Miss T. Room 3: October 2012

I think that was the sound of cheering I just heard as all of the first graders found out there is no school tomorrow! Enjoy your day off together, but remember, you can always read on www.raz-kids.com and play math games at www.everydaymathonline.com. Also- watching the news about Hurricane Sandy is a great activity as well. Today, we tracked Sandy and charted the wind speed, how quickly the hurricane was moving and followed her path using a compass rose. It fit in perfectly with our mapping unit!

We collected so many items for the Colchester Community Food Shelf! The first graders were so proud to carry down all of the items we collected and deliver them to Mr. LaCasse, the food shelf volunteer.

This week in SWR we are reviewing for our Unit 1 SWR test. We will be tested on our word family words, our red words, and writing sentences. This week when practicing with your student, have them write the words down and write sentences instead of just spelling them orally. Writing words down helps to concretely place the spelling of words in our brain as we are moving our hand to form the correct letters. We did a pre-test today and went over it, so your first grader knows what they should be reviewing most this week. For some, it's making sure to form the letters in the correct way. For others it is reviewing all of those tricky red words. Lastly, some of us need to review the parts of a sentence- Uppercase to start, spacing, period to end .

In math we learned something totally new called "Frames and Arrows". There is a rule with frames and arrows that we must follow and then follow the arrow to the next fame and apply the rule to that number as well.

Check out Connor completing this Frame and Arrow set:

You can see the rule was, "Count back by 1's" the 14 and 13 were already there for him, so he had to finish the rest!

During reading we continue to work on the Daily 5. Check out these awesome first grader's work:

Wallah apparently has a problem... she doesn't look too upset to me!

Tucker built all of his red words

Trace used red words to write sentences.

Colin practiced word family words and wrote sentences with the red word, look.

Tucker shows us how he records all of the books that he reads.

Jordan works on a story about a shark that lived during the time of the Dinosaurs... the Megladon.

Two lucky first graders, Summer and Connor, were able to have lunch with me in the classroom to celebrate their awesome behavior!

Our focus in writing this week is using an Editing Checklist. When students have completed a writing piece, they will use the checklist to ensure that they have completed each step in a WOW piece of writing. Having students edit their own (and sometimes each other's) writing makes them more aware of the mistakes they make and how to correct them. They are becoming such great editors already.

Our WOW word this week is, "Perplexed"- puzzled or confused. We did a GREAT job using the word in sentences for the first time today.

REMINDER: Our Halloween celebration is Wednesday, October 31st at 1:45pm. Please join us for our parade and party if you're able.

In math we have been working to add and subtract using a number grid and number line. We've discussed that when we're adding, we move UP and that when we're subtracting we move DOWN. We also realized that when you're adding, it's easiest to start at the higher number. When subtracting though, you should always follow the number sentence exactly. Look at Hailey, using her number grid to add and subtract: