Happy Friday! It is hard to believe we only have 15 days of school left. The energy in the room has increased drastically this week 😜 and we are having fun! We still have a lot to get done...field trips, passion projects, finishing fractions in math, and end-of-year assessments but we are getting it all done!
Gem Mining Field Trip: We are heading to Emerald Hollow Mine on Tuesday, May 7th! Please have your child to school by 8:00 AM sharp as the buses are planning to leave at 8:15 AM. Please feed your child a large breakfast so that they stay full until lunch. Please send your child with a packed lunch and water bottle (water bottle that will fit into their lunchbox would be best). We will be outside the entire day so I suggest applying sunscreen to your child before they come to school. They need to wear comfortable clothes that they can get messy. There will be a chance for us to go into a creek and students can put their feet into the water while looking for stones. The mine director has asked that all students wear water shoes. If your child has Keens, these would be perfect because they are safe and great for water! If not, normal water shoes are great! They shouldn't need a change of clothes but if you feel like your child would mind their clothes being a little wet, you may send a change of clothes in a labeled Ziplock bag.
EOG Early Dismissal: We will have early dismissal because of EOG's on Tuesday, May 14th and Wednesday, May 15th. Carpool will start at 2:00 PM and all students need to be picked up by 3:00 PM. Students will be held in our classrooms for that hour. I would suggest coming as close as you can to 2:00 PM because students already feel that the normal 30 minute carpool line is long. 😅
Author's Tea: Our Author's Tea will be held on Tuesday, May 28th at 1:00 PM in our classroom. This is a time where your child will get to share their passion project bare book with you. We will also have refreshments for the students and you may take your child home with you when done.
Math:
This week in math we finished learning about money and how to add up pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. The students did a scavenger hunt around the room to practice adding coins. We began learning about fractions on Tuesday. Students LOVED our first activity which was using cookies to learn how to cut things into halves and fourths. In first grade, students are required to understand fractions in halves and fourths. I also taught the students about thirds and we did a little bit with fifths and sixths. We will continue fractions next week.
Literacy:
During both our literacy and thematic center chunk of time, students are working on their passion projects. They are doing a great job and are excited to share them with you soon! This is essentially a research project and they are in their final writing phase and will begin illustrating their books soon.
Have a great weekend! 🌤🌻
Love,
Mrs. James
Friday, May 3, 2019
Friday, April 5, 2019
April 1st-5th
Happy Friday! Our class enjoyed the beautiful weather yesterday when we went to the park. Hopefully more of that is coming our way! 😎 We are excited to see all of you next week for our Artist in Me Gallery Crawl. This will be held in our classroom and we will have refreshments for the students to follow.
April 11th 10:00 AM: Artist in Me Gallery Crawl. The students will perform a song about each artist that we studied and then you will go on a scavenger hunt with your child to find all of their artwork.
April 15th-22nd: Spring Break
May 7th: Field trip to Emerald Hollow Mine. Go ahead and put this on your calendar if you would like to chaperone. It will be an all day field trip (it is in Hiddenite, NC) and I will send more information as we get closer to the date.
Math:
We wrapped up our unit on time to the hour and half hour this week and I plan to give a "post-assessment" next week to check student's proficiency levels to see if I need to reteach any of the lessons. They have done great! Some are still struggling with time to the half hour and knowing which number to say or write when it is in between two numbers. We are reviewing that daily and it should click soon! Next week we will begin our unit on money and explore with pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. We will begin by learning the names of the coins and what each coin is worth.
Literacy:
Even though we are continuing with guided reading groups on Tuesday, our passion projects are taking the center stage during our literacy time. This week was the first time when everyone was writing completely different pieces based on their passion project topic. For example, the past few weeks we have all done our acrostic poems on the same day or all have done our labeled pictures on the same day. This week one student may have been writing about blue whales while another student was writing about the different NFL football teams. In order for this to be smooth and successful, we pull each student one-on-one and create dash facts for them. A dash fact is a quick little fact blurb that we extracted from one of their books or internet articles. For example, if I am working with a student on blue whales, one of their dash facts might be "-largest animal ever known to have lived on Earth". After we finish, it is the student's job to turn all of their dash facts into complete sentences (adding necessary words, capitalization, and adding punctuation). Once the students finish their writing, we edit their work and they write their final draft that will go into their barebook.
Thematic:
We finished studying Edgar Degas this week (all things ballerinas and horses) and are moving onto Auguste Renoir. Students got to create their own colorful ballerina using cut-outs and melted crayons and got to paint on horse calendars. These art projects turned out beautifully and will be displayed next week. We began our first Renoir art project yesterday where the students painted a beautiful outdoor scene that we will turn into a reflection painting. We have also been practicing our songs and dances for next Thursday during our thematic time.
Thank you to our mystery readers this week...Sue Sink (Anna's Mom) and Diana Brush (Nicholas' mom)! Mystery readers have become a hit in our classroom. 😊
Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James
April 11th 10:00 AM: Artist in Me Gallery Crawl. The students will perform a song about each artist that we studied and then you will go on a scavenger hunt with your child to find all of their artwork.
April 15th-22nd: Spring Break
May 7th: Field trip to Emerald Hollow Mine. Go ahead and put this on your calendar if you would like to chaperone. It will be an all day field trip (it is in Hiddenite, NC) and I will send more information as we get closer to the date.
Math:
We wrapped up our unit on time to the hour and half hour this week and I plan to give a "post-assessment" next week to check student's proficiency levels to see if I need to reteach any of the lessons. They have done great! Some are still struggling with time to the half hour and knowing which number to say or write when it is in between two numbers. We are reviewing that daily and it should click soon! Next week we will begin our unit on money and explore with pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. We will begin by learning the names of the coins and what each coin is worth.
Literacy:
Even though we are continuing with guided reading groups on Tuesday, our passion projects are taking the center stage during our literacy time. This week was the first time when everyone was writing completely different pieces based on their passion project topic. For example, the past few weeks we have all done our acrostic poems on the same day or all have done our labeled pictures on the same day. This week one student may have been writing about blue whales while another student was writing about the different NFL football teams. In order for this to be smooth and successful, we pull each student one-on-one and create dash facts for them. A dash fact is a quick little fact blurb that we extracted from one of their books or internet articles. For example, if I am working with a student on blue whales, one of their dash facts might be "-largest animal ever known to have lived on Earth". After we finish, it is the student's job to turn all of their dash facts into complete sentences (adding necessary words, capitalization, and adding punctuation). Once the students finish their writing, we edit their work and they write their final draft that will go into their barebook.
Thematic:
We finished studying Edgar Degas this week (all things ballerinas and horses) and are moving onto Auguste Renoir. Students got to create their own colorful ballerina using cut-outs and melted crayons and got to paint on horse calendars. These art projects turned out beautifully and will be displayed next week. We began our first Renoir art project yesterday where the students painted a beautiful outdoor scene that we will turn into a reflection painting. We have also been practicing our songs and dances for next Thursday during our thematic time.
Thank you to our mystery readers this week...Sue Sink (Anna's Mom) and Diana Brush (Nicholas' mom)! Mystery readers have become a hit in our classroom. 😊
Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James
Friday, March 29, 2019
March 25th-29th
Happy, happy Friday! I hope you all have a great weekend with the beautiful weather headed our way. 🌻 We had an awesome and productive week in the classroom. Read below for what your child learned and upcoming events/announcements.
April 11th 10:00 AM: Artist in Me Gallery Crawl. The students will perform a song about each artist that we studied and then you will go on a scavenger hunt with your child to find all of their artwork. You do not want to miss this so put it on your calendar! This event will be in our classroom.
April 15th-22nd: Spring Break
May 7th: Field trip to Emerald Hollow Mine. Go ahead and put this on your calendar if you would like to chaperone. It will be an all day field trip (it is in Hiddenite, NC) and I will send more information as we get closer to the date.
Math:
We continued learning about telling time this week and students learned how to read and write time to the half hour. The trickiest part is them trying to figure out which hour it is when the hour hand is halfway between two numbers. We are still working on this skill! Encourage your child at home to practice this skill by noticing the clocks around them (both analog and digital) and attempting to figure out the time! If it is not exactly at an hour or half hour mark, they could at least determine what hour of the day it is by looking just at the hour hand. Incorporating this into their everyday life will really help them progress with this math concept.
Literacy:
Our literacy schedule for the rest of the year is the following:
Monday: 10 new spelling words and daily 5
Tuesday: guided reading groups and daily 5
Wednesday: passion projects
Thursday: passion projects
Friday: spell check, daily 5, and finish any passion project writing from Wed. and Thurs.
This week during our passion project time, students learned how to label pictures. We talked about what "labeling" is and why we use it in life. I showed them many examples around the classroom of things that I have labeled. Each student chose one thing that had to do with their topic, they drew a picture of it, and labeled all of the parts. They had to label at least 8 things on the picture. For example if they drew a picture of a dog they would label ear, mouth, tongue, whiskers, tail, body, head, paws, etc. They created a rough draft, we helped them edit their picture and spelling, and they created a final copy.
Thematic:
We finished studying Henri Matisse this week and moved onto Edgar Degas today. Students rotated through three stations this week:
1. Matisse bowls: Students learned how to paper mâché this week. They used modge podge to glue Matisse styled shapes onto a balloon. Once the glue dried, they got to pop the balloon and it left a beautiful bowl! These are definitely a class favorite.
2. Matisse paper people cut-outs: We learned that Matisse loves scissors and cutting paper. Students got some body-like shapes and had to cut them out and into smaller pieces and create their own person.
3. How-to Spot a Matisse mini-book: To review each artist, the students illustrate a book about "how to spot a..." This reviews the key characteristics and art styles of each artist so if they walked into an art gallery, they would know an artist by their painting.
Thank you to our mystery readers this week...Carolyn Sink (Anna's grandmother) and Gloria McGlamery (Hudson's gigi)!
Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James
April 11th 10:00 AM: Artist in Me Gallery Crawl. The students will perform a song about each artist that we studied and then you will go on a scavenger hunt with your child to find all of their artwork. You do not want to miss this so put it on your calendar! This event will be in our classroom.
April 15th-22nd: Spring Break
May 7th: Field trip to Emerald Hollow Mine. Go ahead and put this on your calendar if you would like to chaperone. It will be an all day field trip (it is in Hiddenite, NC) and I will send more information as we get closer to the date.
Math:
We continued learning about telling time this week and students learned how to read and write time to the half hour. The trickiest part is them trying to figure out which hour it is when the hour hand is halfway between two numbers. We are still working on this skill! Encourage your child at home to practice this skill by noticing the clocks around them (both analog and digital) and attempting to figure out the time! If it is not exactly at an hour or half hour mark, they could at least determine what hour of the day it is by looking just at the hour hand. Incorporating this into their everyday life will really help them progress with this math concept.
Literacy:
Our literacy schedule for the rest of the year is the following:
Monday: 10 new spelling words and daily 5
Tuesday: guided reading groups and daily 5
Wednesday: passion projects
Thursday: passion projects
Friday: spell check, daily 5, and finish any passion project writing from Wed. and Thurs.
This week during our passion project time, students learned how to label pictures. We talked about what "labeling" is and why we use it in life. I showed them many examples around the classroom of things that I have labeled. Each student chose one thing that had to do with their topic, they drew a picture of it, and labeled all of the parts. They had to label at least 8 things on the picture. For example if they drew a picture of a dog they would label ear, mouth, tongue, whiskers, tail, body, head, paws, etc. They created a rough draft, we helped them edit their picture and spelling, and they created a final copy.
Thematic:
We finished studying Henri Matisse this week and moved onto Edgar Degas today. Students rotated through three stations this week:
1. Matisse bowls: Students learned how to paper mâché this week. They used modge podge to glue Matisse styled shapes onto a balloon. Once the glue dried, they got to pop the balloon and it left a beautiful bowl! These are definitely a class favorite.
2. Matisse paper people cut-outs: We learned that Matisse loves scissors and cutting paper. Students got some body-like shapes and had to cut them out and into smaller pieces and create their own person.
3. How-to Spot a Matisse mini-book: To review each artist, the students illustrate a book about "how to spot a..." This reviews the key characteristics and art styles of each artist so if they walked into an art gallery, they would know an artist by their painting.
Thank you to our mystery readers this week...Carolyn Sink (Anna's grandmother) and Gloria McGlamery (Hudson's gigi)!
Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James
Friday, March 22, 2019
March 18th-22nd
Happy Friday! Wow...we had a very busy week in our classroom between learning how to tell time, working on our fictional writing piece for our passion project, and learning about Henri Matisse and recreating his artwork. We were also excited for the start of spring and have enjoyed the sunshine at recess this week!
Reminders:
April 11th 10:00 AM: Artist in Me Gallery Crawl. The students will perform a song about each artist that we studied and then you will go on a scavenger hunt with your child to find all of their artwork. You do not want to miss this so put it on your calendar! This event will be in our classroom.
April 15th-22nd: Spring Break
May 7th: Field trip to Emerald Hollow Mine. Go ahead and put this on your calendar if you would like to chaperone. It will be an all day field trip (it is in Hiddenite, NC) and I will send more information as we get closer to the date.
Math:
We began a new math "cluster" this week as we began studying the clock and how to tell time. In first grade, they learn to tell time to the hour and half hour. If any students are successful with these two concepts, I challenge them by teaching them time to the quarter hour and down to the minute. This past week we learned about the parts of a clock (face, hour hand, minute hand, large numbers that represent the hours, and the small lines that represent the minutes.) We also focused on telling and writing time to the hour. Students did great! They completed activities where they had to read the time on an analog clock and write the time as "9:00" or "3:00" and activities where they had to read the number time and draw the hands on a clock. Next week we will move onto time to the half hour. Students also continued to work on our math number tiles that included subtraction, before/in between/after, and balancing numbers to 10.
Literacy:
This week during our passion project time, students wrote a fictional writing piece that had to do with their topic. We also began teaching students about the editing process and how we were going to edit/revise each piece of writing they did. After they finished their fictional piece, we called them over one by one and edited their writing. We mainly edited capitalization, punctuation, sight words, and any words that were ineligible. We will continue working on the editing process with them and soon they will be able to edit their own writing. Once it is edited, they write their final draft in their best handwriting that will go into their bare book. I also taught a lesson before our guided reading groups about looking for digraphs and blends in words that we are trying to decode. I tried to help them realized that if they look for these letter chunks, it will help them sound out unknown words. We came up with a huge list as a class that included ch, sh, wh, th, wr, br, bl, tr, ph, pl, sl, cl, cr, fr, etc. We applied this to our guided reading books when reading on Tuesday.
Thematic:
We finished studying Pablo Picasso on Monday and began studying Henri Matisse! We have some of the student's artwork hanging in the classroom already and it looks amazing! They are doing a great job with this unit. Students rotated through two art centers this week as they had multiple steps to them.
1. Students recreated Matisse's famous painting of a goldfish bowl on a table in the corner of a room. Students learned to use a ruler to create their lines and learned how to make a drawing look 3-dimensional. They used different art mediums (oil pastels and liquid watercolors) to create their painting and had to cut construction paper to finish the table and goldfish bowl.
2. We learned that Matisse loved paper cut-outs and reflections/inversions of shapes. Students got to tie-die paper with liquid water colors and then cut out any shape they wanted to create a reflective piece of artwork.
We can't wait to share all of our artwork with you at the gallery crawl! Have an awesome weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James
Reminders:
- If there is a change to the way your child is being dismissed in the afternoon (carpool, bus, after school enrichment class, etc.) and it is during the school day, please call the front desk and they will relay the message to me. I am not always able to check my email during the day and I would hate to miss an afternoon dismissal change.
- We encourage the students to eat their main food first (sandwich, pasta, burger, crackers/cheese, pizza, chicken, etc.) and then their other healthy items before any dessert like item. Please keep this in mind as you are packing your child's lunch as we have to have lots of conversations of saving the treats until the end.
April 11th 10:00 AM: Artist in Me Gallery Crawl. The students will perform a song about each artist that we studied and then you will go on a scavenger hunt with your child to find all of their artwork. You do not want to miss this so put it on your calendar! This event will be in our classroom.
April 15th-22nd: Spring Break
May 7th: Field trip to Emerald Hollow Mine. Go ahead and put this on your calendar if you would like to chaperone. It will be an all day field trip (it is in Hiddenite, NC) and I will send more information as we get closer to the date.
Math:
We began a new math "cluster" this week as we began studying the clock and how to tell time. In first grade, they learn to tell time to the hour and half hour. If any students are successful with these two concepts, I challenge them by teaching them time to the quarter hour and down to the minute. This past week we learned about the parts of a clock (face, hour hand, minute hand, large numbers that represent the hours, and the small lines that represent the minutes.) We also focused on telling and writing time to the hour. Students did great! They completed activities where they had to read the time on an analog clock and write the time as "9:00" or "3:00" and activities where they had to read the number time and draw the hands on a clock. Next week we will move onto time to the half hour. Students also continued to work on our math number tiles that included subtraction, before/in between/after, and balancing numbers to 10.
Literacy:
This week during our passion project time, students wrote a fictional writing piece that had to do with their topic. We also began teaching students about the editing process and how we were going to edit/revise each piece of writing they did. After they finished their fictional piece, we called them over one by one and edited their writing. We mainly edited capitalization, punctuation, sight words, and any words that were ineligible. We will continue working on the editing process with them and soon they will be able to edit their own writing. Once it is edited, they write their final draft in their best handwriting that will go into their bare book. I also taught a lesson before our guided reading groups about looking for digraphs and blends in words that we are trying to decode. I tried to help them realized that if they look for these letter chunks, it will help them sound out unknown words. We came up with a huge list as a class that included ch, sh, wh, th, wr, br, bl, tr, ph, pl, sl, cl, cr, fr, etc. We applied this to our guided reading books when reading on Tuesday.
Thematic:
We finished studying Pablo Picasso on Monday and began studying Henri Matisse! We have some of the student's artwork hanging in the classroom already and it looks amazing! They are doing a great job with this unit. Students rotated through two art centers this week as they had multiple steps to them.
1. Students recreated Matisse's famous painting of a goldfish bowl on a table in the corner of a room. Students learned to use a ruler to create their lines and learned how to make a drawing look 3-dimensional. They used different art mediums (oil pastels and liquid watercolors) to create their painting and had to cut construction paper to finish the table and goldfish bowl.
2. We learned that Matisse loved paper cut-outs and reflections/inversions of shapes. Students got to tie-die paper with liquid water colors and then cut out any shape they wanted to create a reflective piece of artwork.
We can't wait to share all of our artwork with you at the gallery crawl! Have an awesome weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James
Sunday, March 10, 2019
March 4th-8th
Hello parents! We had an awesome week in the classroom between learning about Pablo Picasso and starting our Passion Projects. Passion Projects will begin taking up most of our Daily 5/literacy time and you can read below about what we are doing to get started.
March 12th: Field trip to the Laurel's Nursing Home
March 14th and 15th: No school...teacher workdays
April 11th 10:00 AM: Artist in Me Gallery Crawl
April 15th-22nd: Spring Break
***Carpool: If there is a change during the school day to your child's afternoon pickup plan, please call the CSD front desk and they will relay the message to me. I don't always have time to check my email during the day and I would hate to put your child on the bus when they are supposed to do carpool or vice versa.
Math:
We finished wrapping up with ten more/ten less, one more/one less. I realized that some students needed some extra time to practice this skill so we continued another week of it before moving onto the next concept. This week we will begin learning about time! Like I mentioned in the blog last week, we learn time to the hour and half hour. We also are continuing to work on addition and subtraction with higher numbers, the hundreds chart and the patterns that exist within it, and understanding word problems.
Literacy:
We continued with our guided reading groups on Tuesday like normal but the rest of our literacy time during the week was devoted to Passion Projects. The beginning stages are the toughest as we are trying to set the students up for success in this research project. The first step that we take is pull each child one-on-one and come up with "subtopics" for their topic. Each subtopic will be a page in their bare book and will include page of writing and a page of illustrations. For example, if someone chose "the ocean" as their topic some subtopics could be layers of the ocean, a list of ocean animals, dolphins, sharks, jellyfish, the 5 oceans of the world, waves and currents, etc. Each child brainstormed this with us and we wrote all of them down so that we can begin working on them in the next few weeks. The plan is to work on Passion Projects on Wednesday and Thursdays during out literacy time.
Thematic:
We started our Artist in Me unit this week and we began with learning about Pablo Picasso. We are also learning the "Picasso Polka" that we will sing during our gallery crawl on April 11th. The kids love it! We learned the Picasso loved painting funky faces, blue artwork, rose artwork, cubism, and loved to tie in math into his artwork. We learned that as he transitioned through different phases of his life, his style of artwork also changed. Below are the centers that the students rotated through:
1. Students illustrated a book about "How To Find a Picasso" piece of artwork
2. Students created the famous Picasso painting of a rooster and they used chalk and oil pastels
3. Students created different shades of blue using blue, white, and black to create a "blue period" of a time they were sad
4. Students played "Roll a Picasso" where they rolled a dice and had to draw a face, ears, eyes, mouth, and nose to create a "funky face" like Picasso did
Thanks to our mystery reader today, Christina McConnell! The kids are loving this parent activity. There are still a few spots left so sign up on the Sign Up Genius that I sent out if you are interested.
Have a wonderful week!
Love,
Mrs. James
March 12th: Field trip to the Laurel's Nursing Home
March 14th and 15th: No school...teacher workdays
April 11th 10:00 AM: Artist in Me Gallery Crawl
April 15th-22nd: Spring Break
***Carpool: If there is a change during the school day to your child's afternoon pickup plan, please call the CSD front desk and they will relay the message to me. I don't always have time to check my email during the day and I would hate to put your child on the bus when they are supposed to do carpool or vice versa.
Math:
We finished wrapping up with ten more/ten less, one more/one less. I realized that some students needed some extra time to practice this skill so we continued another week of it before moving onto the next concept. This week we will begin learning about time! Like I mentioned in the blog last week, we learn time to the hour and half hour. We also are continuing to work on addition and subtraction with higher numbers, the hundreds chart and the patterns that exist within it, and understanding word problems.
Literacy:
We continued with our guided reading groups on Tuesday like normal but the rest of our literacy time during the week was devoted to Passion Projects. The beginning stages are the toughest as we are trying to set the students up for success in this research project. The first step that we take is pull each child one-on-one and come up with "subtopics" for their topic. Each subtopic will be a page in their bare book and will include page of writing and a page of illustrations. For example, if someone chose "the ocean" as their topic some subtopics could be layers of the ocean, a list of ocean animals, dolphins, sharks, jellyfish, the 5 oceans of the world, waves and currents, etc. Each child brainstormed this with us and we wrote all of them down so that we can begin working on them in the next few weeks. The plan is to work on Passion Projects on Wednesday and Thursdays during out literacy time.
Thematic:
We started our Artist in Me unit this week and we began with learning about Pablo Picasso. We are also learning the "Picasso Polka" that we will sing during our gallery crawl on April 11th. The kids love it! We learned the Picasso loved painting funky faces, blue artwork, rose artwork, cubism, and loved to tie in math into his artwork. We learned that as he transitioned through different phases of his life, his style of artwork also changed. Below are the centers that the students rotated through:
1. Students illustrated a book about "How To Find a Picasso" piece of artwork
2. Students created the famous Picasso painting of a rooster and they used chalk and oil pastels
3. Students created different shades of blue using blue, white, and black to create a "blue period" of a time they were sad
4. Students played "Roll a Picasso" where they rolled a dice and had to draw a face, ears, eyes, mouth, and nose to create a "funky face" like Picasso did
Thanks to our mystery reader today, Christina McConnell! The kids are loving this parent activity. There are still a few spots left so sign up on the Sign Up Genius that I sent out if you are interested.
Have a wonderful week!
Love,
Mrs. James
Friday, March 1, 2019
February 25th-March 1st
Hello all and happy Friday! I hope you all had a great week. We had a fun, exciting, and busy week with our field trip to Discovery Place and our "Bailey Goes Camping" camping day. We also had a visit from Davidson Dentistry on Wednesday to talk about the importance of dental health and taking care of your teeth. It is hard to believe we only have three more months of school left. 😆 Next week we begin our Artist in Me thematic unit and we will also begin working on our Passion Projects!
March 4th: Passion Project materials due...please refer back to the email I sent on Feb. 21st to see what needs to be collected and sent in for this project.
March 12th: Field trip to the Laurel's Nursing Home
March 14th and 15th: No school...teacher workdays
April 11th 10:00 AM: Artist in Me Gallery Crawl
Math:
We are finishing up our work on ten more/ten less and composing/distinguishing shapes. We will continue to spiral review back to these concepts but will soon be moving into telling time! The kids love learning about time because they are able to use it in their daily life. In first grade, they learn time to the hour and half hour. We talk about the cyclical nature of the clock and we count all of the minutes and see how we can group them into 5's. I also label the clock in our room so that they can easily count the minutes and learn to tell time.
Literacy:
Students completed their normal guided reading groups and word sorts this week and then we had our writer's workshop during our camping day. I am going to reassess all of the students on their "spelling inventory" assessment that I use to show me what developmental spelling stage they are in. Their word sort group may shift some depending on this assessment and if they have made any more progress. We will soon be working on our Passion Projects during literacy time so word sorts may become more sporadic. Guided reading groups will stay consistent. Passion Projects are a great way to work on all of the different parts of literacy at once (decoding, comprehension, summarizing, writing, editing, revising, etc. This is essentially a research project that is differentiated to their level.
Thematic:
This week we wrapped up our Author in Me unit by studying Kevin Henkes. He is the author of several popular children's books such as Chrysanthemum, Lily's Purple Plastic Purse, Wemberly Worried, Owen, and Bailey Goes Camping. After reading Wemberly Worried, students got to write about their own worries that they have in life and they created an art piece to go with it. We also studied our names after reading the book Chrysanthemum and examined the vowels in our name, syllables, letters, etc. We had a full day of camping activities that included reading in tents, writing in tents, playing camping BINGO, making binoculars and going on a nature scavenger hunt, and making s'mores!
Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James
March 4th: Passion Project materials due...please refer back to the email I sent on Feb. 21st to see what needs to be collected and sent in for this project.
March 12th: Field trip to the Laurel's Nursing Home
March 14th and 15th: No school...teacher workdays
April 11th 10:00 AM: Artist in Me Gallery Crawl
Math:
We are finishing up our work on ten more/ten less and composing/distinguishing shapes. We will continue to spiral review back to these concepts but will soon be moving into telling time! The kids love learning about time because they are able to use it in their daily life. In first grade, they learn time to the hour and half hour. We talk about the cyclical nature of the clock and we count all of the minutes and see how we can group them into 5's. I also label the clock in our room so that they can easily count the minutes and learn to tell time.
Literacy:
Students completed their normal guided reading groups and word sorts this week and then we had our writer's workshop during our camping day. I am going to reassess all of the students on their "spelling inventory" assessment that I use to show me what developmental spelling stage they are in. Their word sort group may shift some depending on this assessment and if they have made any more progress. We will soon be working on our Passion Projects during literacy time so word sorts may become more sporadic. Guided reading groups will stay consistent. Passion Projects are a great way to work on all of the different parts of literacy at once (decoding, comprehension, summarizing, writing, editing, revising, etc. This is essentially a research project that is differentiated to their level.
Thematic:
This week we wrapped up our Author in Me unit by studying Kevin Henkes. He is the author of several popular children's books such as Chrysanthemum, Lily's Purple Plastic Purse, Wemberly Worried, Owen, and Bailey Goes Camping. After reading Wemberly Worried, students got to write about their own worries that they have in life and they created an art piece to go with it. We also studied our names after reading the book Chrysanthemum and examined the vowels in our name, syllables, letters, etc. We had a full day of camping activities that included reading in tents, writing in tents, playing camping BINGO, making binoculars and going on a nature scavenger hunt, and making s'mores!
Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James
Friday, February 22, 2019
February 18th-22nd
Happy Friday! We had a great week in our classroom other than being forced to have indoor recess multiple days in a row. 😆 The students actually love it at times because they get to play "Four Corners." We are ready for some sunshine and the playground! The highlight of the week was definitely going to CSD's high school black box and watching the middle school dance performance of "The Greatest Showman." They did an amazing job!
February 26th Discovery Place Field Trip: Please have your child at school by 8:00 AM. The bus will be leaving CSD at 8:15 AM. Chaperones...I will email you separately but you will meet us at Discovery Place with your child at 8:45/8:50 AM. We will not have time for a morning snack so please feed your child a large, protein filled breakfast to keep them full until lunch. Please pack a normal lunch in their lunchbox and make sure to send a water bottle (it would be great if the water bottle could fit inside the lunchbox so it doesn't get lost). We will be eating at Discovery Place at some point between 10:30-12:30.
February 28th Camping Day: Because we are studying Kevin Henkes and one of his books Bailey Goes Camping, we are having our own camping day! Students can wear their pajamas and bring a flashlight for reading inside of the tents. We need some parents to send in some tents for us to borrow and it would be amazing if those parents could also come set up and break down their tent (so that it get's properly assembled and we don't mess it up). We will do fun camping activities all day, we will have hotdogs for lunch, and we will make s'mores! All of these items needed will be on a Sign Up Genius sent out.
March 4th Passion Project Materials Due: Please make sure to read my email I sent out Thursday morning about the Passion Project. Your child needs to pick their topic within the next few days so that you can begin collecting books, internet articles, magazines, scrapbook paper, stickers, etc. Once you begin to collect books and articles, please begin reading them with your child and highlight any important facts (if in an internet article). This will help your child tremendously when they begin the writing process of their project.
Math:
We had two new centers added into math workshop that involved shapes and greater than/less than. Students worked together with tangrams to recreate different pictures. We are reviewing 2D shapes before we move into 3D shapes. Students also played a game where they rolled two dice (if they rolled a 6 and a 4 their number would be 64) and their partner then rolled two dice and they had to pick which sign (< > =) would make the math sentence correct. Next week we will be working on the concept of ten more/ten less using the hundreds chart. Our goal is that they can add ten or subtract ten from any number between 1-150 by the end of first grade.
Literacy:
We moved onto a new concept during our writer's workshop that is called "authors as mentors." We discussed some of our favorite authors that are successful at writing fun, interesting, exciting stories that we get wrapped up into. We decided that we would choose Mo Willems as our "mentor" to study and write a story similar to. We discussed all of the things that Willems does that makes him a great author...funny jokes, interesting characters, punctuation, speech bubbles, a good storyline. All students then wrote their own Elephant and Piggie book styled just Mo Willems.
Thematic:
We studied Ezra Jack Keats this week during our "Author in Me" unit of study. Some of the books we read are Snowy Day, Whistle for Willie, and Peter's Chair. Many of Keats' books take place in a city so we reviewed our cardinal directions and students had to follow specific steps to create their own city. They enjoyed this activity! Students also used scrapbook paper to create their own scene from the book Peter's Chair. Monday we will get to make fake snow as we study the book Snowy Day. We will then move onto Kevin Henkes.
Love,
Mrs. James
February 26th Discovery Place Field Trip: Please have your child at school by 8:00 AM. The bus will be leaving CSD at 8:15 AM. Chaperones...I will email you separately but you will meet us at Discovery Place with your child at 8:45/8:50 AM. We will not have time for a morning snack so please feed your child a large, protein filled breakfast to keep them full until lunch. Please pack a normal lunch in their lunchbox and make sure to send a water bottle (it would be great if the water bottle could fit inside the lunchbox so it doesn't get lost). We will be eating at Discovery Place at some point between 10:30-12:30.
February 28th Camping Day: Because we are studying Kevin Henkes and one of his books Bailey Goes Camping, we are having our own camping day! Students can wear their pajamas and bring a flashlight for reading inside of the tents. We need some parents to send in some tents for us to borrow and it would be amazing if those parents could also come set up and break down their tent (so that it get's properly assembled and we don't mess it up). We will do fun camping activities all day, we will have hotdogs for lunch, and we will make s'mores! All of these items needed will be on a Sign Up Genius sent out.
March 4th Passion Project Materials Due: Please make sure to read my email I sent out Thursday morning about the Passion Project. Your child needs to pick their topic within the next few days so that you can begin collecting books, internet articles, magazines, scrapbook paper, stickers, etc. Once you begin to collect books and articles, please begin reading them with your child and highlight any important facts (if in an internet article). This will help your child tremendously when they begin the writing process of their project.
Math:
We had two new centers added into math workshop that involved shapes and greater than/less than. Students worked together with tangrams to recreate different pictures. We are reviewing 2D shapes before we move into 3D shapes. Students also played a game where they rolled two dice (if they rolled a 6 and a 4 their number would be 64) and their partner then rolled two dice and they had to pick which sign (< > =) would make the math sentence correct. Next week we will be working on the concept of ten more/ten less using the hundreds chart. Our goal is that they can add ten or subtract ten from any number between 1-150 by the end of first grade.
Literacy:
We moved onto a new concept during our writer's workshop that is called "authors as mentors." We discussed some of our favorite authors that are successful at writing fun, interesting, exciting stories that we get wrapped up into. We decided that we would choose Mo Willems as our "mentor" to study and write a story similar to. We discussed all of the things that Willems does that makes him a great author...funny jokes, interesting characters, punctuation, speech bubbles, a good storyline. All students then wrote their own Elephant and Piggie book styled just Mo Willems.
Thematic:
We studied Ezra Jack Keats this week during our "Author in Me" unit of study. Some of the books we read are Snowy Day, Whistle for Willie, and Peter's Chair. Many of Keats' books take place in a city so we reviewed our cardinal directions and students had to follow specific steps to create their own city. They enjoyed this activity! Students also used scrapbook paper to create their own scene from the book Peter's Chair. Monday we will get to make fake snow as we study the book Snowy Day. We will then move onto Kevin Henkes.
Love,
Mrs. James
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