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
Friday, March 29, 2019
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
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