May 8-12, 2017

Specials

Monday - 4

Tuesday - 5

Wednesday -6

Thursday - 1

Friday - 2

Upcoming Events & Reminders
May 9 - Family Fun Night at Orange Leaf
**FIRST GRADE TO CINCINNATI ZOO**
May 11 - First Grade Musical Performance (We will also be sharing our dioramas with you immediately following the performance!)
May 12 - PJ Day

May 15 - Fun Day (make sure to bring water, wear tennis shoes, and apply sunscreen!)
May 16 - Student Led Conferences 3-5pm

May 17 - Wellington Talent Show
May 19 - Last Day of School, Awards, and First Grade Picnic

Week in Review
TEN. MORE. DAYS. Ahh!!
Time has flown by this year with your sweet first graders. You better believe I'm going to be squeezing them extra tight over the next 2 weeks!
Here's a glimpse into what we've been doing this week.
We started the week with our K-PREP Parade!

In Math, we were focused on Calendars and understanding how they work.

In reading, we focused on poetry! Check out some of these poems that your students wrote!

"When I feel warm. I sweat like. A rainbow soo hot! When I am warm so much!"

Yes, we've been exploring with fun punctuation in poetry, too!

 "When I see a red gate I get surprised when. I see a red gate I get happy."

 "When I am outside I. am. cold! When I am outside I hear the sound of the whistles of the leaves. When I am outside I could play on the swing all day. When I am outside I feel happy. I <3 outside."

 "When I see a SPIDER!!! I will RUN if it is big I run so fast I will HIDE!"

 "When I hear trains I am TIRED! When I hear trains I am closing the EARS!" When I hear trains I am so mad!"

"When I feel the sun, it makes me HAPPY. The sun is so hot. When I go inside my mom cooks hot cakes. When I get hot I go to my bedroom."

We also built poetry with our friends using only the words I gave them.

See you soon!

May 1-5, 2017

Specials

Monday - 5

Tuesday - 6

Wednesday -1

Thursday - 2

Friday - 3

Upcoming Events & Reminders
May 2-19 - K-PREP Testing Window. This means our schedule will be different during this time.
May 5 - Habitat Diorama due
May 9 - Family Fun Night at Orange Leaf
**FIRST GRADE TO CINCINNATI ZOO**
May 11 - First Grade Musical Performance (I have been told 5:30 and 6pm so I will let you know the official time as soon as I confirm it).

May 15 - Fun Day (make sure to bring water, wear tennis shoes, and apply sunscreen!)
May 16 - Student Led Conferences 3-5pm

May 17 - Wellington Talent Show
May 19 - Last Day of School, Awards, and First Grade Picnic

Spelling List

No more spelling words the rest of the year!

Kid-Friendly Objectives
I can read, write, and identify words with oo (as in hook and book).
I can write an informational piece about a topic.
I can use the articles "a" and "an" correctly in a sentence.
I can read poetry.
I can read a calendar.

Classroom Donations
THANK YOU to anyone who has sent in donations. You are so very appreciated!!

Week in Review
We've made it to 15 more days until Summer Break! Your kids have some mixed emotions on whether they are ready for the break but I know we have lots of fun things planned over the next 3 weeks. :)
One of those fun things that first graders get to do is count MONEY!

First, we practiced simply identifying the coins and their values.

 Then, we practiced counting groups of coins. This is such a tough skill not because it requires us to memorize the coin values but because we have to go from counting by 25s, to 10s, to 5s, to 1s. Of course, they did it like champs. :)

We played a trading game where the kids raced to be the first one to make a dollar from 100 cents.

 We had fun tossing silly erasers into cupcake liners with various coin amounts that told us exactly which amount to make with the FEWEST amount of coins.

 We also practiced creating receipts and adding up totals. Oh my GOODNESS this is a tough skill!

 But we loved it because it included donuts and hot chocolate :)

In phonics, we got to use some of the chalk donations to practice our spelling words outside!

 Of course, we earned free drawing time afterwards. Cracking me up :-P

We practiced stretching out sentences using details and conjunctions. By the end of the week, we were writing compound sentences!

On Thursday, we had to come up with some alternate plans due to our rescheduling of our field trip. Because we had been studying using photographs in Reading and writing compound sentences in Language, we combined both of these skills! 
This activity was such a great lesson in teamwork and collaboration. The students were experts of their own exhibits at the zoo! Each group had a collection of photographs that could be organized any way they wanted on their poster.

 The teams worked together to decide what organization made the most sense for their exhibit.

Next, teammates were asked to write COMPOUND SENTENCES to teach us what information the photographs can give us about their exhibit.

On Friday, we taught the class about our exhibits. Talk about a proud teacher moment. :)

Each child read their information aloud.

Finally, the group had to come up with one "Focus Question" to ask the class. The questions were so thoughtful and the students were always able to nail the answers. I have lots of future teachers on my hands. :-P

Here's to another fabulous week!

April 24-28, 2017

Specials

Monday - 6

Tuesday - 1

Wednesday -2

Thursday - 3

Friday - 4

Upcoming Events & Reminders
April 24-28 Book Fair - we will go on Wednesday as a class
April 27 - 1st grade to Cincinnati Zoo!
If you are interested in chaperoning, please make sure your background check and volunteer forms are complete! Chaperone training will be held in the morning before our trip.
April 27 - Celebrate the Arts Night 5:30-7:30pm
April 29 - PTA Carnival 2-7pm
May 2-19 - K-PREP Testing Window. This means our schedule will be different during this time.
May 9 - Family Fun Night at Orange Leaf
May 11 - First Grade Musical Performance (More info to come)
May 15 - Fun Day
May 17 - Wellington Talent Show
May 19 - Last Day of School and First Grade Picnic (more info to come)

Spelling List

LIST A

oink
coin
point
soil
enjoy
joy
toys
boys

LIST B

enjoy
cowboy
royal
annoy
choice
spoil
poison
noise

Sight Words
Practice reading and writing at home each week. I will be choosing 2 of these words to put on our spelling test.

full
over
new
sound
take

Kid-Friendly Objectives
I can read, write, and identify words with oi and oy.
I can use a source to get information about a topic.
I can identify coins.
I can count groups of coins.
I can expand simple and compound sentences.
I can use photographs in a text to help me understand.

Classroom Donations
THANK YOU to anyone who has sent in donations. You are so very appreciated.
-CHALK!!!!!!!! :) :) :) :) :) :)

Week in Review

This week, we began to put what we have been learning about informational texts to use! The kids chose their animals to research and began the AMAZING process of reading informational texts and pulling out key words. They have taken this job so very seriously (as you can see below :-P) and are enjoying sharing their information with their peers. 

 We use sources such as Raz-Kids, Library books, Fact Files, National Geographic Kids, and PebbleGo.

You can login to PebbleGo at home using the link to the right --->

 Look at how much information he has found! Jed has taken the job of inquiry so seriously. He opens his text, thinks, "Hm...I wonder ____?" and uses the text to answer his questions!

In Math, we practiced skip counting.

 Hands on math is the best math. :)

 We used our personal hundreds charts to continue counting sequences of 10s, 5s, and 2s.

 Some of our groups even got a head start on money! As a class, we will begin studying money this week. :)

Here's to another great week in first grade!
20 more days!