Hello First Grade Families!
Benchmarking season is upon us! I apologize for the lapse in posts! This time of year has kept us very busy! In between demonstrating all that we have learned this year, we are working hard to prepare some wonderful projects that will be on display during the Ed. Fair on June 6th. By the time the 6th rolls around, we will be absolute experts on our NH Animals! We can't wait to share with you! Ask Me About.... Literacy...As Mrs. Hunton has been benchmarking students and assessing High Frequency Word mastery, our literacy focus has been on our independent work with our texts. We know that our stamina as readers has grown incredibly this year, but there will also be a higher demand for independence and stamina in the second grade! We divide our independent time between reading to ourselves, listening to books using RAZ Kids or iPods, and reading with a buddy. We have even taken on the independent challenge of finding examples of vowel teams, especially, magic e, in our texts. Word Study...Magic e has been our biggest focus! We worked our way up to magic e by studying the variety of other long-vowel combinations. We know that magic e is one of our most common word study principles. We can find magic e everywhere and it has so much power. As we add it, it can change a word like tap into tape which completely changes the meaning of the word. Math...We have continued our study of geometry. Our work with partitioning shapes into equal pieces has not only lead us to discuss the fact that smaller shapes can make up larger shapes, but also served as an opportunity to incorporate the quarter as a money concept and fraction concept! This week we will focus on shape attributes. We know that shapes can be described by their names, number of sides, number of angles, and number of vertices. Writing...We are plugging away at our NH Animal Reports! We did a lot of work with a graphic organizer to condense all of the wonderful information we gathered. Because most nonfiction texts begin with a table of contents that lists headings, we have labeled each of our four sections with a specific heading. Our reports will consist of the headings, Introduction, Where it Lives, Predators/Special Skills, and Other Facts/Conclusion. We will also make sure to add other nonfiction text features to our reports! Upcoming Events!
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Hello First Grade Families!
Happy Monday! I hope everyone had an enjoyable Mother's Day weekend celebrating all of the special role models in our lives! The kids worked hard on their presents last week and were so excited to share them with you! Last week kicked off our study of NH Animals and now, this week, things will be in full swing! Stay tuned! Ask Me About.... Literacy...This week allowed us time to not only classify the animals in our nonfiction group texts into the categories or mammal, fish, reptile, amphibian, bird, or insect, we also used facts and photographs to identify the main traits of those categories. One group's text was about poisonous creatures. We noticed that only fish, reptiles, and insects were included in the book! We know that we can tell how to classify an animal by looking at whether it has fur, feathers, skin or scales, gills or lungs, and how it gives birth to its young! Word Study...This week, we learned the new vowel team, -aw and -au. Both vowel teams produce the same sound like in saw and August. We also studied two more suffixes, -ing and -ed. We can add -ing to the end of a word to show that an action is happening now and -ed to the end of a word to show that an action happened in the past. Math...This week our focus was on beginning a geometry unit! We reviewed basic shapes by exploring pattern blocks (though not getting into too much detail about attributes yet!) We also discussed fractions by completing a paper folding activity. These discussions will continue on this week! Writing...This week we worked on writing "How To" pieces which are designed to teach the reader how to do something that we are good at. This helps us organize our information under headings so the reader can easily understand us. A "How To" is just one style of nonfiction text. Upcoming Events!
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Hello First Grade Families!
I can hardly believe how close Team 210 is to becoming second graders! We have so many fun things planned to round out this wonderful year and I look forward to seeing, not only the growth these students will make in these final months together, but also being able to look back and see a year's worth of growth in action! Here we go into the homestretch! Ask Me About.... Literacy...This week we dove fully into studying nonfiction texts in our literacy groups. We have reviewed common text features such as bold print, the table of contents, photos, captions, labels, headings, the glossary, and an index. As we read nonfiction, we are simultaneously studying nonfiction writing as our final unit of the year. All of this is tied together as we are exposed to nonfiction texts in order to write our own about our NH animals! Our books this week also helped us classify animals into the categories of mammal, reptile, fish, amphibian, bird, and insect. Word Study...This week, we learned the new vowel team, -ue, which has two sounds. -ue sounds different in the word rescue and blue. We have almost learned all of the vowel teams that make the long vowel sounds. Along the way, we have also been discussing the rule that an -e after a vowel and consonant can make the vowel long. Math...This week our focus was on the language in addition and subtraction word problems and solving word problems using both base-ten blocks and an empty number line. We created two charts where we highlighted the language we should be looking for in word problems to let us know whether we should add or subtract. For example, we listed that if we read "in all," "all together," "more," or a word like "gets" or "earns," then we will be adding. But if we read "fewer," "left over," "loses," or phrases like "gives away," then we will most likely be subtracting. Writing...As we dive into nonfiction writing, we began by asking ourselves the question, "Why do writers write nonfiction in the first place?" We answered that nonfiction writers have information that they want to teach to their readers. Each of us has at least one thing we can teach to someone else, so that is where we began our journey with nonfiction this week. We brainstormed and began our very own "how-to" writing pieces. We chose one thing we felt like we were experts at and listed what materials we needed, what the steps were that needed to be carried out, and also added some diagrams and labels to help out our readers. We also divided our information into sections with headings. All in preparation for writing our animal reports! Upcoming Events!
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Hello First Grade Families!
We have come down with an exciting case of "green thumbs" here in Team 210! From creating components of our class "vowel-team garden" our on our bulletin board to tending our Chia Pets and designing "dream gardens" with Mrs. Kurtz, we are enjoying celebrating the spring. Ask Me About.... Literacy...This week we began circling back around to nonfiction texts. In preparation for researching a NH animal, Mrs. Brewster has begun teaching us how to take important information from a nonfiction text and put it into a graphic organizer. Word Study...This week, we learned two new vowel teams -oe and -ou. Both teams create the /oo/ sound. We also learned though, that just like -ow can have two sounds, -ou has two sounds as well. It can be used in both soup and trout. Math...This week we continued adding with place value and comparing numbers. However, into the mix we added the concept of a function machine. A function machine serves the purpose of allowing us to focus on how a number changes. A function machine needs to have a rule such as, "add 10" or "subtract 5." Every number that goes into the machine needs to be changed by the rule before it comes out. If 10 goes into the function machine and the rule is "add 10" we need to add 10+10 in order for 20 to come out! Writing...We have officially finished our fiction stories and will begin illustrating our published books on Monday in preparation for our writing celebration Friday afternoon! We completed our first Chia Pet observation and are thrilled with their growth! We are also looking forward to celebrating Poem in Your Pocket Week next week! We will write poetry about what our 5 senses experience in spring! Upcoming Events!
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Hello First Grade Families!
Hopefully there is no snow to darken our skies this week! We are optimistic in room 210! Last week, we celebrated the beginning of spring by taking the opportunity to discuss the living things around us. Though we automatically think of people and animals, the living things around us include the plant life that is beginning to bloom all around us! We are discussing the attributes of living and nonliving things in order to prepare us for a upcoming unit on New Hampshire wildlife. What better way to learn about what things need to stay alive than to discover it ourselves? Each of us is keeping a "Chia Pet" (of our own making) in the classroom! We will water our plants, make sure they have plenty of sunlight, and observe how they grow over the coming weeks! Stay tuned to watch their progress! Ask Me About.... Literacy...This week we finished our current reading group books and continued to divide our time between reading and practicing our word study principles. Some literacy activities that have been consistently included in our routine are rearranging jumbled words to make a sentence, practicing our new vowel teams by spelling with magnetic letter tiles, and dictating vowel team words to reinforce those long vowel sounds. We just took our Unit 9 Fundations assessment which will be coming home shortly. Word Study...This week, while reviewing closed syllables and our long a and long e vowel teams, we were also introduced to two new vowel teams that produce a sound similar to long o. These are -oi and -oy. Math...As we continue to grow in our confidence with place value, we are able to take on so many new tasks! We have applied place value to two-digit addition, and this week, began comparing the values of numbers based on their place value. One meaningful activity was realizing that digits do not have a value unless they are in a place value. For example, we practiced taking two digits such as 2 and 7 and arranging them to make the lowest and highest numbers we could. The 2 had the value of 20 when it was in the tens place and the 7 had a value of 7 when it was in the ones place to make 27. But if the digits were reversed, the 7 would have a value of 70 in the tens place and 2 would have the value of 2 in the ones place to make 72. We will continue discussing the importance of differentiating the digit vs. the value. Writing...We used our writing time this week to brainstorm what it means for something to be living or nonliving. We decided, as a class, that things that are living need: food, water, sunlight, sleep, shelter, safety, and an appropriate habitat Upcoming Events!
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Hello First Grade Families!
I can't say I'm terribly surprised that we kicked off our Monday, the second day of April, with a snow squall! You should have heard the groans when we looked out the window! We are coming into our "home stretch" of the school year, with April break being one of our final benchmarks. We will begin many projects now that will culminate in larger learning experiences by the end of the year! It will be exciting to get these started now and share them with you in the months to come! Ask Me About.... Literacy...This week we got out of our reading group books and spent a good deal of our time reviewing word study principles and applying them in our reading. One of our jobs this week was to keep a running list of all of the glued sounds that we found in our texts. Examples of these glued sounds are all, am, an, ing, ang, ong, ung, ink, ank, onk, and unk! Word Study...This week, while reviewing closed syllables, we also were introduced to some vowel teams that produce long vowel sounds. For example, we know that ai and ay stand together to make the long a vowel sound, and that ee, ea, and ey stand together to make the long e vowel sound. Math...Last week, we took our study of place value to the next level by using it to help us add two-digit numbers together! We practiced identifying our two-digit numbers by representing them with base-ten blocks in order to show the value of each digit in the number. Then, to add our two numbers together, we combined our pictures together and counted the base-ten blocks we had drawn to reach the sum. This gives us great practice skip counting! We also added the term, flat, into our repertoire. A flat signifies 10 longs with the value of 100. Writing...We continued our story on chart paper and have one more chapter left to write! We will be working on revising our work this week as we prepare to have our final version of our stories ready to be published before April Vacation! Upcoming Events!
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Hello First Grade Families!
It was so fun to wrap up our Trip Around the World with our first grade concert! Thank you all for attending and supporting Team 210! We hope you enjoyed the show! This week, even with our special presentations and concert preparations, we found time for some really meaningful conversations in word study, math, and writing! Ask Me About.... Literacy...This week we got new books in our reading groups that we picked specifically because they had great examples of dialogue. We know that good dialogue adds expression to a story and we can use examples from our own lives to figure out what tones are appropriate during certain situations that our characters get into! Word Study...This week, after having finished with r-controlled vowels, we moved on to syllables! We know that a closed syllable ends on a consonant sound. For example, in the word "blocks," the vowel sound of o is closed in by the ending digraph blend cks. "Blocks" is one syllable and that syllable is closed. Math...We continued our conversations about place value this week by building with longs (tens) and cubes (ones). We know that when a digit is in either the tens or the ones place, the value of that digit is changed. We will continue building two-digit numbers by representing them with base-ten blocks, and will begin to add them next week! Our Fact Power focus was on the Numbers Two Apart strategy. If the addends in our number sentence are two apart, such as 6 and 8, we can quickly solve for the sum in two ways. The first is recognizing this as a Doubles + 2 fact. 6+8 = 6+6+2 or 12+2. The sum is 14. The second way we can solve is by recognizing that since 6 and 8 are two apart, the number in between them is 7, and if you double 7 you also reach 14! These are more efficient options for solving rather than starting at 8 and counting on. It's always good to know some tricks! Writing...We had so much fun this week writing a fiction story together on chart paper! Our story included introducing a new character and setting, chapters, dialogue, secondary characters, a mystery, and more! Hopefully, more practice writing fiction stories all together will help us generate ideas for our own stories. We will be publishing our fiction pieces before April Vacation! Upcoming Events!
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Hello First Grade Families!
What a fun-filled week we had together! From traveling the world, using text features, and putting Me on the Map, to building Leprechaun traps, we definitely stayed busy! Please read below to find out more about what we did in room 210 this week and to find some annoucements and photos! Ask Me About.... Literacy...This week we were able to apply some nonfiction text features as we practiced labeling. We labeled sketches of what we would pack in a suitcase if we were going on a trip, and we labeled the materials we used in our Leprechaun trap designs. Labels help us identify what we are looking at! Word Study...This week we were introduced to the remaining three r-controlled vowels. These were -er and -ir and -ur. The interesting and challenging thing about these three combinations is that they all produce the same sound! So, when we are spelling, one strategy we may need to rely on is spelling the word we want several ways to see which one looks right. We also studied the new trick words, her, over, and number. Math...We introduced our unit on place value this week. We began by re-introducing ourselves to the base-ten blocks. We know that a "cube" is a unit of one, while a "long" is a unit of ten. We practiced exchanging ten cubes for one long and also built the first letter of our names out of longs and cubes and found the value of our letters. Writing...Our writing time was used partially this week to fill in our "passports." We watched two wonderful and fact-filled presentations this week about Italy and Prince Edward Island, Canada, respectively. Each presentation had a power point full a pictures, meaningful artifacts, and a related snack to taste! We compiled facts we learned about each country and added one fact to the passports we created. We also discussed dialogue this week in series texts. We know that the way something is said can add more tone to what is said. We can use, shrieked, and yelled, and exclaimed instead of just said. We will add dialogue to our series. Upcoming Events!
Special Events of the Week
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Hello First Grade Families!
Can you believe how many snow days we have had this year! Hopefully, this was the very last one! Although the snow is growing tiresome, the day off did give us a chance to ease back into the week after break! March is always a tough push during the school year because it is a generally uninterrupted month. Pretty soon we will be at April break, and then after that it is the home stretch to the end of the year! Wow! We have lots of exciting things planned this month! Please read below to find out what we did in room 210 this week and below that will be some annoucements and photos! Ask Me About.... Literacy...This week we continued reviewing the text features present in nonfiction texts. As your children bring home some nonfiction texts in their book bags, or if you have any in your home, help your child locate features such as photographs, labels, bold print, captions, the table of contents, and the index! Word Study...This week we were introduced to two new sounds made by r-controlled vowels. These were -ar and -or. We learned that when "bossy r" stands after a vowel, it makes us skip the vowel sound and jump right to the sound of the r. We also studied the new trick words, should, would, and could. Math...We continued our second week of number line practice! We have discussed all of the parts necessary to form a number line, how we should reasonably space numbers on a number line, and how to make small and large jumps. We can even solve word problems by using a number line! Next week we will begin our next unit on place value. Writing...As we continue writing our fiction stories, this week we were introduced to the idea of a "series." In a series, we know that the characters stay the same, while the settings, events, problems, and solutions change! We read Henry and Mudge: The First Book where we were introduced to our main characters and how they met each other, and compared it to a Henry and Mudge: The Long Weekend to see how the events changed in a new story even though it was still about Henry and Mudge. We also began writing our own series! Upcoming Events!
Special Events of the Week
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Hello First Grade Families!
We are already coming up on Valentine's Day, and pretty soon it will be February Break! We have tried to pack a lot into this short month and still have a lot to come! I'm going to be testing out a new format of blog post that is a newsletter/blog hybrid. This will give you more specific information about what we are studying each week in literacy, word study, math, and writing and will be written from the perspective of your student in order to spark some conversations about school at home! Ask Me About.... Literacy...This week we began discussing the differences between fiction and nonfiction texts. This will be the focus of our small reading groups this upcoming week. We have also been reviewing the strategy of flipping a vowel sound from long to short when trying to decode a word. Word Study...This week we were introduced to four new glued sounds, -ing, -ang, -ong, and-ung. We know that these letters stand together to make one sound. We also studied the new trick words, why, by, my, and try. Math...We have been navigating the hundreds chart this week exploring jumps of +/- 10. We have done this on the chart itself and also in isolated pieces. We have practiced +/- 10 on a "tens ladder"(imagine removing a single row from the hundreds chart but given one number in that row to orient yourself), and we have practiced +/- 10 and +/- 1 with a "cube puzzle" where a selection of five squares from the hundreds chart have been removed and you are only given the center number! To support this, we learned a new game called Tick Toc Tac Toc Toe! Writing...In writing we have begun our third unit! We are studying fiction writing! We know that any fiction story needs original characters, a setting, and main events. We have focused on creating our own characters, deciding a setting, and next week we will get our characters "in and out of trouble" with a focus on problem and solution! Upcoming Events!
Special Events of the Week
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AuthorMusings of a Grade 1 teacher. Outlet for exciting "goings-on" in the classroom. Archives
May 2018
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