How-To to be Happy in First Grade!

American Symbols

Students have enjoyed learning about American symbols.  Students have worked in small groups participating in a Cooperative Learning Classroom model, to research given symbols.  Each student has a role within their group and have worked together to research important facts about their assigned symbol.   Students are preparing to be experts about their symbol so they can teach the class! 

What is Cooperative Learning?

Cooperative Learning involves structuring small groups that work together in such a way that each group member's success is dependent on the group's success.

Extensive research has been done on cooperative learning.

On the average:

·      Students who engage in cooperative learning learn significantly more, remember it longer, and develop better critical-thinking skills than their counterparts in traditional lecture classes.

·      Students enjoy cooperative learning so they are actively engaged

·      Students are going to go on to jobs that require teamwork. Cooperative learning helps students develop the skills necessary to work on projects too difficult and complex for any one person to do in a reasonable amount of time. 

·      Cooperative learning processes prepare students to assess outcomes and problem solve

                         

Students have spent the past few weeks examining text features of informational texts.  They have learned how to read a non-fiction book to gather new information.

How-To-Writing (Procedural Writing)

The goal when teaching procedural writing is help students write with their audience in mind providing explicit details and careful sequencing to allow the reader to successfully complete the task.   We kicked off our new writing unit by exploring the text features of procedural texts.  We went outside and blew bubbles…students were extremely motivated and engaged!  When we came back in, with no prior instruction, students were told to write a procedure for blowing a bubble.  Then, I used all 22 procedures in front of the class while attempting to blow a bubble.  I pretended I had never seen a bottle of bubbles before and desperately needed the children’s procedures to assist me.  Children were in hysterics as I attempted to use their procedures and crucial steps were missing.  Some procedures guided me to blow a bubble…without opening the cap!  Some procedures guided me to use the wand…but did not tell me how!  Students took away key factors about procedural writing: the importance of including details, transition words, steps in order, pictures and numbers.  Since then, students have been extensively reading “How-To” texts and have been working on another draft of their “How-To Blow a Bubble” procedures.

Students were very exciting about our new class member, Pandi.  A student motivated our class for How-To writing by teaching us her special art technique of using pastels, colored pencils and tissues.  She taught us how to use to her mediums during a “How-To-Draw Pandi” lesson!

             

                                    

Tall Tales

   Students will be introduced to traditional American tall tales.  Tall tales were often told orally around a campfire in America's pioneering days.  The humorous stories were meant to boost the spirits of the settlers as they faced an inhospitable land. The stories were sometimes, but not always, based on real people and places. The students will explore how exaggeration and hyperbole contribute to the humor of these tall tales, and are an essential element to the genre.  Three friends in our class gave us a Chinese lesson and shared their background knowledge with us about China after he read a Chinese Folktale.

        

                 

                 

Math

Our number system is called base-ten system because each place represents an increasing power of 10 – ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on.  This system allows us to express infinitely large and infinitely small numbers.  A thorough understanding of the base-ten number system is one of the critical building blocks for computational fluency.  Recently your child has learned how to:

·     Notice place value patterns on a hundreds chart

·     Use skip counting to find the total number of objects from collection of equal groups

·     Use DIGI Blocks and Unifix cubes to visually represent 2 digit numbers

   What's Ahead?

·     Use inequality symbols to compare 2-digit numbers using place value

Practice Base 10 at home at abcya.com- http://www.abcya.com/base_ten_fun.htm
 

                          

Fundations

Our focus the last 2 weeks has been on building our knowledge of glued sounds.  A glued sound is one in which the letters carry their own sounds but are difficult to separate- hence they’re “stuck together”.

When students tap words that include a glued sound, they keep either 2 or 3 fingers together and say the sound with 1 tap.  For example to tap the word hang, students tap /h/ (1 tap) and then /ang/ (1 tap- 3 fingers).  Last week our focus was on ing, ong, ang, ung.  This week we focused on ank, ink, unk, onk.

Students had lots of fun writing sentences about Ms. Schlank.   We had a good laugh discussing…what if my name was Frank Hank Schlank?

                                      

 Author's Chair!

Mystery Reader

April Fools Day...who is who???

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

Reading, Writing, Dreaming and Exploring

Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop

We kicked off 2014 by writing New Year’s resolutions.  Students had a wide range of resolutions such as focusing hard, becoming a better reader, learning how to ice skate and how to do yoga!  We will be hanging them up in the classroom to remind us of our resolutions.  On the first day back, students practiced kids yoga to calm our minds and get us back in school mode after two weeks off! 

Students have been working hard in guided reading groups and literacy workstations to reinforce literacy skills learned throughout the year and gain new skills.  It is crucial for young readers to not only read the words on the page, but be able to understand what he/she is reading.  We have been focusing on concrete comprehension (who, what, when?) and inferential comprehension (thinking beyond the text i.e. why do you think the character made this choice?)

For Writer’s Workshop we began the personal narratives unit. We discussed how writers are like photographers.  While a photographer can take a picture of a whole aquarium, they can also zoom in on just one important part.  Just as a writer can also write about their whole trip to the aquarium, or zoom in on one part.  Students brainstormed “small moments” in their life and began planning their ideas.

Three authors shared their published work in the Author's Chair.

Math

Up until this point in the school year, students have worked hard to understand addition and subtraction and view problems in different ways.  Students have used various problem solving strategies to solve math story problems and focused on the relationship that numbers have to ten.  Number relationships provide the foundation for fact strategies.  Students entered 2014 ready to endeavor new strategies and techniques for solving addition and subtraction problems.  Fact strategies provide a bridge from understanding the meanings of addition and subtraction to quickly and accurately recalling basic addition and subtraction facts. 

What are fact strategies?

Fact strategies are mental techniques to solve facts.  The ultimate goal is for children to eventually stop using the strategies as they develop quick and accurate ways to recall basic facts.  Practice over time will support children to move towards mastery.

One and Two More

It is helpful for children to recognize that 6, for example, is 1 more than 5 and 8 is 2 more than 6.

Doubles

Addition doubles are addition facts in which the two numbers being added together are the same.  Visual representations that help children grasp this concept are fingers on two hands (5 + 5) or eggs in a carton (6 + 6).

As children understand the doubles strategy, they can then build upon the strategy and use near doubles.  Near doubles is when one of the numbers being added is one more than the other number.

For example,

If a child knows that 5 + 5=10, then they can the idea of doubles plus 1 to add 5+6.  6 is the same as 5+1. 5+5 is 10, so 5+6 has to be 1 more.  5+6 equals 11.

Students have been working hard to use fact strategies and understand the relationship between addition and subtraction.

                              

Math Vocabulary

More than

Less than

Greater

Fewer

Equal to

Doubles

Near doubles

Here are some links for children to practice subtraction problems at home:

On http://www.ixl.com/math/grade-1 I suggest practicing addition and subtraction word problems and number sentences with pictures.  Encourage students to use strategies such as drawing pictures or using manipulatives.

http://www.ixl.com/math/grade-1/subtraction-with-pictures-numbers-up-to-10

http://www.ixl.com/math/grade-1/word-problems-write-the-subtraction-sentence

Fundations

Students have been learning about two letter consonant blends: when two consonants are next to each other in a word, you blend the sounds together and hear each sound.

We had lots of fun making pretend milkshakes in blenders!  Students blended together the “ice cream” (one consonant) and “milk” (the other consonant) in “blenders.”  Students enjoying making milkshake menus by generating their own words with the given consonant blend.  Some of the class favorites…

Stein Milkshake

Smelly Milkshake

Fast Milkshake

Ask your child what milkshakes they put on their menu…

Students have been learning about silent e, also known as magic e: when an “e” is at the end of a word it doesn’t make a sound and it “magically changes” the vowel to say it’s name/make it’s long vowel sound.

Students had magic wands and practiced their magical spell to transform words…

“Abracadabra fidalee fee, I give you the power of the magic e!”

Science and Social Studies

We explored the idea of air resistance as students dropped parachutes from a chair.  We observed how the parachute fell faster when more paper clips were added.  Students practiced thinking and writing like scientists by using language such as, “I saw, I noticed and I observed.”

 See the following video from class

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZYwsAvHgVw

In light of MLK Day on Monday, we focused on the meaning of three new vocabulary words: dream, peace, equality.

We looked at 2 eggs and discussed how eggs look different on the outside but look the same on the inside just like people. 

Students understand that Martin Luther King was a very brave, helpful and important person.  We read a poem about helping the world and students thought of 3 ways they can help at home, at school or in the community.  Now understanding the term “dream” in a new context, students were able to generate their own dreams.

Great work earning Career Day room 101!

Mystery Readers