Winter Concert this Week!

Hello, families! I wanted to remind you that our school winter concert is this Thursday, November 30 at 6:30 P.M.! Students will have spent a lot of time practicing songs and concert behavior in music class this fall and at rehearsals this week, so I hope they can all attend to show off their hard work. 

This week we had our first lesson in fire safety. A Hartford firefighter came into our classroom. Students remembered lots of things they had learned last year and of course had lots of questions to ask him. I am sending home two worksheets he passed out that are activities you might do at home to go along with the topic of his lesson. 

Some students have been asking when we will get our class photo. Sorry for the delay. It was not taken on the original picture day, but instead on the retake day which was just a couple of weeks ago. So it should be here soon and everyone will receive one!

Week in Review

This week we learned about a saying writers have, "Show, don't tell." 

We looked at poems and tried to figure out the big feeling in them. Even though the poet hadn't told us, we could always figure it out based on their word choice and the picture they created in our minds. Then we wrote this class poem before we went off to try it in our own writing-- can you figure out how most of us felt when some of those first snow flakes fell earlier this week??

On another day in writing we talked about how to make writing that feels "regular" into writing that feels like a poem. Two ways we tried out to create more of the voice of a poem were: write like you are talking to rather than about an object, or write a story as a poem by telling it as if you just rushed into a room and said only the most important words to tell a story. We got some great gems from jumping in and trying these techniques!

In math we learned a new game called Make the Sum. You take turns flipping cards over and make the target sum whenever you can, using two or more cards combined.

We read and responded to morning messages like this 

and this

We did some fun new morning meeting greetings, including one that had an inner and an outer circle rotating so we could each greet lots of different classmates. We also did a greeting where each person called out their first name and the class said their last name back. This caused delight when even I said my first name!

In social studies we've been reading about the Pilgrims and Native Americans and the first Thanksgiving. In first grade we focus on how life was the same and different from our lives now living in the 2000s. We wrote this paragraph/report as a class, a first introduction to this form of writing with a topic sentence, supporting details, and a conclusion. 

We had reading groups. We meet in small groups during our reading time twice a week. Some students are in a small group with me, some with Mrs. B who helps out in our classroom, some with Ms. Derosier and Mr. Burriss. Reading groups give us a chance to reinforce the skills and strategies we are working on in our reading workshop lessons, as well as a chance to read multiple copies of the same book and have book discussions and/or do word work that supports the text. Some groups meet in another room because it helps us all have enough space and to keep the noise level down that naturally occurs when small groups are happening. Students look forward to reading group times.  

Today we had indoor recess because of the rain and enjoyed a lot of building and creating!

Tomorrow morning first thing is a WRS tradition for students and staff: squash chucking! As all students and staff get ready for the feast next week, the second grade needs help chucking the squash and gathering up the pieces before they wash and seed and cook and mash it. (Thank you for sending in the corn bread mix! We could use a couple more boxes, but we are in good shape.)

Last, students have asked me to "put it on the blog," so here is a reminder per request: Family Movie Night here at school is tomorrow, Nov. 17 at 6:30 P.M. (doors open at 6:00). The movie is Cars 3!

Quiet Time

A couple of times a week in the first grade classrooms you'll find us having "Quiet Time." This is different from what may have been called quiet time in kindergarten. It falls in the early afternoon, right after recess or right after Music class. After the noise, elevated activity level, and excitement of those activities, students walk in the door, quickly choose something they would like to do by themselves silently for fifteen or twenty minutes, and head directly to a spot of their own in the room. It usually feels calm and focused during quiet time. While students choose to draw, color, write, read, do a puzzle, sort "treasures," use Legos, or other activities, they are getting a chance to practice self-initiative, creativity, self-regulation. It gives them a break from the challenging work we do all day long and hopefully gives them a chance to restart and collect themselves before the rest of the afternoon. Sometimes if students have catch-up work to do, quiet time is also a time to take care of those “have-tos” before making a free choice.

We Are Poets

For the next few weeks our writing workshop time will be focused on creating poetry. This week we began by observing objects in a "poetry museum" to practice taking notes and describing them the way a poet might see them-- with our senses, but also with feelings and imagination. We noticed how a poet might imagine bees buzzing inside a pencil sharpener or imagine the ceiling as the sky for the classroom or imagine an acorn cap as a little hat. Students got a kick out of this poetic way of seeing the world and had fun trying it out.

The next day we practiced taking the words from poems and reading them written out on the page in a usual (prose-like) way and then reading them with the line breaks laid out on the page as the poet intended-- a big difference. We noticed how poetry has a rhythm and that the poet chooses words carefully as well as how to lay them out in order to make us read the poem in a certain way.

Here is some work we did rearranging the given words at the top into a poem using line breaks.
The next day we talked about how writers, and poets especially, write then reread to see how it sounds, write some more and then reread it to hear it again. Poets really want their poems to sound a certain way. We noticed poets sometimes repeat words that are important. We are enjoying poems whenever we get the chance to hear them read aloud. We had fun creating this poem as a class before we set off to work on our own pieces yesterday:

While poetry is not a genre required or formally assessed by the standards, it is a freeing and fun form of writing for kids. Kids naturally see the world in an imaginative, often poetic way. The teaching that goes into a unit on poetry is so useful as skills for writing in general and will support the writing we do for the rest of the school year. I am trying out several new ideas for this unit from a book by Lucy Calkins and Stephanie Parsons called Poetry: Powerful Thoughts in Tiny Packages. In the introduction, they write, "a unit of study on poetry can teach children to explore, and savor language, valuing voice and repetition...They can learn to read and to write with an ear, appreciating and revising the pace and rhythm of words, and they can learn to care not only about their topics, but also about how they write about those topics. Poetry can teach children to deliberately craft their language, trying things on the page on purpose, hoping to create special effects."

Poetry also is a great way to practice choosing a title, focusing on a main idea, including detail, thinking about good beginnings and endings. Students often end up writing one or two or more complete poems in a session. We focus on free verse poetry rather than on trying to rhyme.

Sea Star Quilt

We made a sea star quilt this week this week. First we read an informational poem to learn a few things about fascinating sea stars, in particular that they have five arms. For the patchwork blocks, we had to first calculate exactly how many squares of each color we'd each need to fill the pattern. This was extra challenging because several brown squares had to be cut into halves of fourths to make the triangles (we're working with wholes, halves, and fourths in our current Number Corner pattern too). It was a great chance to practice careful cutting and use of glue, as well!

When the blocks were all assembled to make a quilt we noticed many patterns within it and made lots of interesting math observations. The quilt provided many opportunities to practice counting by 5s-- can you find all the ways to see groups of 5 in this quilt?

After it was posted on the wall we reviewed all the mathematical observations and took tuns proving them by pointing out how each observation was derived.

Seeking Cornbread Contributions

For our school Thanksgiving Feast that all students and staff will enjoy on Tuesday, November 21, each class contributes something. First grade will once again make cornbread for the whole school. I will be getting some eggs and milk and other necessities. If you are able to purchase and donate a box of Jiffy corn muffin mix for us to use, that would be most helpful. We will be making the cornbread the day before the feast, so please send in cornbread mix anytime between now and Friday, November 17, so I will know what, if anything, we still need before baking day! Students always enjoy this little project. Thanks in advance.