Week of October 13 and October 20

We had a dance party as a paws points celebration!

We worked on editing and revising our writing! Students used pens to edit and add to their work.

We have been looking for exampls of author's craft or moves that authors do to make their writing better.  We have explored a number of different books to find these craft moves. Students are now trying out these moves in their own writing.

We painted and published our butterfly life cycle book.  Mrs. Dana's class read our book, and they loved it.  Students used the app Book Creator to record their voices reading the page that they created.

 We watched an episode of Wild Kratts about the life cycle of a frog.

Students used an app called Mandalar.  They learned and practiced the app during math menu.  Today, students created a design and then challenged a classmate to build it out of real pattern blocks.  It was so much fun!

We have been using the website www.abcya.com during math menu.  Students have had a chance to explore different games on the website.  We have tried Fuzz Bugs, Marble Math, Counting Fish, and Numerical order.

Week of October 6, 2014

We helped put the garden to bed with Mrs. Dana's class.

Cardboard challenge was so much fun!

We started writing and illustrating our class butterfly book.

We have been learning about different shapes in math.  We have been building our own designs and learning how to fill in other designs.  Students have also been playing a game called Fill The Hexagons.

Our word wall words this week were she, are, and can.  We have been learning about digraphs.  These are words with the th, sh, wh, or ch sounds.

Week of September 29, 2014

We practiced ordering numbers in math.

We have been working really hard on our story problems.  It is important that we use manipulatives to build a model.  Students are working on writing equations  and showing their thinking.  We have 2 different kinds of story problems that we are working on.  There are addition story problems and combination story problems.  Students must come up with different combinations to make a specific number.

We played a game called Hang Mouse on our smart board.  It is from a website called Spelling City.  Students are able to search for my name (Henault) and use our spelling lists from home.  There is also a Spelling City app. 

www.spellingcity.com

We now have four pieces of work on our Rocking Writers Wall.  One of the new additions shows how to make a sentence with a period at the end, uppercase letter at the beginning, and spaces between each word.  The other example shows how to put feelings in your story to make it more interesting.

We started our reading groups this week.  Students may stay in our classroom or go to different rooms for reading groups.  Reading groups are taught by myself, Mrs. Pack, Mrs. Dana, Mrs. Holly, and Mr. Bouchard.  All first grade students are mixed together and these groups change throughout the year depending on the needs of the students.