Hello First Grade Families!
Thank you for your patience as I have missed out on a few weekends of blog posts! There were conferences, then I was in a musical in Concord that opened the weekend before last and finally, all of a sudden, the holiday was here! Your students have been up to so much and you got to see a piece of that at our First Grade Feast. Thank you again to all who donated and attended! It was a huge success that truly reflected the feeling of community we have been trying to build amongst our first-grade teams. After families left school, our day before break was spent experimenting with the holiday staple, cranberries! We made predictions about what would happen to fresh cranberries in water and dried cranberries in Sprite, determined which cranberries were ripe by whether or not they bounced, and even examined how the natural dyes in cranberries can stain clothes and were once used for that purpose. After these experiments, we also participated in a taste test! We tried fresh cranberries, dried cranberries, cranberry juice, and cranberry sauce and recorded which foods we liked or dislike. I'll tell you this, fresh cranberries...were not a hit!!! Our final portion of the afternoon was spent celebrating your students' Small Moment writing! Students' books were typed, illustrated and bound, and before they went into our classroom library, we had a museum walk of sorts to share our stories! We decorated our tables, shared a special treat, and swapped stories with the friends around us. Please enjoy the photos from our whole day! This past week, though busy, was a wonderful reminder of how grateful I am for this career, this school, your families, and your students. Thank you for all you do for this BES community! ***A few notes:
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Though our week got off to a bumpy start (I sure hope everyone's power is back by now!!) we were able to get quite a bit done. Our week was full to the brim!
Tuesday was another day of rotations which is a wonderful opportunity for Team 210 to spend some quality time with students from the other first grade teams who we usually only get to see at recess and lunch! Our students rotated through five different stations where we completed fall-themed educational activities! In Team 210's room, I led "Fall-Themed" Improv games. Improv games are a wonderful way to practice quick thinking and to build confidence and partnership within a group. Over the summers, I am a theater camp counselor at the Derryfield School and we like to practice improv games with our campers everyday! It was so wonderful to see the first graders taking risks, playing along, and not being afraid to be a little silly. Even at this level, improv games can have an impact on future public speaking skills and begin to get students comfortable in front of a group of their peers! I want to send a special thank you to the families who contributed to our special snack! It was so appreciated and a wonderful way to end our day together. Another task that first graders accomplished this week was practicing dictation sentences. Dictation activities are when I say a sentence out loud, and the students are responsible for recording the sentence using proper capitalization and punctuation and identifying the "trick words" present by circling them. This is a very difficult task as it depends on the students' ability to keep those five or six words in their head even after I am done repeating the sentence. These dictations are on our Fundations Unit Assessments from now on so it was so helpful to practice these skills in a whole-group setting. We discussed ways to problem solve, strategies for keeping the sentence in our minds, and ways to make sure we get down just what we hear on paper. Below are some photos from that activity! Be on the lookout for the November calendar coming home tomorrow, and I look forward to meeting with all families at the Parent-Teacher Conferences this Thursday and Friday. I will send out a final confirmation of time and dates tomorrow! |
AuthorMusings of a Grade 1 teacher. Outlet for exciting "goings-on" in the classroom. Archives
May 2018
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