Sunday, February 19, 2017

Feb. 20-24, 2017

Specials
Monday - No school!
Tuesday - 5
Wednesday -6
Thursday - 1
Friday - 2

Upcoming Events & Reminders
February 20 - President's Day. No School
February 21-March 10 - Jump Rope for Heart - assembly on Tuesday

Catch ALL of the first grade teachers talking about how AMAZING first grade is at Wellington on Channel 13 (FCPS TV) in March. (air time coming later).

AND...a HUGE congratulations to Ms. Isabella for being handpicked by our principal to represent Wellington on FCPS TV's Character Matters. Catch us on the show in March (again, air time to come later!)



Spelling List
LIST A
zoo
room
food
tooth
few
new
chew
flew

LIST B
bloom
school
spoon
troop
chew
grew
flew
threw

Kid-Friendly Objectives
I can read, write, and identify words with ew and oo.
I can write to tell a fictional story.
I can use strategies to add 3 numbers.
I can identify who is telling the story at any point in the text.
I can understand and use pronouns.

Websites the kids are RAVING about
There are a few sites the kids have been begging me to tell you about! Click the links below to explore (and secretly learn by having fun but shhhh...)
Reading Horizons Discovery the kids are OBSESSED with this new one. Your child's login should be their first name and last initial. (For example, mine would be: amandac) Some kiddos have nicknames so please contact me if you are having difficulty.

Brainpop Jr. is a fun, interactive site with videos, games, and activities to teach new concepts.
Login: welibrary
password: explorers

And here is a video from one of our movement breaks that has been requested repeatedly :)

Week in Review
This week flew by with all of our fun things planned! :)
We kicked off our week with our Valentine's Day activities! 
We read this book:
and talked about what we think love means. Here are some of our answers:












Before our party got started, we continued my favorite tradition of Complimats. The kiddos begin this activity by complimenting themselves (because that's okay!) and then we write one compliment for every single person in the class.



Then...the party began! Here is a look back at some of our wild fun!










 We ended the day with parfaits!
The kiddos got to choose any toppings they wanted...some of us went overboard!
 Some of us weren't sure if we even liked it!


Some of us were scraping every last bit out of the cup. :)

As our week continued on, we had lots of fun in other ways!
For math, we worked on mastering the skill of telling ten more and ten less from ANY two digit number.


We each got our own hundreds chart to put in our journals AND we learned the "100s Chart Shuffle."



An easy way to practice this skill at home is to choose any number on a hundreds chart and have your kids tell you 1 more, 1 less, 10 more, or 10 less. No hundreds chart? Even better! Practice the mental strategy of counting by 10s (2, 12, 22, 32, 42, etc.) when you're riding around in the car!

By the end of the week, we were masters at this skill so we were able to create our own "torn hundreds chart" puzzles! (hopefully these made it home for you to try!)







 We also got to use some of the ones I made for us to keep in a center. Of course, the kiddos said, "These are tooooooo easy, Mrs. Carney!"



We wrapped up our African American Achievers unit this week and studied a little bit about presidents for President's Day. 

We used PebbleGo to study the President's job. We learned that Presidents get to decide whether to sign or veto bills. So, we decided to come up with our own bills throughout the day!
(yes, that is spilled coffee on the poster)

Then, kids chose a bill to either sign or veto.










Have a FABULOUS week!

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Feb. 13-17, 2017

Specials
Monday - 6
Tuesday - 1
Wednesday -2
Thursday - 3
Friday -4

Upcoming Events & Reminders
February 14 - Valentine's Day Celebration! Click here to volunteer or donate to our event!
Our party will be 9:45-10:45 if you signed up to volunteer!
February 20 - President's Day. No School
February 21-March 10 - Jump Rope for Heart (more info soon)

Spelling List
LIST A
tube
cute
mute
cube
use
mule
fuse
fume

LIST B
huge
June
flute
use
cube
fuse
amuse
refuse

Kid-Friendly Objectives
I can read, write, and identify words with the long u spelling pattern.
I can write to tell my opinion and support it with at least 2 reasons.
I can mentally tell a number that is 10 more or 10 less.
I can compare two texts on the same topic.
I can correctly use suffixes to change the meaning of a word.

Week in Review
No pictures this week. :(
Stay tuned for next week!

Sunday, February 5, 2017

February 6-10, 2017

Specials
Monday - 1
Tuesday - 2
Wednesday -3
Thursday - 4
Friday -5

Upcoming Events & Reminders

February 14 - Valentine's Day Celebration! Click here to volunteer or donate to our event!
February 20 - President's Day. No School
February 21-March 10 - Jump Rope for Heart
March 7 - Family Fun Night at City BBQ

Spelling List
LIST A
read
heat
meal
bee
tree
need
sheep
clean


LIST B
clean
plead
dream
sheep
cheese
coffee
screen
least

Kid-Friendly Objectives
I can read, write, and identify words with the ea or ee spelling patterns. (Long E)
I can write to tell my opinion and support it with at least 2 reasons.
I can correctly tell time to the hour and half hour.
I can identify an author's point and the reasons he/she gives to support it.
I can correctly use prefixes to change the meaning of a word.

Week in Review
Your first grader has been working hard on the skill of reading nonfiction texts. As we wrapped up our unit on penguins this week, we focused on the ability to identify an author's main point and the reasons they give to support it. As I began to prepare for this week and to think about how I would present it to first graders, I thought of a cow.


We used this visual to help us break apart an author's writing using a nonfiction book from Raz-Kids. (Don't forget, you can access leveled texts for your kid at home by visiting www.kidsa-z.com and using my username: acarney8) :) 


(yes, this cow only has 3 legs because the author only gave us 3 reasons to support his point!)

Each time we analyzed the author's writing, we had a good laugh about what would happen to the cow if the author did not give it ANY legs to stand on! 

Eventually, the kids began to make the connection that this cow is EXACTLY like our opinion writing - we tell the BIG point and then prove it to our audience. 

We continued to practice this skill using Scholastic News.
 We started to notice a pattern that the author's big point was typically the heading or the topic sentence of each section.

But we kept drawing cows just to make sure we REALLY got it.









Some of us even chose to use this new way of organizing information as a method for organizing facts for our PENGUIN WRITING! We chose the most interesting penguin and researched it to prove why it is so interesting.







Here are our final pieces: 





 (Madison - your face is cracking me up!!!)

We're all so proud of our hard work!


We completed our writing pieces Friday morning and went STRAIGHT INTO PAINTING!!
I wish I had a chance to take more pictures of this in action but alas...one Mrs. Carney trying to pass paint out to 26 students was as crazy as the picture you've made up in your head. So here are their final products, instead:

These girls worked hard on making a life size King Penguin. Can you believe they're that big compared to a first grader?!
Chinstrap Penguin:
 South African Penguin:
 The always cool Macaroni Penguin:
 Nate was part of the South African Penguin group, too!
 The South American Penguin:
 The cute, cute, cute Adelie Penguin!

We spent the rest of our Friday going to the awards ceremony and watching Happy Feet. Oh, did I forget to mention the MASSIVE Book Box we received?!

Thanks to all of you who order each month and earn points for our students, we received SO many great things for our room. More than half of this table got to stay in the room with us! We used our points to get new chapter books, new phonics box sets, picture books, a clock with movable gears, and we earned 10 FREE books! 

Because of you, we also have coupons that I get to send home with our next book order to reduce your costs. :) We've also been bumped into "Green Apple Teacher" status which means our class gets more goodies periodically from Scholastic. 
 From the bottom of our hearts...
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 We LOVED going through our new goodies. :)