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.