Week of October 15th, 2012

We have been using Daily Five during our literacy time.  Daily Five is a way to structure literacy learning within the classroom.  The program was developed by two sisters that are both teachers.  It includes five different choices for students to be working on.  We have practiced reading to self, reading to someone, listening to reading, word work, and writing.  During word work, students are working on spelling words from our Fundations spelling program and from our Word Wall.  They may do this by writing on whiteboards, using Wikki Sticks, and rainbow writing.  When students Rainbow Write, they use "special pens" and write each letter in a word a different color.  Writing during Daily Five is separate from our Writer's Workshop.  When students write during Daily Five, they may write about anything they would like.  For the first time on Monday, students will be able to choose which two choices they would like to participate in for that morning.  On Friday, they will pick two different choices.  This means in one week students will practice four of the five choices.  The belief is that students will be more focused and driven when they feel in control of their learning.  On Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays students practice reading to self and participate in reading groups.  Please feel free to visit their website if you would like to learn more: Daily Five.

When students listen to reading during Daily Five, they may use the website TumbleBooks.  We sometimes listen to books on this website for our read aloud after lunch.  This week we listened to Ogre Fun by Loris Lesynski.

Our Word Wall words this week were it, at, and can.

Stuffed Animal Day

Wednesday will be stuffed animal day to celebrate meeting our points goal the last two weeks. Students may bring one stuffed animal to school. Students will be allowed to have the stuffed animal with them throughout the day unless it becomes a distraction.

Week of October 8th, 2012

We have been working on some fall crafts in our classroom.  We created fall trees after we read the book Fletcher and the Falling Leaves.  We read the book Leaf Man and have collected our own pile of leaves, so that we can create our own leaf art.

Nurse Amy came in and talked to the class about germs.  She will be in next week to share about dental hygiene!

When we have finished out writing time, one or two students sit in the the author's chair.  The student in the author chair reads the story to the class, and the class gives out "grows" and "glows."  Grows are things you could add to your story, and glows are great things that you did in your story.

Once a week Mr. Bouchard has been coming in and teaching us about different math apps on the ipads.  We now have five different apps on our Math App Menu.  This week during centers, students had time to explore the apps either on their own or with a partner.  The second math center was Head and Tails which is a game from Investigations Math Program.  This game helped with identifying the penny, counting skills, and addition skills.  The last game was called In The Doghouse.  This game helped with counting and addition skills.

We had our second week of our listening center and reading groups.  Either on Monday or Friday students participate in the listening center.  Students are able to listen to books on the ipad, laptop, or desktop computers.  Sometimes students work alone and sometimes they work with a partner.  If students are not at the listening center they are reading to themselves or to a buddy.  Reading groups happen on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.

Our Word Wall words this week were for, was, and he. 

Week of October 1st, 2012

One of our math centers this week was building addition math facts using flash cards and unifix cubes.  Students worked with a partner or in a small group and made towers to match their unifix cubes.  It was a very popular center!

Another center this week was called Three Towers from the Investigations Math Program.  This center worked on counting, adding, and writing addition equations.  Our games on the BrightLink this week were Fruit Shoot Addition and Ballon Pop Skip Count By 5's.

We have been working on skip counting in first grade.  This week we really focused on counting by 5's.  One of our favorite class activities is singing and dancing along with our skip counting music videos.

Here is the Counting By Fives video if you would like to watch it!  We have also practiced counting by 2's and 10's.

We are continuing to work on writing our Small Moments.  We focused on making sure our stories have a beginning, middle, and end.  We filled out a graphic organizer to help us determine the beginning, middle, and end of one of our stories.

Our new words added to our Word Wall this week were has, as, and his.

Please check the Red Reading Folders for parent teacher conference confirmation sheets!  See you at open house on Thursday, October 11th from 6:00-7:00!

Week of September 24th, 2012

The class worked very hard this week.  Here is a little bit of what we did!

 

When students bring in their Reading Log Sheets, and they have read at least ten minutes four times a week, they may put a marble in the jar.  When our jar is full, we are going to get a new book for our classroom library.  Students did a great job this week bringing in their Reading Logs.  Remember they come home on Friday and need to come back the following Thursday!

You will notice on the Reading Log that there is a sticker.  This sticker helps me remember how much students read the week before.  I noticed a lot of students going above and beyond the goal.  That is awesome!

 

When students come into the classroom in the morning, they have a "Morning Work" job.  Right now their morning work job is to complete a sheet about the number of the day.  This helps student to identify numbers, write numbers, understand even and odd, and practice basic adding and subtracting. 

 

We continue to work on our math centers at the end of math.  This week on the BrightLink Center we played  Funky Mummy Addition and Skip Counting By 2's and 10's .  The other two centers were Five In A Row (From The Investigations Math Program) and Egg Head.  Both of the games help practice counting, adding, and identifying numbers.  It is also a great time for students to work on being a good partner.

We kicked off our Writer's Workshop on Monday.  Students are working on writing small moments.  These are true stories about their lives.  I have been very impressed with our Writing Workshop time.  Students are focused and coming up with great ideas!  When we are writing small moments we think of an idea, picture it in our minds, draw the pictures, and write the words to match our pictures.  Students have green writing folders.  When they have a piece in progress it goes on the blue dot side, and when it is finished it goes on the red dot side.

Our Word Wall words this week were "in" and "is".  As a class we came up with these two sentences and our Word Wall Specialist this week got to write them in the sentence.  We are really working on writing in lower case letters!

You may have noticed that on our blog we have our very own book shelf with four of our read aloud books on it.  Every month we will change the books on our bookshelf.  We read The Kissing Hand and A Chair For My Mother during writing time as good examples of small moment writing.  We read the nonfiction book Monarch Butterflies during science, and we acted out the butterfly life cycle.  The book I Need My Monster was chosen by the class as the book the students wanted to share with their families.  Have a great weekend!

Pajama Day In Ms. Henault's Class

 

We will be having Pajama Day this Friday (9-28-12) to celebrate reaching our class points goal for the last 2 weeks.  I have observed so many positive behaviors in our classroom!  Students are welcome to wear their pajamas to school, but they don't have to. 

Our Hatching Butterfly

Our chrysalis hatched into a monarch butterfly.  We are going to let our butterfly free so it can lay more eggs.  Then the life cycle starts all over again.  We love butterflies.
 Written by: Ms. Henault's Class