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

Red Ribbon Week

This week was Red Ribbon Week! We had five awesome theme days - it was fun to see everyone's crazy socks, PJs, and rock star outfits!

This week during math we learned the parts of an addition sentence. We know that an addition sentence is: addend PLUS addend EQUALS sum. We have also started learning different strategies we can use to help us solve addition sentences. We know the best strategy is to JUST KNOW IT, but we can DRAW A PICTURE or COUNT ON if we don't.

Writer's Workshop continues to be a busy time in our classroom. You are going to be BLOWN AWAY when you see how much these first graders have been writing since August! This week we have been working on adding dialogue to our writing. We even learned about quotation marks! We know that we put quotations around the FIRST word a character says and then again around the LAST word a character says.

IMPORTANT REMINDERS:

Parent/Teacher Conferences are Monday, October 28 and Wednesday, October 30. Each of you have signed up for a conference time next week and I look forward to meeting with all of you!

Our Halloween party will be Thursday afternoon at the end of the day. 

NO SCHOOL FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 1. 

What a GREAT Week!

We have had an awesome week in Room 16! 

We finished up our Place Value unit in math and even added a few new games to our math centers! One game is Greater Than, Less Than that requires a partner and a deck of cards. It is very similar to the card game War!

The second game was the alligator game! This requires a partner, tens sticks, ones cubes, game mat, and alligator mouth. Partner 1 closes their eyes while partner 2 makes two numbers using tens and ones. Then partner 1 opens their eyes, counts the tens and ones, and uses the alligator mouth to show greater than or less than. 

Sharing our writing is very important for First Graders! It helps develop our strategies and skills, and gives us a chance to show off our writing pieces. On Thursday we had our first WRITING MUSEUM! Each First Grader chose a few pieces from their Writer's Workshop folder to display on their desks while everyone walked around our classroom museum. During our writing museum we noticed:

Everyone writes differently

Everyone writes about different things

Everyone has become BETTER writers since the beginning of the year!!!! (VERY exciting when First Graders notice this on their own!!)

On Thursday afternoon we used the LAPTOPS! Every First Grader can successfully log on with their username (25firstnamelastname) AND password (ten digit code) which is no easy feat! We practiced logging on, going to the internet, and typing in a web address to play a place value game. We get better and better each time! 

 Sometimes we even use Miss Greteman's laptop!

This afternoon we had a MYSTERY READER! Mrs. Smith, Elliott's mom, came to our classroom this afternoon to read Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig AND a non-fiction book about bats! Thank you to Mrs. Smith for coming to our classroom!

I hope everyone has a great weekend and enjoys this warm weather!

A Fantastic Friday!

Happy Friday Fantastic First Grade Families!

I apologize for the lack of blog posts – we have been BUSY in Room 16!

In Math, we are starting to wrap up our Place Value unit. Our next unit will focus on addition and subtraction! Some things we will learn are:

Addition and subtraction vocabulary

Addition strategies

Subtraction strategies

Fact families

Unknown addends

 

Check us out during Math Centers today!

 

 

Writer’s Workshop continues to be a VERY exciting part of our day! Thank you to all who helped their child brainstorm a list of SEED STORY ideas! This week we learned that many authors work with other writer’s to help them get BETTER! Each First Grader has a writing partner who they meet with regularly. We meet with our writing partners BEFORE we write, WHILE we are writing, and even AFTER we write! When we meet with our writing partner BEFORE we write, it looks like this:

1.     First partner tells their story.

2.     Second partner pictures it and asks questions about the story.

3.     First partner tells their story again, saying MORE!

4.     Partners switch!

 

In Social Studies, we have started learning about communities. We know that a community is a place where we live, work, and play. We also know that every community has helpers. Some community helpers are: police officers, mailmen, and fire fighters. Next week we will begin learning about the three different types of communities – urban, suburban, and rural. Many of our First Grade Social Studies topics can be learned simply by talking about them, so I encourage you to discuss these topics with your child!

This afternoon we had a MYSTERY READER! Hannah's mom came to our classroom and we were SO lucky because she read TWO BOOKS! She read two Robert Munsch books -  Purple, Green, and Yellow AND Mortimer! Thank you Mrs Deeter! We really enjoyed your visit!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and GO CARDS!!!