Sparkling Writers

Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop

Students continued the writing process integrating the 6+1 traits of writing into their Small Moments.  The bold traits below have been the area of focus for the past few weeks.
  
                            

                                   
         

Ideas, Organization, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, Voice, Conventions

Students have been actively engaged in the writing process; students have been collaborating, adding to their stories, and editing to make their writing stronger.  Students had a blast learning about "sparkle words".  Author's use "sparkle words" to capture the readers attention.  Students worked hard to replace "tired words", such as"good, bad, happy, nice",  in their writing with more interesting synonyms.  "Tired words" are simple words that you hear often.  While it is okay to use these words sometimes, students agreed they could think of more interesting words to engage their reader.

It has been eye opening to see the drastic gains the students have made in writing since September!

The following chart from Ruth Culham’s book, 6+1 Traits of Writing, demonstrates the qualities of my process-centered classroom for writing.

                              

We had a strong focus this week on inquiry based questioning and focusing on the point of view of texts/characters and the author’s purpose of certain ideas and words.

Many books were used as mentors for both reading and writing.  The following 3 books were student favorites!

                                         
                                                      

Math

Tying up the most recent math topic, students continued to practice and generalize strategies for addition and apply them to 2 part word problems and addition with 3 numbers. 

                              

What’s Ahead?

Subtraction is a challenging concept developmentally for first graders.  Providing hands on and tangible learning experiences in conjunction with lots of practice are essential for understanding.

For the month of March students will focus on strategies for subtraction facts to 20.  Earlier in the year, children used the relationship between addition and subtraction to solve problems.  In the coming weeks, children will learn to extend their understanding to larger numbers.

What are subtraction fact strategies?

Think Addition is a powerful way to think about subtraction facts.  As students have spent a better part of the year understanding relationships between parts and wholes, now they will be able to use this knowledge to make subtraction easier. 

For example, if a student sees the problem 8-3=?  Using the Think Addition strategy a student would reason, “ I know the problem is asking me to take 3 away from 8.  I know that the 8 is the whole in the problem and the 3 is one part.  I also know that 3 + 5 equals 8, so 5 must be the missing part in this problem.  The missing part is what I am trying to find for my answer.”

Fact Families are groups of related facts.  Children will continue to connect the relationship between addition and subtraction in fact families.  All number sentences use the same numbers.  If you know one fact in a family, you can figure out the other facts in the family.

For example,

6+8=14

8+6+14

14-6=8

14-8+6

In this example, you can see that 6 and 8 are the parts and 14 is the whole.  Continuing to think about a whole and its parts will help children build on their understanding of fact families and the relationship between addition and subtraction.

Valentine’s Day and the 100^th Day of School

We integrated math, reading and writing activities for both celebrations.  From graphing and organizing valentines and cards, to sorting and counting the cans and figuring out how many times we could write our name in 100 seconds…the kids had a blast!  Making a class list of all of the things we would each want to eat 100 of and not eat 100 of was a highlight.  We also focused on the themes of love, family and friendship for the month of February.  We teamed up with Ms. Keough’s class to create a human friendship train!  Students wrote compliments on one another’s back.

                      

                          

Author's Chair

Mystery Reader

Congratulations- We Surpassed Our Goal!

Students in room 101 have been collecting food items to donate to the food pantry.  Our goal was to collect 100 items by the 100th day of school.  Today, we sorted and counted items...we were so excited to surpass our goal as we collected 144 items!

A Snowy and Busy Week!

Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop

                   

We have been reading many mentor texts teaching us about small moments and students have thought hard about important moments they want to write about.

We have been focusing on ideas and organization for Writer’s Workshop.  Ideas are strong when they are clear and focused, and move from the general to the specific.  Students have planned their small moments and have been exposed to two different types of graphic organizers.  Students are working at their own pace to transfer their ideas into a fluid story that contains a “bold beginning” that hooks the reader, a “mighty middle” rich with details, and an “excellent ending” that ties everything up.  While students are eager to have a final product, we are really focusing on the process of brainstorming, planning, editing and revising. Students have been collaborating with their peers and teachers on this writing process.

I find it important for students to understand writing as not just something that is done in school, but also a mean of communication and expression.  Students were very excited to be given their own personal journals that they will be given the opportunity to write in from time to time.

During literacy work stations, students have been introduced to a Reading is Thinking Journal.  It is crucial for beginning readers to understand that reading is far more than just reading the words on the page.  Reading is thinking: asking questions, making connections, having feelings about what we read, understanding the words, and making movies in our minds.  Think about all of the things that adults do as they read and talk to your child about what you do as a reader.  Students have been practicing recording their thinking as they read independently.

 Math

                                         

The skills in the new math topic are a continuum of basic fact strategies learned in the previous topic.  In the primary grades, there is an emphasis on mastering the basic addition facts.  For children who cannot quickly memorize all of the facts, these strategies are put in place to help them. 

Children did a great job learning and practicing doubles.  We connected this strategy to many real life and tangible situations such as 5 fingers on each hand (5+5=10) and 6 eggs in each row of a carton (6+6=12).

The doubles-plus-1 and doubles-plus-2 strategy ultimately involves the associative property of addition.  A doubles-plus-1 (or 2) fact includes one addend that is 1 (or 2) more than the other addend.  Students are applying the strategies learned in the previous weeks for addition problems with greater sums.  While this has been a challenging concept for students to grasp, providing students with visual representations such as connecting cubes and acting the strategy/problem out as a class has been helpful.

The making 10 strategy allows children to create a “friendlier” problem.  For example, when adding 9+5 the child can reason, “I can take 1 from the 5 and put it with the 9 to make 10.  Then I can easily add 10 and 4 to get 14.”  The associative property of addition also underlies this strategy.

What is ahead?

Students will soon be exposed to two-question word problems and adding 3 numbers. 

The need to learn and understand new symbolic and verbal math language is in conjunction with the memorization of the facts.

Important math vocabulary

addition

addend

sum

part

whole

Extra Math Practice at Home:

** Practing the doubles strategy**

(I highly encourage children to practice doubles)

http://www.ixl.com/math/grade-1/adding-doubles

http://www.ixl.com/math/grade-1/adding-doubles-complete-the-sentence

http://www.ixl.com/math/grade-1/adding-doubles-using-models

Practicing word problems with greater sums: (remind your child to use strategies such as drawing a picture or using manipulatives to solve problems)

http://www.ixl.com/math/grade-1/addition-word-problems-sums-to-18

Practing addition problems using number sense: (remind children that true means correct.) 

http://www.ixl.com/math/grade-1/addition-sentences-true-or-false

Fundations

                               

We have continued to focus on reading and spelling words with 2 and 3 letter blends .  In the coming weeks students will continue to improve on these skills along with learning digraph blends.

Examples:

2 letter blend- best

3 letter blend- splash

digraph blend- crunch

A visit from the fire department to teach us about fire safety!

Mystery Reader’s

Author’s Chair