoth Plantation. In Art class with Ms. Cortes, all students made Native American vests. We even went on a “virtual” field trip to the Plimoth Plantation!
Much of our unit consisted of teamwork to represent how the Pilgrims and Native Americans had to work together in order to survive. We simulated how crowded it was on the Mayflower by gathering all students together in the first grade hallway in the same square footage at the Mayflower. Classes worked collaboratively to practice songs and poems and to make Pilgrim and Native American hats to wear during our Feast presentation. All five classes joined together to vote on a menu for our Feast (see last week's blog) and worked together to prepare the food for their feast. We couldn't have done this without the incredible support of our families! Thank you for the food donations, the help during our Monday Food Prep day, and your attendance to our Feast presentation! Thank you for all of your help in making this an amazing experience for all children and an event to remember!
0 Comments
We are all painfully aware of how highly controversial and emotionally charged this election year is. Between the tv commercials, phone calls, door knockers, and debates... it's overwhelming! Like many of our families, I have struggled with how to discuss the Presidential Election in a way that respects all families' feelings and, most importantly, is appropriate and relevant to first graders. Regardless of who you support, we cannot ignore how historically important EACH Presidential election is. I want families to rest assured that we are filtering all election discussions into educational opportunities that are appropriate for first grade.
Here is how we are learning about the election in our classroom:
October is the perfect month for our mini unit on bats! On Monday, Ms. Eno, from the UNH Cooperative Extension, visited each first grade classroom to present about bats! Ms. Eno has been visiting WPS first graders for the past four years! She is just as "batty" about bats as we are! Ms. Eno showed us pictures of local New Hampshire bats and their habitats. Ask your kiddo how bats help NH farmers and where bats live! Ms. Eno even brought two frozen bats that had died and were recovered for science for us to look at, not touch. So cool!
At the end of October, our class studied pumpkins as a part of our Math unit on measuring (which we will dive into more later in the year) and our Science unit on Life Cycles. We began learning about pumpkins through interactive read alouds. We drew and painted pumpkins for our bulletin board and wrote some of the facts that we learned.
Students were asked to bring in a small pumpkin to use in classroom activities. Each student estimated and then measured the height, weight, and circumference of their pumpkin. They estimated how many lines and then counted them. Did you know that for each line on a pumpkin's skin there is a line of seeds inside? After studying the outside of our pumpkins, it was time to look inside! We cut open a class pumpkin and all took turns scooping out the pulp and seeds. We brainstormed describing words for what the insides felt like. "Slimy, gooey, and yucky" were popular descriptors! Check out our pumpkin diagrams that are hanging in the hallway! Finally, we estimated how many seeds we thought there were. Guesses ranged from 20 seeds to 3,000. Boy, were surprised when we sorted the seeds into groups of 10 and counted. There were 438 seeds in that little, 3 pound pumpkin! Can you believe it?! After the long Columbus Day weekend, we did a LOT of learning this 4 day week! We began our first guided reading groups where children in similar reading levels meet with Ms. Gennett for a small group instruction on specific reading skills. Each group meets with Ms. Gennett at least 3 times a week. In a guided reading group, students work on phonics skills, read, and discuss a shared text with a focus on skills that are appropriate for their reading level. Guided reading groups provide differentiated instruction with immediate feedback to the readers.
Fridays are tough for everyone... Whether you're an adult or a kid - we ALL feel worn out by the end of the week and are looking forward to Friday. Last year, I instituted a Fun Friday policy to help kids (and teachers) stay focused during the week while working towards fun activities on Friday. These Fun Friday projects are activities I already have planned into our curriculum, but I now try to reserve them for Friday to make the day feel extra fun! This Friday, we had an apple tasting! We all tasted a slice of Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, and Cortland apples. We were all surprised (myself included) at how juicy and flavorful the Golden Delicious apples were! Each student casted their vote via tally and Golden Delicious won by a landslide! After taking our Unit 3 - Addition to 10 math assessment, students earned the privilege of using the Chromebooks with their Book Buddies. Our first graders can independently set up their mouse, headphones, and access Bookflix on the Chromebooks. We are 21st Century Learners! Our class earned their 20th pom-pom for excellent behavior on Wednesday, voted, and decided on a Pajama Day for Fun Friday! Check out the cutie-petutie pictures below! Like I said... it was an epic Fun Friday! :) Our class was over the moon to watch several of our butterflies emerge from their chrysalises! The kids were amazed to watch a butterfly shed it's thin chrysalis and emerge with crumpled wings. Within 20 minutes, the butterfly had pumped the blood into its wings and was ready for release! What an amazing transformation!
On Wednesday, Woodman Park School participated in its annual Walk to School Day! Thank you to all of the parent volunteers who helped set up refreshments and meet the walking groups of students and families. A special thanks to the High School athletic students who cheered on our kiddos as they walked to school! What a great tradition! Sorry for the tardiness on my weekly post! It is my goal to post every Saturday about the previous week, but things get busy for me over the weekends!
We are wrapping up our classroom assessments in reading and spelling. Students have been working hard practicing Reader's Workshop. We brainstormed why it's so important to read every day and met with our second grade Book Buddies for the first time on Friday! Ms. Allen taught several lessons on rhyming words and spelling patterns. As a part of our Social Studies unit, We are a Family at School, we talked about what it means to be a family at home and at school. It is our responsibility as a classroom and school family to take care of each other, to help each other, and to support each other. We have such a caring group of students! They have already demonstrated many acts of kindness in taking care of their classmates! We made it through our first FULL week of school! And what a busy week it was! Thank you to everyone who was able to make to Open House on Tuesday night. Were you able to guess your student by their self portrait and clues?! Check out two of our students' portraits below!
Our caterpillar is munching away on its milkweed and growing each day! Hopefully it will make its chrysalis in the next couple of days. The students have loved learning about the stages of a monarch caterpillar's life cycle and observing our classroom caterpillar. We are recording our observations in science journals every other day. As a part of our launch to Writer's Workshop, students brainstormed ideas that we could write about. In First Grade, we write about things we know. This often included our family, friends, school, and hobbies. Below is a resource for ideas we can write about that the classroom worked together to create. On FUN Friday, we earned use of the Chromebook Cart at the end of the day. Students learned how to set up their Chromebook with a mouse and headphones. We explored the educational website www.abcya.com. Eventually, Chromebooks will be an integrated station in our classroom for Reader's Workshop and Math Workshop. We had a wonderful, albeit short, first week of school! It is always nice to have just a couple of days to ease the kids into the swing of things. We spend a LOT of time learning and practicing our school and classroom routines as well as getting to know each other. I can already tell that we have a fabulous group of kiddos! Ms. Allen and I were so delighted to see classmates helping others, using kind words, and inviting each other to play at recess! We can't wait to get to know your children better and dig deeper into learning! Ms. Allen and I worked very hard in the last couple of weeks of August to prepare our classroom for the new year! At the end of each school year, teachers have to pack up all of the classroom supplies so that the custodial crew can deep clean and wax the floors. It takes hours to unpack a classroom and often looks like an explosion of supplies! Here are just a couple of before and after photos of our room this year!
|
Our Class BlogCheck out our blog for weekly updates on our learning and important information! Archives
April 2017
Categories |