On Friday we celebrated the 101st day of first grade with some Dalmatian themed activities. We wore black and white polka dots, created dog ear hats, and used dice in math. Students also created designs using 101 cubes and write stories about being a Dalmatian. In reading we compared a non-fiction Dalmatian book with the Disney book 101 Dalamtians. It was a fun day and great way to celebrate our hard work this year.
We are knee deep into our All About unit in writing. We are learning the ins and outs of non-fiction stories including text features, introductions, and conclusions. This week we spent our literacy time researching penguins and our writing time composing all about books to show off our research. It was a very fun project that was completed in small groups and ended by creating giant posters complete with bold words and diagrams. Next week students will have the opportunity to research an animal of their choice and then complete an all about book in writing using their research. To start off the 3rd quarter we are learning about 2D and 3D shape attributes. We started our unit with 2D shapes and look forward to practicing with 3D shapes this week. We first practiced our attribute words using Woozles. It was great to see all the ways students were able to sort using their attribute words. We ended by making our own woozles and sorting them as a class. We've also incorporated some new shape activities into our daily math centers. I love hearing the students become mathematicians during this time and use all the vocabulary we've learned. We had a great December in room 1415. Not only did we learn about many new things, but the month was also filled with special activities and visitors. One of my favorite times of day in our classroom is the Daily 5 literacy rotations. As a special treat, we had a virtual fireplace roaring on the Promethean board for students to read by. In December we had our first learning experience of the year. Cranberry Day was an opportunity for students to rotate through math, science, reading, and art stations all revolving around cranberries. The highlight for the kids included catapulting cranberries across the room and the yummy cranberry treats. As a send off for winter break we ended 2014 with a yearly tradition of Grinch Day. The students entered to an all green room complete with streamers, green pencils, and green covered tables. We had fun completing Grinchy activities and growing our hearts 3 sizes. It certainly was a great send off to winter break.
We have had a wonderful month in our classroom. We had our first field trip to the fire station, we became pirate to learn about subtraction, had spider week, and learned all about adjectives, verbs, and nouns! Not to mention there are still a few weeks left in the month. Apple week was huge success! We had a great time incorporating apples and Johnny Appleseed into EVERY activity. Thank you to parents for donating both your time and supplies to make it a great week. We're already looking forward to our next theme!We have been working the past 2 weeks on some of our addition math facts. We started with making 5 and have transitioned into making 10. From here we will be working with number bonds as well as subtraction. Memorizing the facts will help students to get a solid foundation with our base 10 number system. We will be able to use it with place value, addition of greater values, and in relation to fact families and missing addends. Practicing these facts at home will help reinforce the activities we are doing at home. Sumdog is another great way to get in practice of math facts. Below are some pictures from our math activities and some pages from our interactive math journals. |