First Grade News
This week first grade writers got serious about series writing! They practiced “showing not telling,” including chapters, and adding patterns to elevate their writing. Each first grader has published at least one book in their series, and we look forward to reading the second and third installments! In Math we learned to tell time to the hour and half hour. First graders practiced reading clocks, played “what time is it?” BINGO, and made their own practice clocks. In Social Studies we have been preparing for Earth Day. We’ve learned all about neighborhoods and communities, and now it is... Read More
First Grade News
Thank you for sending in books for Malawi. They were delivered last week. This week got to see pictures of our books in their new home! In Writing Workshop we revised and edited our first series books. To revise, we looked at the “Henry and Mudge” series and noticed what the author, Cynthia Rylant, put in her books to make them special. We noticed that she gave lots of details, made patterns, and made the action exciting. We will continue to add to our series after the break. First grade mathematicians practiced using their most important math tool... Read More
First Grade News
In Math we continued to work on addition and subtraction with regrouping. This week, first graders applied their math strategies to real world problems. First grader writers continue to work on their realistic fiction stories. This week we started writing series. By looking at popular series books in our classrooms we noticed that series books all have the same characters, but have different adventures in each book. Many first graders decided to have their series take place in our classroom neighborhood. They made stick puppets of their characters to live in our neighborhood. Our class neighborhood is complete! This week... Read More
First Grade News: Week of March 12th
Thank you to everyone who brought in books for Malawi! This week we learned more about Malawi and saw pictures of the library that our books will be donated to. We wrote a letter to the children who will receive our books. Our classroom neighborhood is almost complete! This week first graders painted their structures, decided where they should go in the neighborhood, and added details such as stop signs and trains. We still need to name our neighborhood and make people to live in it! We read another finalist for the Irma Black Book Awards this week:... Read More
First Grade News: Week of March 5th
First grade mathematicians learned double digit addition with regrouping this week. We started by using base ten blocks to represent making groups of ten, and then we moved into learning the vertical algorithm. We are participating in the Irma Black Book Awards. First and Second graders across the country get to vote for this award. We will read the four finalists and then discuss what makes a great picture book. This week we read “After the Fall: How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again” by Dan Santant. In Writing Workshop we continued our realistic fiction stories. This... Read More
First Grade: Week of February 26th
Happy Purim! We had a fun filled week in first grade. On Monday we celebrated the 100th day of school. The Kindergarten, first, and second grade classes got together to do different activities all about the number 100. They built structures with 100 Legos, played math games, and wrote 100 reasons they love our school. In Writing Workshop, we used our pretending skills to begin writing realistic fiction stories. First graders thought of pretend characters, gave them a name, and imagined adventures for their characters. In Math we learned about larger numbers and reviewed place value. We read “Trombone Shorty”... Read More
First Grade News: Week of February 12
We had a fun filled week in first grade. On Thursday we celebrated Rosh Chodesh Adar by wearing our pajamas to school! First grade writers finished editing their teaching books this week. On Friday we had a classroom publishing party. First graders shared their books with each other and celebrated all of their hard work. We learned about graphing this week. First graders learned how to record information using picture graphs, bar graphs, and tally charts. They worked in pairs to make their own graphs about their classmates. Some graphs include favorite olympic sport, how many siblings we... Read More
First Grade News
We had a blast on our trip to the National Museum of Mathematics this week! Check out our pictures below. This week first grade writers picked a piece to be published next week. They learned how to use pictures to add more information to their teaching books, and started to edit their pieces. We also started to plan for our class publishing party. So far, we are thinking that we will share our stories and have a dance party! As part of our Social Studies unit on mapping, first graders became cartographers and made maps of the first... Read More
First Grade News: Week of January 29
This week in Writing Workshop, students learned about including introductions in their information books. They studied different information texts in our classroom to see how different authors chose to start their books. They noticed that introductions can start with a question, an action, a story, or a big idea. On Thursday, each first grader shared a chapter of their book with a small group. With the conclusion of our unit on length, first grade mathematicians finished their first math book this week! We will begin book two next week. We will also be going on our field trip to... Read More
First Grade News: Week of January 22nd
We had so much fun on our field trip to the Jewish Children Museum! The first graders learn about historical events throughout biblical times. Enjoy the pictures below! First grade writers have been working hard on their information books and writing even more pages. We started writing chapter books and learned how to add a table of contents. We learned some challenging sight words this week: how, do, she, their, and number. We practiced using these words in sentences. We continued to learn new reading strategies in our reading groups. In Math we finished our unit on addition and... Read More