Welcome to First Grade!

We had a busy and exciting first few week's of school.  We read many books about friendship and the beginning of school along with writing our own class book entitled, First Day Feelings.  Aside from generating our class rules, learning routines and expectations (further discussed in last weeks newsletter) students have already become actively engaged learners! 

Students enjoyed the book All Things Big and Small, a book that I wrote. The theme of the story is accepting differences.  Students created self portraits and wrote a special fact about themselves.

We began reviewing letter formation for Fundations.  Students practiced their handwriting using multi-modal approaches such as pencils, white boards and the Smartboard.  For math, students participated in multi-sensory math centers.  We practiced writing numbers using different methods including markers and shaving cream!

We kicked off Reader's Workshop by making observations of readers.  We observed each other reading and made "movies in our mind" thinking about other readers we know.  As each day passed, students added to the list.  By Friday, we filled up the whole door!

Fostering the love of reading is something I am dedicated to as an educator.  After we analyzed our observations of readers, we realized that pleasure reading rarely occurs sitting at a table.  For D.E.A.R time (drop everything and read) students were assigned special spots to enjoy their books.  Each month we will switch the spots.  Students are so excited about their special reading spots and look forward to D.E.A.R time each day.  Ask your child what his/her spot is for the month!

Students learned about the 3 ways to read a book.  They were introduced to Pug Corner, our class library where books are organized by topic, genre and author.

We began talking about "just right books".  Students learned that a "just right book" means you can read and understand the words and are interested in the topic.   Students were introduced to our "just right book" library and were given book bins to hold their books.

Group Work
Students worked extensively the past couple of weeks on a team building unit.  We began the unit by brainstorming a list of things that people in our class are good at.  The first task was for each group to nominate one name for our class pug.

Disney World
Students have been actively engaged in planning pretend trips to Disney World with their group.  Each day students participate in a class lesson and have the opportunity to practice a new "norm" with the overarching goal of cooperation.  Each day the tasks gets increasingly more complex as they require more in depth problem solving and higher order thinking skills along with other skills such as math, reading and writing.  So far the norms have been, "everyone helps, everyone is good at something and no one is good at everything, and everyone is included."  Words such as flexibility and compromise have been important terms thus far.  Students have used their multiple abilities and group work skills to pack for their trips and decide on a resort.  Each task also requires a follow up activity.  Students have made extensive amounts of progress with their abilities to work together!  I have been impressed with the elaborate discussions and strategies that groups have used to come to conclusions.