First Grade on Parade

This week we talked a lot about focusing even on small goals. We realized that small goals can help us get better and better in order to accomplish larger goals. For example: If our goal is to have better handwriting, that can seem overwhelming. If we focus on making one type of letter better this week, we can get to that goal one step at a time!

We added a goal to the top of our Published Writing page so that we could have a reminder of what to focus on while we wrote. This week, we were paying attention to our tall letters, and making sure we were writing within the lines. 

Music Maker Game

Make the Band Game

Music Shop Game

Math - I can find the sum of three addends.
Reading - I can read with expression! 
Writing - I can write a personal narrative.
Science - I can explain that a system has many parts. 
Social Studies - I can tell how landforms affect how we live. 

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Math - I can find the sum of three addends.

​We read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and talked about how the caterpillar ate one more fruit each time. Students chose three different fruits to make their own "Hungry Caterpillar" pattern. We wanted to figure out how many fruits the caterpillar ate in all, so we grouped two numbers to make the problem easier. We decided that if we grouped 1 and 2 it would make 3, then instead of having 1+2+3 we would have 3+3, which is a doubles fact! 

We used this idea to group addends for the remainder of the week. We grouped doubles, and made tens to make solving a three addend problem easier!

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Reading - I can read with expression!

This fun Go Noodle video was a great way to introduce "Reading with Expression" we were able to tell the difference between sounding like a "robot" and sounding like we were talking!

Don't Read Like a Robot!

Each child in my classroom has a "Poetry Journal" where we collect poems throughout the year. Each week we add poems containing words from our spelling pattern. We also add poems for special occasions and celebrations throughout the year. For every poem we find important words and highlight them in yellow, then we box our stanzas in blue. 

If you are wondering where we got our fabulous word pattern poems check out susanjonesteaching.com/

This week, we read back through our poetry journals and practiced reading with expression using this handy dandy dice! The kids had so much fun focusing on HOW they were reading instead of on each individual word!

First grade is learning to Read with expression! This dice makes prosody fluency fun! #firstgrade pic.twitter.com/YSMc0DRPqB

— Elementary Nerd (@ElementaryNerd) November 10, 2017

Click the below image to print your own "Read It" dice!

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Writing - I can write a personal narrative.

This week students wrote about a vacation they took that brought them to a landform.  We had some great stories about trips to the beach, islands, and mountains! This activity served multiple purposes as it hit on grammar objectives (past tense verbs), Social Studies objectives (telling how a landform affects our lives), and writing objectives (writing a personal narrative from a past experience).

Click on the image to download the Landform Planning Page!

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Science - I can explain that a system has many parts. 

We read our Story of the Week "Beth and the Band". In this story, some children find a bandstand and create instruments to play together. We talked about how with just one instrument you could not make a band, so you need help from other instruments! All of these instruments together make a system, called a band! We learned that a system has many parts, while we applied our reading to make real-life connections!

​The class made instruments just like the kids in the story, and tested their instruments to see what kind of sounds they made. We will extend on this project as we learn about sound energy and vibrations!

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Social Studies - I can tell how land forms affect how we live.

We went on a "virtual field trip" around the world to visit each landform! We then recorded our findings in our Landform Photo Albums! The class had a great time pretending they were on a field trip!

Land form Field trip

Land form Photo Album

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On Twitter Check out @strongbobcats ! This week our teachers used the phrase
"Home of the free because of the brave."
to make a play on words to describe our school. This was a great way to showcase our teacher's talents, as well as bring attention to our veterans this Veterans Day!

Tweets by StrongBobcats