Holiday Celebration and Author's Tea

On Thursday, December 20, children read the stories they wrote during our Small Moments Unit in writer's workshop to their families.  Thank you to all of the parents who donated food for the celebration!  Here are some pictures. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

It was a pleasure meeting all the families of my students earlier this week.  Thank you for the gift of your children.

Food Drive

Thank you to all who donated!

We graphed the food we collected and here is the graph:

We had 13 cans, one bag, and 7 boxes of food!

Wednesday mornings with Mrs. Brinkler

Every Wednesday morning at 9:30 Mrs. Brinkler delivers a guidance lesson.  One of the favorite parts of the lesson is a "challenge" in which students are challenged to work together to complete a task.  This week students were given small cards depicting an emotion.  Their challenge was to display the emotion with body language and find the one student in our class who had a matching card.  They had to discover the matching student by studying their classmates' body language.  Here are two students who found their matches:

Can you guess what emotion they are displaying with their body language?

Our iPad is on its way!

Thank you very much to everyone for donating to our second DonorsChoose project of the year.  We now have an iPad 3 (with a pink case) on its way. 

  
 

Mo Willems and The Common Core

Maine has joined 47 other states and "signed on" to the Common Core, a set of national standards that are being used by teachers and administrators nationwide to help prepare children for college and careers.  This means that if you should move from Maine to Mississippi, your child's end of year reading goals should look the same in both states.   Today I was at the Samoset Resort in Rockport, Maine, attending a workshop titled "Linking Classroom Planning and the Common Core" with Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan, authors of Assessment:  Finding the Stories of Our Students.

In a nutshell, the heart of the workshop was dedicated to looking deeply at the Common Core's ten anchor standards for reading and aligning them with the planning, instruction, and assessment cycle of teaching.  Because there were two presenters and only eight attendees for this particular session,  I was able to further differentiate by grade level, which means that there was time to ask and receive answers specific to first grade. 

How does this connect with Mo Willems and what we are doing in school today?  The standards address what "the average first grader in the United States" should know about reading.  I was able to plan the linking of what to teach and how to teach it with our current favorite books,  Mo Willems' Knuffle Bunny,  Don't Let The Pigeon Drive the Bus, and We Are In A Book in mind.  The professional development will help immeasurably for all of my future instruction.  

In addition to the training, we were each given copies (to keep!) of all of the childrens' books that we used throughout the conference as text models for teaching the standards.  Brenda Power, the owner of Choice Literacy, a literacy website with 55,000 subscribers, and the conference hostess, gave us each many other gifts to take home (including a free subscription to her website and a $199.00 Demonstration DVD!).

Best.  Workshop.  Ever.  

Starting the Year in Writer's Workshop

There are three genres of writing that we are mandated to study in first grade:  narrative (stories), expository (factual), and persuasive.  We are starting the year by delving deep into story writing.  We are in the process of writing stories with a beginning, middle, ending, problem and resolution.  We are looking at punctuation and deciding which kind to use at the end of a sentence.  Some of us can read our writing and think about how we could change it so it makes better sense.   Others can add detail to our drawings and writing to help make our story more interesting or clearer.  

The book that we are using to help us think of writing ideas is Ralph Tells A Story by Abby Hanlon.  The book was written by a first grade teacher and suggests that there is a story in all of us; we just need to pay attention to find it. 

Every Day in EveryDay Math

One of the components of our Everyday Math curriculum is called "Mental Math and Reflexes."  This is usually a warm up activity to get us ready for new learning.  Yesterday's lesson said, "The leader (you or a child) forms the front of a train.  The children follow behind the leader, each child holding onto the waist of the child in front.  They think 1, hop and say "2," pause and think 3, hop and say "4," pause and think 5, hop and say "6" and so on."

Here we all are doing the lesson.

My DonorsChoose.org Grant Was Filled!

Wow!  And it was filled very quickly! 

It is a reading/writing center with tubs for holding supplies, two magnetic whiteboards, a center shelving area for holding big books, and it is on wheels.  The total cost of the project was almost $500.00 and so I am very grateful for the donors who chose to support my project.

This is my tenth funded project from DonorsChoose.  I have received about $4000.00 in free materials for my classroom over the past four years.    You may visit them at DonorsChoose.org for more information.

Here is what is coming:                                              

This is the DonorsChoose.org logo

A New Year

Welcome to a new school year!   We are practicing, practicing, practicing our routines.  For these first six weeks of school, our focus will be on learning how to be a friend. 

More Pond Science

We are studying the life cycles of toads and frogs as a part of our pond unit.  Here is a picture of the toad tadpoles that we are observing in our Science Center.

We also made a Venn diagram which compares frogs and toads.  The "I Can" list helps us remember all of the choices of activities that we can do in the Science Center. 

Here are some first graders sequencing frog life cycle photographs in correct order and documenting their arrangement in our class Science Journal.

Here is a picture from another angle of the science center.  You will notice that we have science pond books, a science journal, magnifying glasses, live tadpoles, and two non-fiction posters.   Our poster explaining the scientific process is also available for reference.  That is the character "Frog" from the Frog and Toad series of books hiding behind the plant!

What are we learning about in science?

We are learning about pond habitats in science.  We performed an experiment last week using the scientific process.  We use the following chart that I made every time we do a science experiment, and that is quite often!   Here is a picture of the chart:

Our question was, "What kind of soil do you think you would find at a pond and why?"  To help us make an informed hypothesis, we remembered what we know about soil and also read the book, Looking at Soil by Judith Rosenbaum.  Here is a picture of the book:

We learned about three types of soil:  clay, sand, and humus.   After reading the book, we examined samples of the three different kinds of soil with magnifying glasses and toothpicks.  Here are the soil samples:

 

Here we are examining the samples.  Please notice how everyone allowed space for their friends to observe and how engaged everyone is in their learning! 

To help us learn about how fast liquids filter through the three different types of soil, we observed water passing through three filters.  Each filter held a type of soil:  sand, clay or humus.  

Everyone then predicted what type of soil would most likely be found around a pond and why.  We recorded our observations:

We came to the conclusion that soil with a lot of humus would most likely be found around a pond.  Our reasons were that water filters too fast through sand to hold the water that is in a pond.  We remembered from our Looking at Soil book that healthy plants need a way for water to filter away from their roots, so we decided that clay would not work.  We also observed bits and pieces of sticks and some wood chips in the humus, which we would expect to find in the dirt around a pond.   

Today I brought a sample of "what's at the bottom of a pond" from the pond that is on the land that my family owns.  We poked around at the plants that grew in the sample and connected the name of the plants in the sample to several of the books we have been reading - the plants are called "lily pads!" 

Caine's Arcade!

We watched Caine's Arcade last week.  The movie is about ten minutes long and tells the story of nine year old Caine, who spends his entire summer building a cardboard arcade in the front office of his dad's used car parts store Los Angeles.  Although Caine has only one customer all summer, he never gives up and continues to add arcade games that he built.  This movie was connected to our yearlong study about ourselves - what we all have in common and what is different about us.   

I won't ruin the story, but Caine gives us a tremendous lesson about a characteristic that helps us do well in school and life: perseverance.   Other lessons included are examples of the power of play, and the success you might obtain by following your dreams.  

Here is the link:http://cainesarcade.com/ 

This is one of our first graders who built his own arcade game after watching Caine's arcade.  He has built four games so far and has made $7.00 on games.

Happy Vacation Everyone

I hope everyone is enjoying their week off from school! 

What is Happening in Writer's Workshop

We are working hard towards the end of the third quarter of school.  We have concluded our Writer's Workshop unit of study on All About Books.   This type of writing aligns with the expectations of the Common Core, a set of national standards that are being implemented in many states.

Our next unit of study will be about Persuasive Writing.  This is another writing genre that is emphasized in the Common Core.   We will be writing persuasive letters in an attempt to convince our audience to change something.  We have walked around the school looking for ideas.  One of the things we decided to write about is the need for more swings on the playground.   Please look for persuasive letters to come home from your students in the next few weeks.  These persuasive letters may try to convince you to adjust your child's bedtime, eat more healthy food, or buy a new backpack!

These are some of the covers of the All About Books that we have just finished.

Valentine's Day Happenings

We made Valentines and had a special snack today.    Here are some pictures.  Sharing valentines helped us remember to be kind, one of our school rules. 

Our Winter Bulletin Board Is Finished

Thank you to Donna Johnstone, a grandmother of one of our students, for all of her work in helping me to create a bulletin board with our first graders.  This was the culminating project on our unit of study which answered the question, "What Do Maine Animals Do To Get Ready For Winter?"   Students worked one on one with Donna to create one animal from multiple craft sources such as felt, cloth, yarn, and paint.  Each child then researched facts about their animal from a variety of sources including the internet, library books, and their personal collection of books.  They each word processed (with assistance) a few sentences about what that animal does to survive in the winter in Maine.   Their choices were adapt, migrate, or hibernate.  Here are some pictures of sections of the completed bulletin board.