What we've been up to...

News from Ms. Little’s 1^st Grade Class

November 7, 2013

Upcoming Events

·      Monday, November 11^th – Veterans Day (no school)

·      Friday, November 15^th – Scholastic Book Orders due

Hello Families!

In Writing Workshop, we’re focusing on remembering true events that happened to us and stretching that one event into a “small moment” story. After reading The Best Story, we talked about how the best stories come from your own heart. We made lists and drew pictures of people, places, holidays, etc. that will help us remember small moments we can write about.

In Math, we’re working on addition and continuing to build our number sense. We’ve used ten frames, manipulatives, card games and dice games to help us practice our adding skills.

        

       

The Monster March was a success! We all enjoyed dressing up, seeing our friends’ costumes, and parading around the school on Halloween.

         

We continued the Halloween theme by constructing paper pumpkins by cutting and folding ten circles.

 

Then, we made Orange Pumpkin, Orange Pumpkin books. After coloring, gluing, and putting the pages in the correct order, we read our books aloud to a friend.

Enjoy the weekend! J

Ms. Little

What we've been up to...

News from Ms. Little’s 1^st Grade Class

October 24, 2013

Upcoming Events

·      Friday, October 25^th – Dismissal at 12:40

·      Thursday, October 31^st – Monster March

·      Friday, November 1^st – Dismissal at 12:40

Hello Families!

In Literacy, we are continuing to build our independent reading stamina and practicing reading in book groups. We have also been doing word work with CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words (such as lip, rug, net, mad). In Writing Workshop, we are working on putting true stories from our lives on paper with words, pictures, and labels. Next week, we’ll start focusing on “small moment” stories.

In Math, we’re practicing determining more or less using greater than and less than symbols and ordering numbers from least to greatest/greatest to least. Counting activities, number card games and dice games have helped us practice these skills.

  

We’ve been learning all about apples in Science.  We studied two non-fiction books to find out how apples grow, the life cycle of an apple, and what each part of an apple is called.

Using Cortland, Granny Smith, Red Delicious, and McIntosh apples, we inspected and recorded the properties we observed with our five senses. 

Then, we made two types of graphs to show which type of apple we liked best.

Newsletter 10-10-13

What we've been up to...

Our class has been busy these first few weeks of first grade!

During the first week of school, we went on a "people hunt" to learn more about our classmates.  Students had to find a different person to sign each box on their paper. We found out that lots of children in our class have a brother or a sister, like to dance, and love to eat watermelon!

We have launched the first component of the Daily 5: Read to Self. During this time children independently read the pictures or read the words of a just right book at their level. We're practicing building our stamina in order to reach our goal of reading independently for 20 minutes. Right now, we're up to reading for eight minutes straight!

Counting and number writing has been our focus in Math. Writing numbers with the correct formation, playing dice games, counting out loud, and matching numbers to amounts are some of the activities we've been doing to practice.

ME Bags have been a huge hit! The children have enjoyed sharing the items they brought from home, explaining what each one tells about themselves, and then answering questions from their classmates. This activity has been a great way to learn more about each other. We'll be sharing more ME Bags this week!

More updates about what's happening in our classroom are to come throughout the school year. Be sure to check back soon!

Newsletter 9-6-13

Newsletter 9-6-13