Well, this has been a fascinating week thus far. The kids can't seem to figure out what day it is because of Election Day yesterday...if I had a nickel for every time they asked if it was Monday...Anyways, I hope every one enjoyed their day off and found the time to exercise your right to vote!
Reading: This week we are focusing our comprehension skill on Main Idea/Topic and Key Details. Students have been working on this skill since the beginning of the year and are getting better and better as we practice more. This is still a complicated, higher-level thinking skill.
Our stories this week and next will focus on Native American folktales and legends. This week we have discussed what it means to be a folktale or a legend. To demonstrate the concept we played the game, telephone where a message starts at one end of the line and is transferred from student to student until it reaches the other end of the line. It was interesting to see what details were left out or changed by the end of the game. Do you have any legends or stories that have been passed down to you by your mothers or grandfathers? This would be something neat to share with your little one!
Math: Well, we have finally moved on from place value and are now comparing numbers to 20. While this sounds like a simple task it truly is not! We are not only comparing using phrases "greatest" and "least" but we are also finding out how many more and how many less between two sets of numbers. Right now everything is very concrete and we are using many manipulatives; however, by the Thanksgiving Break students will be expected to do this through word problem only without the use of manipulatives.
On another note, I would like to share some of the equations students have been sharing during our "Incredible Equations" portion of Calendar Math. Just to get you up to speed, in Calendar Math we focus our studies around the number of days we have been in school. For example, today we made Incredible Equations for the number 60. Some of those equations included 5 x 12, 10 x 6, 25 + 25 + 10...I mean, WOW! We are really raising the bar here, folks! On Monday we got a gasp from an observer when one of the students gave the following equation for the number 59 - (5 x 10) + 9. Ha! I was so impressed and this just goes to show how much our students really do pick up on everything that we say and teach.
Veteran's Day: This week in Social Studies we are learning about soldiers and what our soldiers and veterans do to help us keep our rights and freedoms as American citizens. Today we made a word web to describe all of the things that soldiers do for our country. Tomorrow we will be working on some patriotic activities (which I very much appreciate all of your help in getting together) and I look forward to sharing this activity with you all.
Please consider coming to the Veteran's Day lunch at Stonewall. This will be a wonderful treat for all of our Veterans and families of the community! Let me know by tomorrow if you plan on attending this lunch.
Reminder:
**Please send in 1 dollar for an in-school performance on Friday
11.09.2011
11.04.2011
Celebrations of Success
We had a great Celebrations of Success Ceremony today. The students were so genuinely happy about receiving their awards and went home feeling very happy and proud of themselves. We put together a quick podcast this morning to share with everyone what we have accomplished and are proud of this year. Take some time to listen to what we have to say...
I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Remember we do not have school on Tuesday for Election Day!
11.03.2011
We are Super Stars!
Wow, what a special day we have had here in first grade. Probably the most exciting part of our day was our "special visitor" who came to videotape our class. Apparently the folks down at central office found out about our students and decided that they would come videotape us to showcase students doing the right thing. Way to go Mrs. Murphy's class. Our class will be in the Teacher Spotlight segment on channel 13 beginning in January. Keep your eyes and ears open... :)
Today we go a LOT done and I want to share some of the photos with you as well as send out a souple of reminders for tomorrow...
Today we played a math game online and we also played a place value game with partners. Check out the following link to play some cool place value games:
Today we go a LOT done and I want to share some of the photos with you as well as send out a souple of reminders for tomorrow...
Today we played a math game online and we also played a place value game with partners. Check out the following link to play some cool place value games:
Here we are playing a place value math game:
Aren't they cute?!
Reminders
**Tomorrow is Celebrations of Success...12:00 in room 12...look forward to seeing you there!
**DEARABBY and Math log dur tomorrow
**Health Fair tonight- look in your student's folder for more information!
11.02.2011
Wednesday, November 2nd
I hope everyone is having a great week. I know are in the midst of an exciting week here, as always! Take a look at what we've been up to the past couple of days:
Reading: We are currently working on retelling important events in a story IN ORDER. This year we have really worked on finding the important details so now we are taking the next step and putting those details in order from beginning to end. Today we read the book, The Ugly Pumpkin, and talked about four very important events. Tomorrow we will be making flip book...stay tuned!
Math: We are really hitting place value hard. We continue to work with base ten blocks to show how many tens and ones make up a number. We are learning lots of cool new games in class and tomorrow I am introducing the students to some online manipulatives using the following website: http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/frames_asid_152_g_2_t_1.html?from=grade_g_2.html
Check out the math game we played today...
Powerpoints: Can you see how hard we are working on our nocturnal animal powerpoints?
Reminders:
**Celebrations of Success- THIS FRIDAY at 12:00 in room 12
Reading: We are currently working on retelling important events in a story IN ORDER. This year we have really worked on finding the important details so now we are taking the next step and putting those details in order from beginning to end. Today we read the book, The Ugly Pumpkin, and talked about four very important events. Tomorrow we will be making flip book...stay tuned!
Math: We are really hitting place value hard. We continue to work with base ten blocks to show how many tens and ones make up a number. We are learning lots of cool new games in class and tomorrow I am introducing the students to some online manipulatives using the following website: http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/frames_asid_152_g_2_t_1.html?from=grade_g_2.html
Check out the math game we played today...
Powerpoints: Can you see how hard we are working on our nocturnal animal powerpoints?
Reminders:
**Celebrations of Success- THIS FRIDAY at 12:00 in room 12
10.31.2011
Monday, October 31st
We had such a fabulous day in first grade!!! I have changed a couple of things about our reading program and I have to say the students did great and adapted very well.
Reading: This week we are focusing on the sun and Earth and how they impact one another. We will be reading text about activities that happen during the different seasons as well as continuing to study the reason for the seasons. We have different sight words that I will be sending out tomorrow so you can study those at home.
As far as the phonics, we have four different groups studying four different skills depending on what your student specifically needs.
Writing: We continue to study nouns and proper nouns during class. Students are starting to notice both in everything that we read. Please encourage your students to look for these words in their reading at home!
Math: Numbers to 20, numbers to 20, numbers to 20!!! Once again we continue to look at the fundamentals of our numbers up to 20. Our focus is on place value and what truly makes up a number. Last week I included a website to help students master their place value skills. Take some time to look at this website with your student.
**Reminders**
-DEARABBY and math logs due Friday
-Celebrations of Success from 12:00-12:30 on Friday, November 4th
Reading: This week we are focusing on the sun and Earth and how they impact one another. We will be reading text about activities that happen during the different seasons as well as continuing to study the reason for the seasons. We have different sight words that I will be sending out tomorrow so you can study those at home.
As far as the phonics, we have four different groups studying four different skills depending on what your student specifically needs.
Writing: We continue to study nouns and proper nouns during class. Students are starting to notice both in everything that we read. Please encourage your students to look for these words in their reading at home!
Math: Numbers to 20, numbers to 20, numbers to 20!!! Once again we continue to look at the fundamentals of our numbers up to 20. Our focus is on place value and what truly makes up a number. Last week I included a website to help students master their place value skills. Take some time to look at this website with your student.
**Reminders**
-DEARABBY and math logs due Friday
-Celebrations of Success from 12:00-12:30 on Friday, November 4th
10.28.2011
Friday, October 28th
Here we are again at the end of yet another week. I have many, many items to share with you all today as well as some reminders for the following week.
Creative Writing: Today we had a writing workshop where we focused on the writing skills we have learned this year. The important skills we worked on included capitalizing all words at the beginning of sentences and including punctuation at the end of a sentence. We have been studying nocturnal animals and today we read a fictional story about a baby bat and her journey to find her mother. On the way she finds a family of birds and tries to live with them but notices quickly that birds and bats are very different. After we listened to the story, the students were asked the following question: Would you rather be a bird or a bat? Why?
Listen to the podcasts to find out what we thought!
Pretty cool, huh?!
Friday Spotlight: This is something new that I am going to implement in order to share out some of the great things your students are doing and learning in class. Each Friday I will choose 3 students to share something they have learned with the class. Students may choose to read a page out of a challenging book, they may choose to read some sight words, they may choose to read the shared reading, they may choose to complete a challenging math problem, etc. I will be video recording these Friday Spotlights and posting them on our classroom website. Be on the lookout-your student could be the star!!!
**Reminders**
-DEARABBY, Math Log, and Spelling Words went home today in O.W.L binders
-Report Cards will be coming out soon-stayed tuned to find out when!
-Celebrations of Success will be on Friday, November 4th at 12:00
Creative Writing: Today we had a writing workshop where we focused on the writing skills we have learned this year. The important skills we worked on included capitalizing all words at the beginning of sentences and including punctuation at the end of a sentence. We have been studying nocturnal animals and today we read a fictional story about a baby bat and her journey to find her mother. On the way she finds a family of birds and tries to live with them but notices quickly that birds and bats are very different. After we listened to the story, the students were asked the following question: Would you rather be a bird or a bat? Why?
Listen to the podcasts to find out what we thought!
Pretty cool, huh?!
Friday Spotlight: This is something new that I am going to implement in order to share out some of the great things your students are doing and learning in class. Each Friday I will choose 3 students to share something they have learned with the class. Students may choose to read a page out of a challenging book, they may choose to read some sight words, they may choose to read the shared reading, they may choose to complete a challenging math problem, etc. I will be video recording these Friday Spotlights and posting them on our classroom website. Be on the lookout-your student could be the star!!!
**Reminders**
-DEARABBY, Math Log, and Spelling Words went home today in O.W.L binders
-Report Cards will be coming out soon-stayed tuned to find out when!
-Celebrations of Success will be on Friday, November 4th at 12:00
10.27.2011
Thursday, October 27th
I can not even believe tomorrow is Friday! This week has gone by faster than any other probably because we have been so busy in the classroom. I have had such a great time meeting with all of you to discuss your student's progress. It has been so nice to get the opportunity to talk about next steps together as well as talk about all of the wonderful things your little ones are doing in class.
Day and Night: After meeting with some of you this week I have realized that our "trip to outer space" was a big hit this week. Earlier this week we took a trip in our imaginary spaceship to view the Earth and the Sun from outer space. Together we discussed how the world turns, or rotates, on its axis and how this movement creates day and night. Today we discuss the different seasons and touched upon the reason we have our seasons.
Powerpoints: We continue to work on our nocturnal animal powerpoints. The students are really working hard and have really taken ownership over their projects. I can not wait to share this project with everyone- I think you will be very impressed!
Math: Right now we are really diving into place value and number sense. We are looking at numbers from 10-20 and discussing what each digit actually means (ex: in the number 17 we have 1 group of ten and 7 ones). What an important concept to understand! Check out the following website with your student to practice place value: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/maths/games/place_the_penguin/big_sound/full.shtml
Wishlist Item: I would like to start sending some books home with your students that I KNOW they can read. I would greatly appreciate any gallon size plastic bags to help me with this project. More to come on this...
Tomorrow is Friday!!!
Day and Night: After meeting with some of you this week I have realized that our "trip to outer space" was a big hit this week. Earlier this week we took a trip in our imaginary spaceship to view the Earth and the Sun from outer space. Together we discussed how the world turns, or rotates, on its axis and how this movement creates day and night. Today we discuss the different seasons and touched upon the reason we have our seasons.
Powerpoints: We continue to work on our nocturnal animal powerpoints. The students are really working hard and have really taken ownership over their projects. I can not wait to share this project with everyone- I think you will be very impressed!
Math: Right now we are really diving into place value and number sense. We are looking at numbers from 10-20 and discussing what each digit actually means (ex: in the number 17 we have 1 group of ten and 7 ones). What an important concept to understand! Check out the following website with your student to practice place value: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/maths/games/place_the_penguin/big_sound/full.shtml
Wishlist Item: I would like to start sending some books home with your students that I KNOW they can read. I would greatly appreciate any gallon size plastic bags to help me with this project. More to come on this...
Tomorrow is Friday!!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
