Morgan is the blog updater today! Tomorrow will be someone else!

Math - Everybody was working and I was coming around taking pictures.

Writer's Workshop - Everyone was writing on their teaching books and we all got to share. I wasn't taking pictures.

Lunch - Everyone was eating. Some people brought their lunch and some people bought their lunch.

Daily 5 - Everyone was working on something. Miss Greteman was calling over some groups.

Art - Everybody was working on some elf feet. There was a substitute during art. We all were working very hard at art!

Savannah, Gabby, Olivia, Belle, and Emma read their teaching books.

Science - We were all watching a brainpop video. They were Moby brainpop videos.

Spelling - We were working on a vowel project about the one vowel rule, two vowel rule, and silent e rule.

We packed up. Miss Greteman checked our binders.

The end.

Room 16 is starting something new! Instead of Miss Greteman always making blog updates, FIRST GRADERS will be making blog updates! Each day one First Grade will be in charge of updating the blog. Today, we are doing it as a class to "get the hang of it." Here is a look at our day through the eyes of a First Grader...

This morning we wrote in our journals about our weekends.

Math - We did a Christmas coloring page. We did math centers. Miss Greteman had math groups.

Writer's Workshop - We wrote a beginning for our teaching chapter books.

Lunch and Recess - We had indoor recess. We played heads up seven up.We colored. We read books.

Daily 5 - We did groups with Mrs. Marting and Miss Greteman. We did centers.

P.E - We played a tagging game. It is called Grinch Tag. We played a game that you had to knock pins down. It is called Chopping Down Trees. We played a game with paper plates. We pretended they were snowballs and we were on scooters getting them.

Mystery Reader - Gavin's dad read Snowmen at night.

We took our spelling test because we had a snow day on Friday.

Science - Matter can change.

Happy Monday!

Happy Monday Fantastic First Grade Families!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and enjoyed the break! I can't believe we only have three weeks before Christmas Break!

This week we are back on track with new spelling words! We will be working with BEGINNING CHUNKS and ENDING CHUNKS. As we become more experienced readers, our brain effortlessly searches for known letters, sounds, and parts of words we know to help us "solve" the parts we don't know. Finding and remembering chunks of letters to decode (reading!) and encode (writing!) is a very important strategy we use throughout our entire lives!

BEGINNING CHUNK: the beginning chunk is the letter(s) in front of the vowel. These are consonants, digraphs, or blends. Most words begin with a beginning chunk. These are also known as onsets. 

ENDING CHUNK: the ending chunk begins at the first vowel to the end of the word or syllable. Every word has an ending chunk (because EVERY word has a vowel!). These are also known as word families or rimes. 

In Writing, we continue to work on teaching books, but we have upped the anty! We have begun writing CHAPTER teaching books! Today we looked at a familiar nonfiction book about sharks and discovered the TABLE OF CONTENTS. We learned that a table of contents is kind of like a schedule - it tells us what is coming up in the book. A table of contents can help us organize our information into chapters and eventually stretch out our teaching books to be longer and more detailed! Everyone is VERY excited to become authors of CHAPTER BOOKS!

We have started a new chapter in Science - Matter. In this chapter we will learn:

What is matter?

What are solids, liquids, and gases?

How can you change matter?

What is a mixture?

Today we learned that matter is anything that takes up space, and mass is the amount of matter in an object. We can describe and group objects using our five senses - by color, size, shape, texture, and weight.

Don't forget - Adopt a Family is still going on! This week we are collecting personal care items such as soap, shampoo, conditioner, baby products, lotion, toothpaste, etc. Every donation (big or small!) really helps our Concord families. Thank you!

Have a great night!

A VERY Short Week!

Happy Monday Fantastic First Grade Families!

This afternoon we had a MYSTERY READER! Bobby's mom came to our classroom to read two books - Let's Eat! and How The Grinch Stole Christmas. A big thank you to Mrs. Vogel for coming!

With our incredibly short week, there will be NO SPELLING THIS WEEK. We will start back up with Spelling after Thanksgiving Break. 

Just a reminder: PLEASE send your child to school with a WINTER COAT. They are outside for twenty straight minutes during recess, so a light jacket/fleece is not enough. Thank you!

What a Week!

Happy Monday Fantastic First Grade Families!

We continue to stay busy busy in Room 16!

We have officially started our new writing unit - informational/teaching books! We have learned that we are ALL experts on something. Many of us are experts on animals, games, or sports! We have also learned HOW to write a teaching book:

It is important we say it across our fingers because we need to know AT LEAST five things about our topic to be considered an expert. If we can only think of two or three things about our topic we have to think of a NEW topic. 

In Math we have begun SUBTRACTION! We know that a subtraction sentence is minuend minus subtrahend equals difference. We also know that the minuend is ALWAYS going to be the biggest number. Just like addition, we will be learning various strategies to help us solve subtraction sentences. Today we learned how to draw a picture and CROSS OUT to help us find the difference. We will also discover the relationship between addition and subtraction (HINT: fact families!)

In your child's Flyer Binder you will find an XTRAMATH flyer. Xtramath is an online fact fluency program. I encourage you to have your first grader use xtramath to practice addition facts. Although we have learned various strategies to help us solve addition sentences, the BEST strategy is to JUST KNOW IT! Xtramath will help with just knowing it!

Thank you to everyone who has donated to our adopt a family program! We have A TON of items in our boxes!

GOOGLE DRIVE!!!

Happy Friday Fantastic First Grade Families!

WOW! Today was a REALLY awesome and VERY jam packed day! 

In Writing we are beginning to wrap up our Small Moment unit. This means we are PUBLISHING OUR STORIES! Each first grader has chosen ONE seed story they love and we have been working hard to revise and edit to make it one of the best stories we've ever written. This means we are checking for capitals and periods, and bringing our stories to life by adding speech bubbles, dialogue, feelings, and actions. We are in the process of typing our stories in a Google Presentation that we will print then illustrate. Each Lindbergh student has their own GMAIL and GOOGLE DRIVE. As we become more familiar with how this awesome technology works, I will send home usernames and passwords so first graders can access their google drive at home! 

This afternoon we met with our fourth grade buddies to plant bulbs in our Concord Garden! 

We also had a MYSTERY READER today! John's mom came to our classroom and read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. Thank you for coming Mrs. Zoeller! 

IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER:

Veteran's Day Assembly - Monday, November 11 - Wear red, white, and blue!

Early Release - Wednesday, November 13