Congratulations were in order for Team 210 as we officially made it to the 90th day of school! Your kiddos are half-way to becoming second graders! Can you believe it?
I certainly can't! They say, "Time flies when you're having fun," for a reason! I am so proud of how far each student has come! Each has shown growth in reading fluency and decoding skills, fact fluency in math and use of math vocabulary, confidence in participation and demonstration of social skills and self-regulation strategies! Just last week I had to approve our class composite page for the yearbook and each student even LOOKS so much older than they did back in September! I'm sure you've noticed this too! This has been a wonderful period of growth, and we still have half a year to go! This week we celebrated our 90th day of school with first grade rotations on Friday. Each classroom teacher prepared a different lesson around the concept of one-half and shared it with each group of first graders! At the end of the day, we were visited by the "Mad Halfer" who demonstrated for us, that no matter the size of the paper, it can only be folded no more than 7 times! This week begins our week-long science, space rotations, in preparation for our field trip to the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord, and the continuation of mid-year benchmarking! Have a wonderful week, first-grade families, and enjoy just a few photos of the kids with the Mad Halfer!
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Though somewhat interrupted, Team 210 made the most of last week! We completed our second i-Ready math benchmark, continued our study of coins and making inferences, and even made use of the 6 fresh inches of snow we received mid-week!
In first grade, we strive to expand our vocabulary in order to better describe and make sense of the world around us! One way Team 210 gets to put this into practice is with our seasonal woods walks. Our first woods walk took place in the fall, tied into our study of using natural resources to make fairy houses. Upon completing our fall walk, students were asked to describe the woods using their five senses, write a fall poem, and also write an entry in our seasons walk journal! Now, in winter, we completed the same activity! We took our walk along the trails behind the school with the goal of using all of our senses to experience the woods around us. This walk was scaffolded so that a part of our walk was dedicated to each of the five senses. We then shared some adjectives to describe what we felt, heard, saw, smelled, and tasted! (Though we were encouraged NOT to eat the snow, we did get a taste when the wind blew snow off of the branches down on us!!) Please enjoy our photos and you can look forward to the completed journal at the end of the school year! We can all agree the Holiday season at home is a busy time of year! The same goes for in the classroom as well. Schedules are hectic, projects need wrapping up, snow days occur, testing begins, reports cards are worked on, etc.
The title of this post addresses that, though we are still very busy and have much on our schedule, with the Holiday season over, we are mostly returning to normalcy! The month of January, no matter how disjointed, is a crucial time for young learners where new gains are made and new skills are acquired. We are almost halfway through the year, so your students are just about closer to being second graders than kindergarteners anymore, and it shows! This month we will be participating in our second math benchmark of the year, starting another round of reading benchmarks, celebrating reaching the halfway point in the year, and taking part in our space rotations leading up to our next field trip to the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center! We have a lot going on but I know we are ready to take it all on! This week, we had Mrs. Kurtz, our REACH Coordinator, come in for an experiment! She read the class the book Red Sled by Rita Judge and got us all thinking about how sleds move across the snow. We also made the connection to the Winter Olympics and watched a Go-Pro video of a bobsledder racing down a track. The students then had to make their own sleds using different materials and test, not only which material sled down a makeshift hill the fastest, but also test what happened to the time of their sled when weight was added! Stay tuned for what else is to come during this busy month and enjoy some photos below! |
AuthorMusings of a Grade 1 teacher. Outlet for exciting "goings-on" in the classroom. Archives
May 2018
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