My Last Full Week:(

This was supposed to be posted on Monday but somehow it stayed in draft form...so here it is!!

We have been so lucky to have amazing weather for our x-country skiing adventures!  Some of us are attempting new "tricks" such as learning how to cross our skis and fall over, how to zoom down a hill a little faster than our legs are ready for, and how to enjoy being outside on beautiful days!

Hills and Spills...

Follow The Leader

Hills and Spills continued...

Learning about Sound:) Vibrations are everywhere!  Watch out world, we are developing some amazing instruments.

Here is what we KNOW and WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW, at the end of this week we will fill out what we have learned.

Our Valentine's Day bags


More of the creation stations...

This week will unfortunately be my last full week here at Thatcher Brook Primary School.  Ms. Amy and I will have two transition days after our school vacation.

This week we will be wrapping up our exploration of sound.  Students have been experimenting with different objects varying the volume and pitch of their instruments by making a variety of modifications.  Ask your student how sound is made, or what they have noticed about sound when making different types of instruments.  

In Fundations we are learning about blends and digraph blends.  Ask your student what a blend is.  A blend contains two or more consonants but they each make their own sound, such as /s/ and /l/ in the word slip.  a digraph contains two consonants and makes only one sound such as /sh/, /ch/, /ck/, /th/, and /wh/.  Try to brainstorm words together that contain a digraphs and blends.  The word PINK contains the blend NK, BENCH contains the digraph CH, etc.

In Investigations we are diving into telling time.  So many students are very excited about this adventure because it provides them with a sense of independence when they can tell time all by themselves.  We are learning whole hours and 1/2 hours on analog clocks.  Many students have been asking to be challenged to the minute, so we have been slowly introducing how many parts the clock is broken down into.  Ask your student to see if he/she can tell you the time next time you need to know it.  

Our author study this week has been focused on any author who writes about our theme, sound.  We have been reading non-fiction and fiction texts to make many new discoveries about sound.  

In Writer's Workshop we are continuing to polish our skills of opinion writing.  One student asked, "Miss Livingston, are you teaching us how to argue?"  My answer was, "I'm teaching you how to gather evidence and support your answers, sometimes in your life this may be defined as arguing."  It was so great to see the connection made!        

Thank you very much for all of your support inside and outside of this classroom!

100 Days Smarter!!!

We made it to day 100!  We are all now 100 days of school smarter!  We only have 80 more days of first grade.  We celebrated the 100th day of school by creating a list of things we want to do by the time we reach 100 years old.  We also created a self portrait of what we think we will look like in 93 years...They were very interesting, most students said they will not have grey hair and they will not be wearing glasses.

Some of the responses included, "I will go to another country, I will be a hockey coach, I will build a house, etc"  They were so creative!!

We also managed to get outside to continue with our x-country skiing adventures.  We have been so lucky to have amazing sunny conditions.  

Here we are exploring!

We are focusing on character traits and made our own school of fish just like the character Swimmy did in the book, Swimmy by Leo Lionni.  Look at all of the character traits we discovered Swimmy had!

This week we will be continuing to learn about glued sounds.  The glued sounds ing, ong, ung, ank, all, unk, ink, and ang.  Our current trick words this week will be too, very, also, some, and come.  While your student is reading at home see how many of these words you can find together. Another game you can play together is to create an ongoing list of words that have our current glued sounds in them.  You can continue to add to the words as you discover them throughout your day!

During Reader's Workshop we will be finishing up investigating character traits and looking for evidence.  Supporting our answers is something we are learning throughout our day.  We are regularly asking, "How can I support my answer?" or "What is my reason?"  Our author of the week will be Tomie DePaola, he is known for his books Strega Nona and Tony's Bread.

During Math we will be learning about fractions and time.  We will begin to learn about telling time to the hour and dividing shapes in halves and fourths.  Making snowflakes out of paper can be a great tool to reinforce fractions.  There are so many different ways to make a snowflake!

Writer's workshop has been taking place throughout the day and we have been doing an amazing job at growing our abilities with opinion writing.  It's amazing the evidence students have been finding to support their decisions.  

Students brought home a reminder about our Valentine's Day celebration on Friday, February 14th.  If you would like to send in something please return the form so we can make sure we have enough for everyone.  

Our theme will be changing this week and we will begin learning about sound.  Students will understand that sound is a form of energy that travels in waves, that sound waves travel through different mediums, and that sound waves travel in a given direction until an outside force or object gets in the way.     

Thank you for your continued support in building the learning bridge from school to home.  

  

Skiing & Vermont!!

We made it out x-country skiing!! A lot of students were very nervous at first but had so much fun after we finally managed to get our boots and skis on.  Look at all of the fun we had!! 

The first stages of creating our Vermont map.  Mixing, Mixing, Mixing...

Here is our almost final project...

This week we will continue to focus on suffixes, the bonus letter rule, base words, and trickwords in  Fundations.  To continue building the bridge from school to home, playing literacy games such as guess my word, sight word BINGO, Eye Spy with current words, among others can greatly increase fluency and confidence in your learner.

Our current trick words we are trying to master are:

The       As    And    Is   His   Of   As   Has   To   Into   We   He   She   Be   Me   For   Or   You   Your   I   They   Was   One   Said   From   Have   Do   Does

As you are reading with your student see how many sight words you can find in a book you are reading.  Make it fun, try and predict how many there will be before you read the book.  See who has the closer prediction when you reach the end!

During Investigations (Math) we will be exploring Number Games and Crayon Puzzles 

Addition, Subtraction, and The Number System.  Last week we finished measuring animal jumps using a wide array of units.  A few of the units were baby steps, craft sticks, and basketball player footsteps.   This week we will turn our focus 

We will continue refining our opinion writing abilities with regular "Would you rather" prompts.  Last week one of our prompts was, "Would you rather be a rubberband or a pencil?"  Students were able to come up with some great arguments and reasoning.  Tell your student which one you would rather be and why.  A requirement for opinion writing is to always have supporting reasons, so make sure you let your creative juices flow!

Enjoy your week, thank you for being such amazing parents!