Since we have such a short week, we decided to mix things up a little bit in first grade and have some fun! We spent the mornings switching classrooms and doing different literacy based activities! Mrs. Smith taught about story comprehension, Mrs. Boyer presented and read about the first Thanksgiving with the students, and Mrs. Steedly planned an awesome Mayflower STEAM challenge! Here are some pictures from the challenge. Students were given only foil to build a ship that would carry pilgrims and supplies (marshmellows and m&ms)! Students had to work cooperatively with their partner to complete their challenge! From the way they burst back in the room to tell me about their project, I think they had fun! :) Thanks Mrs. Steedly for capturing and sharing these great pictures from the day!
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We have started a new unit on letter writing. We don't mean the letters of the alphabet, we mean letters that you use to communicate with people!
We have all been really excited to finally write our own letters and today was the day! Our friends wrote a letter to someone they are thankful for and were able to deliver them. Alyssa wrote a letter to Mr. Wallace! Great work friends! Our friends from Ms. Tasha's Tiger Time group (Tyler, Abel, Sierra, and Trinity) put on an excellent play for the rest of first grade. They shared information about the first Thanksgiving! We are so proud of their hard work to prepare for their play and are very proud of their courage to stand in front of such a big group and present in a "loud proud" voice!
Plus they had the cutest hats ever! :) We have been spending more time in the computer lab learning some different programs. Last week we learned how to open up Microsoft Word, choose a blank document, pick a font, and change the size of the font. From there we practiced typing our spelling words and then learned how to print them! We practiced again this week and tried to type even more words than last week! Everyone was successful in beating their own personal record. Some friends even typed ALL of the words! Woah! We haven't approached proper hand placement on the keyboard yet, but our friend Amelia is already beginning to do this on her own! Nice job! Our friend Kai was involved in a Reader's Theater play in Mrs. Steedly's Tiger Time. (Reader's Theater focuses on reading confidence and fluency!)
Kai played the part of the principal and felt like he should dress the part. Can you tell who the real principal of North Ward is?! Halloween was a bit of a crazy day, so we didn't get to do our fun Halloween math centers until the day after! Students enjoyed practicing their addition facts in different ways - "Eye" Love Math - Students pulled "eyeballs" out of a bucket and wrote an addition sentence to match the numbers on them. Spider Toss - Students tossed plastic spider rings into numbered cups and wrote a number sentence to match. (This was actually really tricky!) Color by addition problem - Students colored a funny witch using addition problems Pumpkin Number Bonds - Students used little pumpkin counters to decompose numbers! Trick or Treat - Students pulled a card out of a bucket and read the number sentence and gave the correct sum. There were also cards that said "Treat! Go again!", and some said "Trick! Put 2 cards back!" :D We've been really working hard on our basic addition skills and have been showing great growth! Now to change things up....onto subtraction! :) Things got a little "spooky" in first grade this week! We created our own monsters! This activity was called a monster STEM (or STEAM) activity. The letters stand for the following...
S - Science, T - Technology, E - Engineering, A - Art, and M - Math. Students were given the task - create a monster who is 4 cubes tall and has 3 legs. There were supplies available for them to use such as play-doh, pipe cleaners, straws, and googly eyes. It was up to the student to use their imagination to create this monster! How we incorporated all the aspects of STEAM - Science: Students explored new materials, planned their work, revised their final product to make it better, and reflected on their work afterwards. Technology: We posted a photo of our monster on SeeSaw Engineering: Students had to figure out how to build their monster and how to make it stand up! Art: Students created their beautiful monster using their creative and artistic imaginations! Math: Students had to count to make sure their monsters had the appropriate number of legs and that it was indeed 4 cubes tall by measuring it. A big thank you to the fire department for coming and teaching us about fire safety! It was a very cold and drizzle-y morning, that's why you'll see a picture of us sitting on the floor in the hallway! We were waiting for our turn in the firehouse and it was too cold outside! :) Oh snap! We learned how to write Autobiographies! You'll be able to see and read our books during parent/teacher conferences, but in the meantime...enjoy our funny selfies from our covers! :) (***No photos were actually posted on Mrs. Smith's snap chat!) We were finally ready to practice Daily 5 independently! Everyone gets to choose which 3 of our 5 activities (due to time constraints) to participate in. We work quietly until the timer goes off and then switch! Here are some friends working hard! |
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October 2017
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