We are so excited that our eggs arrived today! We have our incubator on, running, and warming the eggs up. We have also learned how to properly care for the eggs while we have them. We are responsible for turning the eggs three times per day just like a mother hen would do to her eggs! We have eighteen eggs in our incubator and are hoping that all of them hatch. We have marked our eggs with an "x" on one side and a number on the other so we can keep track of our eggs. We also have a chart where we will record our observations and track each time we turn the eggs so we don't get confused. Hand washing is an extremely important part of caring for eggs and chicks so we don't give bacteria to the eggs/chicks and the eggs/chicks don't give bacteria to us. We have also learned how to care for the incubator. We know that it is important to have humid air in the incubator. We made the air in our incubator more humid by adding water to the bottom of it.
In SWR today we wrote a sentence that was worth 60 dots! Whew! We were tired when it was over! The sentence had many red words and a lot of ___st words. We are beginning to notice the "st" combination when we're reading.
We measured our feet in math, recorded the results and put them in a bar graph, and analyzed the results. We remembered how to find the middle value! We are so impressive.
IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER:
5/3- walk to school day
5/4- Green Up Day
5/7-10- Colchester School District Art Show 8am-4pm (Reception Thursday, May 9 6-8 PM -Refreshments will be served)
5/28- Field Trip
5/31- Step Up Day
We had an awesome first day back together after vacation. It sounds as though everyone enjoyed their time off and had a wonderful break.
We are jumping right back into our regular routine this week. The end of the year will fly by and we still have a lot of work to do! The focus this week in SWR are the ____st and ____nt endings. We thought of many words that would fit like nest, want, point, list, best and festive- which just happens to be our WOW word of the week! Our new red word is when.
We measured our heights in math and plotted them on a graph. We analyzed our results and learned how to find the middle value. The middle value or number is the number that is in the middle- it is also known as the median, but we did not learn that word today. We started Unit 10 which is our last math unit and a review. We will be slowing down and making sure that each concept is solidified before we move on. The first graders will now only have two math worksheets for homework per week. Please complete them whenever works for you and return them by Friday each week.
We did not finish Little House before vacation so this week we will be finishing that story. We were a bit sad to read today that all of the Indians were leaving the area. We have not yet learned why, but we made some very good predictions.
We are continuing to write How-To's in writing.
Our new science unit is Embryology. We will be receiving our eggs tomorrow. I have never hatched chicks before so this is new for me, too! The other first grade teachers assure me we have nothing to worry about, but... I'm not so sure!
There are quite a few papers/forms in your child's folder this afternoon. Please make sure to check those this evening.
We wrote a sentence in SWR today that was worth 48 dots! The sentence had 10 words. We realized that it is hard to remember to write every word when there are so many so it's important to write quickly and listen carefully.
We rotated through math stations today. The first graders love playing beat the calculator and adding by 10's, 100's and even 1,000's. We finally had our whole class healthy and at school today so now everyone has taken the Unit 9 math test. Look for a copy of the test in your child's homework folder today.
We are working hard to try to finish Little House by tomorrow... we still have 60 pages to go so we're not sure we can make it! We love coming to the reading circle with our reading response notebooks. The first graders have done a wonderful job using these as tools to understand and think about their thinking. Today, there was a fire on the prairie. We wondered how it started. We don't know yet, but we had a lot of great predictions.
This afternoon we had music and Four Winds! We love Four Winds and always so excited when we have it.
Tomorrow is Poetry Cafe! Please remember to practice your child's poem with them. If you're able to join us, please do!
You may notice that we now have larger pictures and they are all at the bottom of the page. We are using our classroom iPad to blog now, so the formatting is slightly different. We hope that the new format is working for you!
****I forgot to upload the blog from school so there are no pictures today! I will add them tomorrow! In the meantime... check out our VINES! They are awesome videos that can be found on our Tweet Feed!****** https://twitter.com/MissTerrien
We might just be the most technologically connected first graders we know! Today, we created a classroom Vine account to share tiny video snapshots of our day. We are just working out the details but you can check out all of our vines from our Twitter feed. www.twitter.com/missterrien
We tapped out all of our red words today and wrote many words in the an, am and and families. We also wrote two sentences containing many of those words. We are such great writers! We are practicing using "skeptical" in sentences as well. Today's favorite was, "My mom was skeptical that we didn't have math homework this week, but we really don't!"
We took our Unit 9 math test today. We used a new whole-class format for the first time. Every first grader did a wonderful job and worked hard to complete each question before we moved onto the next one. Copies of your student's test should go home on Friday. We will start Unit 10 (our final unit!) after vacation.
In reading we continued to work on questioning and making predictions. We read a chapter called "Cry In the Night". Pa thought that it was Mr. Scott's wife screaming, but it wasn't. Ask your first grader what is was that making so much noise and then ask what happened...
One question that we have that has not been answered yet is how the settlers and the Indians will eventually get along. We have read about some friendly encounters and some not-so-friendly encounters so we are anxious to hear more. Please continue to have your child log on to RAZ kids each night to read at least one book.
In science we are finishing up learning about birds. After vacation we will have a very exciting science unit... Chicks! We will actually be hatching chickens in our classroom. (Yikes!)
We continue to write How-To books in writing and are getting quite good at them! We had to limit the number of Lego Star Wars How-To's we could write because so many of us wanted to write about that! Today we wrote How to Eat a Piece of Pizza.
We worked more with the sounds am, an and and this morning. We wrote the words pan, bam, jam, tram and band. We also tapped out all of our red words.
We reviewed for our math test today. This is the hardest math test we've had all year! Many of the problems have two parts so we have to be sure that we are reading very carefully and that we make sure to answer the entire question. When we were done reviewing we completed a page in our workbooks and then rotated through math stations.
In reading, we continued to track the questions we have and tried to answer as many as we could. The first graders enjoy writing their questions in their reading response notebooks. We are working very hard to finish Little House before vacation. We had 100 pages left this morning and I asked the students if they thought that we could finish in four days. They replied, "Well, just read 25 pages a day and we will!" They are so smart!
The first graders have been enjoying writing non-fiction stories. We are also starting to write How-To books. Yesterday, we wrote How to Make a Peanut Butter Sandwich. Today, we wrote How to Brush Your Teeth. We realized that it is important to write How To books about things we are experts in.
In SWR this week we are learning about the welded sounds am, an and and. Today we practiced writing many ___an words like, ban, can, Dan, fan, man, pan, tan and ran. Our red word of the week is were. Not to be confused with we're or where! Our WOW word is skeptical- to have doubt. We discussed different times when we have been skeptical before.
We learned about and practiced equivalent fractions in math. We used our fraction strips to make matches. We also made a fraction game that can be played like Go Fish or like Memory. We had a great time playing our new fraction game when our work was done. We will review for our Unit 9 math test tomorrow and take the test on Wednesday. There is no math homework this week.
In reading, we have been keeping track of questions we have as we read and have been paying attention to see if we can find the answers. We did this with Little House today and also with our independent reading books. We are recording our questions on our chart and also in our reading response notebooks. The first graders are excellent readers and began to make predictions about the answers to our questions! We have also been using our classroom iPad to look up words we don't know as we read. We love this because we can hear how the word is pronounced as well as understand what it means.
I had two lovely first graders join me for lunch today to celebrate their awesome behavior. We talked about our weekends and what we might do over April vacation. They were telling me about new toys their parents might buy them and I told them they must be lucky because my parents never take me to buy toys! They said, "Well, Miss Terrien, you don't live with your parents so you can just bring yourself." Fair enough. :)
In science and writing we started writing our very own non-fiction stories! We will also start to learn about how to write procedures.
When we were practicing our WOW word today we thought it would be more fun to act it out instead of use it in a sentence. I think the first graders have this word mastered...
We began to compare fractions in math today. This is very challenging because usually the larger number means more but 1/8 is not larger than 1/2. We created fraction strips to help us compare different fractions. We also used the <, > and = signs to show which was larger. We also learned the words numerator (the number on top of a fraction) and denominator (the number on the bottom of a fraction).
During literacy we learned about the Glossary in non-fiction books and showed an example of one in our non-fiction notebooks. We are getting so close to be ready to write our own non-fiction books!
This afternoon we had Guidance with Mr. Moses! We love our Guidance days and have such a great time.
Tomorrow is Poetry Cafe! Please remember to practice your child's poem with them tonight and, as always, join us if you're able!
Did you know that our classroom is on Twitter? If you already have a Twitter account, make sure to follow us @MissTerrien. If you don't- you can create one or check out our tweet feed at www.twitter.com/MissTerrien
We use twitter to connect with other classrooms and follow some of our favorite websites like NASA and National Geographic Kids.
Today we worked more with the "ck" ending after short vowels in SWR. We also wrote a sentence that was worth 40 dots! It was a question and had 7 red words. We did a great job!
In math we looked at the equal parts of a circle and realized that cirlces can be broken up into smaller, equal pieces just like squares can. After we were done our work, we played Base-10 exchange and make symmetrical patterns.
As we were reading Little House today I read the sentence, "Mary was so scared she did not move." I barely took a breath and the first graders yelled, "She's PETRIFIED!" It is so exciting when we start to implement our WOW words into our own vocabulary and recognize when we hear their definition as we read.
In writing and science we continue to work on our Non-Fiction Notebooks and are beginning to form ideas for our own non-fiction pieces of writing.
We are learning all about the "ck" ending this week. C and K come together and the end of words that have a short vowel like back, snack, pick, block, tuck and rock. Our red word is how. (Not to be confused with who... learning to read and spell can be so confusing!) Our WOW word this week is petrify. Petrify can mean two things; to be so scared you can't move or to make rigid or turn to stone. We have done a wonderful job using it both ways so far this week.
We learned more about fractions in math today. We took squares of paper and tried to fold them in fourths as many different ways as we could. We came up with two ways pretty easily, but had to work harder for the others! It was a lot of fun. We also used our pattern block templates to show different fractions of shapes.
In reading we learned that the characters in Little House are all suffering from "fever 'n ague". We met a new character- a doctor- because everyone in the family was sick. We also met Mr. Scott's wife. She came to the house to take care of the family while they got better.
In writing and science we worked on our Non-Fiction notebooks and practiced finding examples of indexes in our books.
It was SO nice to come back to the classroom to a note from our substitute saying how wonderful the first graders were yesterday! They all made it up to ROLE MODEL! I was so proud of them and their excellent effort!
We wrote "fancier" words in SWR today like cha-ching! and swinging. The first graders are always so surprised when they realize they can spell these words too, just by listening to the sounds.
I was so pleased at snack to look over and see one first grader helping another spread their cream cheese on a bagel- we are so lucky to have such thoughtful students in our room.
In math we practiced adding two digit numbers using our number grids. Some of us remembered to use our 10's trick, others of us still like to county by 1's and some of us used our base-10 blocks. It is important to have many strategies to choose from, so we like to practice all of them.
We read more of Little House and were SO distraught when Mr. Scott, the man helping to dig the Ingalls' well, became sick in the well and couldn't get out. Mr. Ingalls hauled him up, and he was breathing, but he hasn't woken up yet. We are so worried. We also learned the word seize today and discussed how it is different from seas, and sees. (I think I see a WOW word in our future...).
In writing and science we worked to compare and contrast two animals.
We also had Guidance with Mr. Moses.
