January 23-27, 2017

Specials

Monday - 4

Tuesday - 5

Wednesday -6

Thursday - 1

Friday - Non-Rotation Day

Upcoming Events & Reminders
January 23 - 99th Day. Dress in all black!
January 24 - 100th Day. Dress like you live 100 years into the future
January 27 - Non-rotation day. STEM Day
February 3 - Tentative date for 2nd grading period awards
February 20 - President's Day. No School

Spelling List

LIST A

high

night

sigh

light

fight

tight

bright

slight

 

LIST B

bright

slight

fright

light

might

delight

tonight

knight

Kid-Friendly Objectives
I can read, write, and identify words with the -igh spelling pattern.
I can write to tell my opinion and support it with at least 2 reasons.
I can correctly tell time to the hour.
I can determine whether information in a text came from the pictures or the words.
I can correctly match a verb to its singular or plural noun.

Week in Review
Hi everyone! :) 
We started our 4-day week with a refresher on why we did not have school on Monday. I don't know if you are familiar with Kid President but he often has very powerful videos that are presented in a kid-friendly way. Here is his video on MLK Jr. that we watched Tuesday morning.

We used his video as a quick refresher that helped lead us into our writing prompt for the day. The kids LOVE to tell their opinions in writing - and they sure do have a lot of opinions. :-P

The exciting piece for the week was our Cutest Pet Contest. The kids either brought in a photograph or illustrated one. I insisted that Max was the cutest pet of all and several of the kids were ready to argue their pets for the win! We talked about how sometimes you need to persuade someone to believe your opinion. Here are some of our persuasive pieces.

As we complete our Penguin Unit, we will be choosing the most interesting penguin and explaining why we think they are so interesting. 

We kept up our penguin research by studying the Gentoo and Chinstrap Penguins this week!

The kids have been working on completing research independently.

We also had some fun with Shades of Meaning this week! Shades of Meaning help set the groundwork for synonyms. We learned that shades of meaning help authors turn their stories into more exciting stories by using verbs that are very similar but are a SHADE different. At the end of the week, we made some Shades of Meaning Super Heroes.

In Math, we continued our Measurement and Data unit by creating and interpreting graphs! We have discussed the importance of how graphs can help us and how we can analyze the data they show.

These kiddos are showing off how they analyzed their snowman data!

We have one more day of data tomorrow before we assess in the afternoon. Next up: TELLING TIME!!!

TurtleDiary has a fun, simple game to practice turning an analog clock into a digital clock. Your first grader can use this to practice time telling at home (of course, you can practice in many other ways, too!)

January 17-20, 2017

Specials

Monday - NO SCHOOL!

Tuesday - 6

Wednesday -1

Thursday - 2

Friday - 3

Save this image for a quick reference guide! (I promise it is easier to read once you've saved it!)

Upcoming Events & Reminders
January 16 - MLK Day. No school
January 27 - Non-rotation day. STEM Day
February 3 - Tentative date for 2nd grading period awards
February 20 - President's Day. No School

Spelling List

Beginning in January, we will be increasing the number of words on each list and asking students to write a dictated sentence. This means that we will choose one of the spelling words and ask students to use it in a sentence that we dictate. I will not be assessing the spelling of all of the words in the sentence but will assess the sentenced based on Capitalization, Finger Spaces, punctuation, and spelling the word correctly. 

LIST A

ride

vine

kite

time

like

fire

smile

slide

LIST B

slide

bride

smile

wipe

chime

prize

white

thrive

Kid-Friendly Objectives
I can read, write, and identify words with the i_e spelling pattern.
I can write to tell my opinion and support it with at least 2 reasons.
I can read data from a graph.
I can identify and use text features in a nonfiction text.
I can use shades of meaning to understand verbs.

Week in Review
Our first full week back from winter break...did you survive? I barely did! Your first graders, of course, did wonderfully. Here's a fun look back at their hard work!

I love watching their growth in writing. There is something magical about the month of January when things just seem to click with our kids. It's as if they leave in December as first graders and come back in January as "soon-to-be-second-graders." Our writing unit is circling back around to opinion pieces. To change it up a bit to handle my practically second graders, we are focusing on the art of persuasion. 

To begin, we revisited our dear old friend Pigeon with the book:

The kids came up with reasons why they believed the pigeon SHOULD or SHOULD NOT be able to stay up late.

The next day, we read a book titled "Cold Weather" and decided to try to persuade others of our opinion about Winter. 

Our class was, collectively, in love with Winter!

That was too easy of a topic. Next, we read:

and created a list of our dream vacation spots. Some of the kids were so inspired by this writing prompt that they chose to spend their Work on Writing time during Daily 5 to persuade Mrs. Strange to let us go on dream field trips. We are still waiting to hear back from her about Myrtle Beach ;-).

Reading this week was all about Text Features and PENGUINS!
Here are some of the text features we've discussed:

We have enjoyed using our Penguin Text Feature booklets to do some research about penguins, too!
So far, we have learned about the HUGE emperor penguin and the 2nd largest, King Penguin.

In math, we used our pigeon friend to help us continue practicing measurement. We used another directed drawing (In case you haven't noticed, I'm a little addicted...). Each kiddo had the choice of measuring their pigeon with an eraser, cubes, or paperclips. We discussed the importance of estimating a length and NAMING the unit we choose to measure with. We even took a real deal (assessment) on Friday for measurement and CRUSHED IT. We are so ready to tackle data and graphing next week!

Last, but ABSOLUTELY not least, we discussed Martin Luther King Jr. on Friday with this AMAZING Reading Rainbow episode:

The kids really got it...especially when they looked around the room and noticed how diverse our classroom is. They were devastated to realize that MLK lived in a time that our classroom would have been deemed illegal. To send the message home, we did the egg experiment.

We discussed what was similar about these two eggs and what was different. We agreed that while they looked different, they were both obviously eggs. I cracked open the white egg and revealed the expected yellow yolk. The kids then made predictions about what they would find on the inside of the brown egg. Many predicted it would be a brown yolk because the egg was different than one they'd seen before! I cracked open the egg, spun the plate around, and asked, "Can you tell me which one is the brown egg now?" They were stumped. When asked what they can learn from these eggs, one of your wonderful first graders came to the front of the classroom and loudly proclaimed,

"You can't judge a kid by how they look on the outside. You have to look at their heart and their mind."

I hope you have a restful day off for MLK Day and take a moment to be thankful that your first grader gets to spend his/her days with such a beautiful, kind, and diverse group of students every day. Have a wonderful week!