Monday, November 25, 2013

Bentley and Royce

The first graders let me know that my orginal picture of the kittens never made it to the blog- I completely forgot to upload a new one so here are some pictures of the new additions to my family.

We also found out... they're GIRLS!  So exciting!




Thursday, November 21, 2013

Lunch and Conferences

Our lunch menu for the week after Thanksgiving is ready.  Please fill it out as soon as you can!

Lunch Menu

Parent/Teacher conferences are on Monday and Tuesday.  If you've forgotten when you've signed up for, let me know and I'll send home a reminder.  I'm looking forward to meeting with all of you next week.

Your child's report card will go home in their home/school folder tomorrow afternoon.  Please make sure to check for it after school.

We've been learning about the tradition of Thanksgiving this week and have had so much fun learning about our own traditions we celebrate with our families. 

We've also had some pretty WHACKY prizes from Granny.


We pretended to take a ride on the Mayflower as well!  Whew! There was NOT a lot of extra room!


Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Measuring and Skip Counting

Livid is our WOW word this week. We've had a lot of fun telling about times we have felt livid.  (Which has led to interesting conversations about BIG problems, and small problems, and how to know the difference.)

Our red word of the week is areThe word families we are working with this week are ____ip and _____ib.  The p's and b's (and d's and q's!) are very tricky so we've been working hard to take our time and write carefully.  

In math, we have moved onto a unit of measurement.  We are working with fast-math facts every day to improve our fact fluency.  We had an important discussion yesterday about Xtra Math.  The students had been guessing the answer quite often to beat the timer.  We talked about how it was MORE important to figure out the answer so it was correct than to guess a bunch of numbers.  The program tracks how well we're doing this, so I've started to share with the students their accuracy report.  They are excited to see how much they can improve their green circles.

We had a special visitor arrive in the mail all the way from Livonia, MI.  Flat Erin is my god-daughter and has sent her flat self to us to see what our classroom is like.  We've had lots of fun with Flat Erin who was inspired after she read the book, Flat Stanley. 





Monday, November 18, 2013

Four Winds

The theme of Four Winds this year is Ecosystems.  We learned today about Leaf Litter.


was also joined for lunch by a very special duo to celebrate their awesome behavior!  We have so much to celebrate in Room 3.



The first graders were excited for me to share a picture here, so check out a picture of my new kittens! 

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Close Read

A reading strategy we have been working on is the Close Read.  During a close read we underline, circle and/or highlight words that are important or that we'd like to go back to.  We love to close-read our poems of the week because we learn so much more from them when we slow down and go word by word and line by line.  Check out our close read in action:




We also earned Chair Hopping for a Granny's Whacky Prize today.  We had fun! 


I will be out of the room tomorrow at a Common Core math workshop.  If you need anything please contact Mrs. Troia.  Have a great weekend! 

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Granny's Whacky Prizes

We are working hard to earn Granny's Whacky Prizes!  We love when we are able to play a Pax game and earn a prize- they're just so WHACKY!  Today we got to congo-line to P.E.  Mr. Pecor thought we were very funny. 

Part of our new game is learning Pax quiet.  We have 4 separate volumes in our classroom- 0, 3", 3', and 10'.  We have learned the hand signals for these and love to practice them by singing, "What does the fox say?"  Ask your first grader to demonstrate the differences in these volumes and tell you when we use them at school.  We are always working to create a calm, peaceful environment in our classroom and remind ourselves often what that looks, sounds and feels like. 

In math we are wrapping up Unit 3 and have prepared to take our Unit 3 assessment tomorrow.  We will be assessed on knowing combinations of 10, filling in frames and arrows, counting coins and continuing patterns. 

We have learned about different types of liquids in science and have had fun seeing how liquid can be fast moving (like water) or slow moving (like corn syrup)! 

Please be sure to fill out the lunch form from yesterday. 


Monday, November 11, 2013

Elated

What a wonderful Monday!  Our WOW word of the week is elated- to be filled with joy.  Our red word this week is, is.  The first graders think this word is WAY TOO EASY to be a red word!  Our word families are ____ax and ___ix.  It is tricky to have two word families with different short vowel sounds, but we are doing a great job.  

Our Poem of the Week is Colors Crackle, Colors Roar.   We are learning many new color words through this poem and lots of new vocabulary.  Our Sight Word Poem of the Week is Counting Circus. We are really enjoying learning about and through poetry. 

In math we will continue to count dimes, nickels and pennies.  We will have our Unit 3 assessment at the end of the week.  

We are starting a new game in our classroom called Pax Good Behavior Game.  We are rolling out this game slowly, but expect your child to tell you about Pax and Granny's Whacky Prizes.  We are very excited to try this new game!  



Our school book fair is this week.

Please sign up for lunch using the link below:
Lunch Menu  

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Solids and Liquids

We have had a great time learning more about solids and liquids in science.  Yesterday we created science folders and worked in our science notebooks for the first time.  We have had interesting conversations about certain matter that could be both solid and liquid. 

In math we introduced the dime.  Counting by 10's, 5's then 1's is important when counting money.  It was our 50th day of school today so we had lots of exchanging to do with our coins during Morning Meeting. 

To celebrate her awesome behavior, this super student chose to sit at my desk for the day!  What a treat!



I will be out of the classroom tomorrow for a training.  I will still (I think) have access to email.  Please email if anything comes up!

Thanks!