Using Photos to Add Details

This week, as we begin to wrap up our writing workshop unit writing informational chapter books, we learned one more way that writers add details to their work to better teach their readers: do research to get more information. One way to do research at a first-grade level is to find photos or pictures of our topics and notice all we can in them, and put those details into the words in our book. Students added details to their chapters by studying photos of a leafy sea dragon, a tennis ball, a hockey player, a New York Yankees uniform, a cat, and more. Here we are hard at work, writing, and then sharing aloud, our newly added details.

Number Corner Patterns

Take a look at our busy November Number Corner area. See if your child can describe to you some of the patterns and key words in our fraction calendar pieces this month, or about how we are "collecting" hours this month. Maybe they can tell you about how many decades of school days we have recently completed, or about the two number families we've been rehearsing in the current number line sequence.

Sea Star Quilt Blocks

Today we had a chance to be creative and practice some fine motor skills by coloring, cutting, and gluing paper quilt blocks that will be assembled into a class "quilt." 

First we learned some facts about sea stars (students may have been most fascinated by the fact that they can regenerate their arms if one breaks!). The important fact math-wise was that they have five arms each. 

Then we each created two different quilt blocks that each included five of something. Once the quilt is put together we'll have a fun way to notice and practice some patterns in the multiples of five.

Fire Safety

Today we had our first of several fire safety lessons this year with Firefighter Dan. He read a story called No Dragons for Tea. The main takeaways from the story and today's session were:

• know two ways out in case of a fire
• crawl low under smoke
• just get out if your hear the alarm; don't go get anything
• don't go back inside until an adult says it's safe

The students are bringing home a couple activities to do with their families around making and discussing a fire escape plan.

Making Cornbread

This morning we made cornbread as the first-grade contribution to tomorrow's school-wide feast. Cracking eggs was the highlight for many students!

 

Donations, Please!

Our school Thanksgiving feast is coming up on Tues., Nov. 20. First graders contribute to this fun all-school even by mixing and baking cornbread. We need about 16 boxes of Jiffy corn muffin mix in all, so if each student could send in a box or two by Friday Nov. 16, that would be great! 

Also, if you would like to donate canned peaches or pears to help with the Hartford-Norwich Holiday Basket program, we have a collection box now in each classroom. (And as a reminder, we're always collecting those Box Tops!)

Thanks in advance if you can help out!

Feeling Words

There is a lot of value in being able to accurately describe how we feel! The students brainstormed quite a list of words to describe feelings this week. We practiced another way kids can solve problems that occur between them: use an "I" statement to describe how someone's actions make you feel. We practiced using this script to say what characters might have been able to say to each other in some favorite read alouds. We also practiced with realistic made-up problems like someone cutting you in line, or someone hogging the ball, or someone swinging a jump rope around.

Ideas for Questions to Ask about the School Day

Dear Parents, 

I am sending home a list of ideas for questions you could ask your child in order to try to get more insight into their school day. Many of you shared at our conferences how it can be hard to get information out of them at the end of the day. I copied a list of great ideas for questions that I had saved from a newsletter Ms. Powers sent home last year. Maybe you can store it near your dinner table and ask one or two each night to help get some good conversations started!

Reading with Fluency

In our Fundations work we sometimes read a short story with no pictures. The stories are "controlled texts," which means that they only contain trick words we've learned (high-frequency words students should know by sight) and words that can be tapped out and read based on the spelling rules we've learned so far. 

We practice comprehension with these stories-- not always easy without the aid of pictures! 

We mark up some features in words, such as underlining digraphs (sh, ch, ck, th, wh) in words in the story. 

These stories are already "scooped" into phrases. When we read with phrasing (and expression, and at a good rate) this is reading fluently. It makes it easier to understand what we are reading and is more enjoyable to listen to. We practice reading the words within each scoop one after another rather than one word at a time. Here we are practicing reading and marking some features of words in the story "The Cod Fish."

Self Assessing and Goal Setting

Look at these earnest writers! Here we are about seven days into our unit writing informational books, or teaching books. We've begun with doing this kind of writing with topics we already know a lot about. Today we spent some time taking stock of the writing we've done so far, noticing what we are doing really well, and each choosing a goal or two to work on to improve our informational writing. We looked at a checklist of first-grade end-of-year goals for this type of writing. I could barely hold back many of the students who wanted to improve or fix up their writing in certain ways as we discussed the checklist. They each wrote a goal on a post-it, and went to work improving their current piece of writing. Many of us realized we needed an ending, or a beginning where we state the topic, or that we could improve our book's teaching power by putting labels in the pictures, adding lists with commas, or capitalizing names of specific people and places. Next week we'll learn about chapters and tables of contents...

Fair Ways to Play

We're beginning a project in both first-grade classrooms about how to solve common recess conflicts that occur. 

We've been learning ideas from some great Second Steps (social skills curriculum) lessons. We've learned the steps to problem solving. Each step starts with a letter in this acronym: STEP. Ask your child if they can tell you the "S step," the "T step," and so on. It's amazing how helpful a catchy song on the CD player can be to help things like this stick in our brains!

S: State the problem (without blame)

T: Think of solutions (lots of possible ideas of what to do)

E: Explore consequences (what might happen if we did each of these solutions, how might we each feel)

P: Pick the best solution

We also learned some fair ways to play for times when two children want to use the same set of blocks, for example. Here are some ways to play fairly:

• sharing,
• taking turns, and
• trading

We look at situations in a photograph or in a two-minute video, brainstorm solutions, then find out what the characters pick. Then we try to relate it back to our own lives during the week. We often do some role playing, which students love. Here we are practicing some friendly language for turn-taking with a book.