Math Journals

We have been working daily in our  math journals.  Currently, we use our math journals to show our thinking and to take notes.  We have gotten so much better at recording our thinking in just ONE WEEK!  

Check out these awesome first graders showing off their counting and recording strategies.

 

Showing Our Thinking

We have been working hard to always record and show our thinking in math.  Check out this first grader recording and showing his thinking.  He even added more detail as he explained it to the class because he realized it could be more clear.

Some students work on words during literacy.  These students think minecraft is "asom"  or awesome.  :)

Sensory Language

Our WOW word this week is perplexed.  We had fun telling about times we have been confused before.  In SWR we are working on the ___in and ___im word families and trying to always remember to uppercase (capitalize) people's names, even when they are in the middle of sentences! 

Today in math we learned how to add and subtract on a number line.  We took notes in our math journals too, which felt very grown up.  We took notes about what +, -, and = means.  Ask your first grader to tell you the difference between these symbols.  We continued to count and record our counting and strategies in our journals as well.

We started reading Charlotte's Web in literacy to prepare for our field trip in December.  We read chapter one and did such great reading work as we read.  We listened for sensory language.  Sensory language is words that are written or spoken that tells us what a character is seeing, smelling, tasting, touching  and hearing.  We kept track of our examples and where we found them in the book. Here are a couple of our favorites,

"her shoes were sopping," "the air smelled of springtime,"  "no bigger than a white rat." 

As we read, we look for sensory language that helps us understand the character and story better. 

In writing we continue to work on personal narratives.  We are working to add conversations, details and to show how the people are feeling.  Today, we tried to use at least one example of sensory language. 

We are looking forward to Friday's celebration.  Parents/guests may arrive at 1:30 to help with costumes.  The parage begins at 1:50 and then we will return to our room to have a small celebration with food and drinks.  Please let me know if you have any questions.  Thanks! 

Math Journals

This week in math we have implemented math journals.  We use math journals to record our thinking.  Just like our reading journals, it is so important to write the date at the beginning of every entry.  So far, we have been counting a variety of objects and recording the number and how we know it is that number.  This has been a fascinating adventure in first grade.  If you have any extra time at home over the weekend or in the evenings, it would be great if you could count objects with your first grader.  Let them show you how they do it first, then have discussions about how you might keep the objects organized as you count.  Let them record their thinking and make sure they label their work! 

We love counting cubes and macaroni, but you can count ANYTHING! 

Look at these first graders hard at work:

We will be having a Halloween celebration next Friday, October 31st.  Students can change into their costume at school and will change out of it before they go home.  Masks will not be allowed with any costume.  We will have a small parade and then a small celebration in the classroom.  Please be on the lookout for a sign-up genius about how you might participate in our party.

Reading with Partners

While we read today, we told the events of the story in order of when they happened.  We talke about what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the story.  In our reading groups, we read with partners.  Reading with partners is fun because one of us gets to act like the "teacher."  We *love* pretending to be the teacher.  

In writing, we tried an on-demand writing prompt for the first time.  On-demand writing prompts are used to show how we write independently.  We learned how our writing would be assessed and we learned how to earn a 4, a 3, a 2 or a 1.  The first graders were so excited to try to earn a 4 for their writing.  We remembered that we had to tell a true story from our lives, to write complete ideas in sentences, to use punctuation, and to use transition words.  We are such great writers!   

Writing Like Real Authors!!

We have been practicing writing like real writers. We take everything we know about our favorite stories and try to make sure we have them in our writing. We look for:

-complete sentences

-finger spaces

-an idea on every page and 

-transition words

Check out these writers hard at work. 

We also started math today with a very difficult challenge.  Ask your first grader to tell you all about it! 

Writing Celebrations

We were so excited to celebrate publishing our stories today!  We read each story out loud and hung them in the hallway to share with the world.  We are really proud of our writing and enjoyed hearing the Author's page the most. 

We started Unit 3 in math today.  Unit three is all about patterns.  We found patterns, continued patterns and created patterns.  We enjoyed creating patterns for our friends.

Unit 2 Math Assessment

We took our Unit 2 math assessment today.  We did such a fabulous job.  We all worked hard to "show what you know!"  We love having an opportunity to "show what [we] know" because we can demonstrate how much we've learned.  We learn a lot in first grade!  What was most impressive was that every single student improved from the pre-assessment.  We were so proud to see how much we've grown as learners during unit 2. You will be able to see your child's assessment results on the parent portal by the end of the week.  I will also send a copy home in folders so you're able to see the actual test.  

We worked on mapping stories today in literacy.  Mapping stories is important because it helps us draw out the most important parts of a story.  Ask your first grader to tell you what we find on a story map.  The best part is, soon, we can use story maps to plan our own writing.

In writing we added Title and Author pages to our stories.  We feel like accomplished writers when our writing is so fancy.  We are excited to have our stories on display in our classroom.   

Informational Meetings

We have many informational meetings district wide to address questions and concerns that members of our community may have.  This Thursday we have a parent forum at PPS from 6-6:45pm.  The topic will be literacy and our district literacy coordinator will be there along with our principal and teaching representatives. 

If you are looking for more information about how educational dollars are being spent in Colchester, there are two meetings scheduled.  Please check out our Colchester community blog to learn more about that:

CSDSpotlight- Educational Dollars Informational Forum

It is important to be informed about our community and school(s).

We had (another!) amazing day in room 12.  The first graders loved coming to school in their PJs to celebrate a full warm-fuzzy bear.  And... we couldn't BELIEVE this, but we filled the bear AGAIN this afternoon!  That is a LOT of warm fuzzies!  To celebrate, we stopped everything we were doing and went out for an extra recess right before art.  We were so excited to celebrate immediately and were really proud of ourselves for working so hard to be safe, be respectful and be ready to learn. 

In math, we've been working on strategies for fast facts.  Check out these first graders applying those strategies to add three numbers together, something we've never done before!

We worked to re-tell stories in order today during literacy.  We realized that it is important to tell the events in the order that they happen- it makes more sense! 

In writing, we used a self-assessment checklist to edit our stories.  We are such hard-working first graders.

What a Weekend!

MWow!  We were so lucky to have such a beautiful weekend!  I was so excited with the PPS representatives at Pink Out the Park!  There were so many families from our community there, we really enjoyed running with everyone.  An extra-big congratulations to Sarah, Lucien, Trinity and Emily for finishing the entire 5k.  We have some extremely impressive (and determined!) first graders in our room.

We had an awesome end of the week last week.  We earned 5 more whole-class Pax-It notes and filled our warm-fuzzy bear.  To celebrate 5 whole-class Pax-It notes, we earned a super-deluxe Granny's Whacky Prize.  The prize was that Mrs. Hershman had to bring in a special surprise for the ENTIRE class!  To celebrate filling our warm-fuzzy bear we voted from our list of celebrations.  We decided that tomorrow (Tuesday, October 14) will be PAJAMA DAY in room 12.  Please send your child to school in their pajamas! What a way to celebrate! 

Our WOW word this week is somber.  We learned about apostrophe "S" showing belonging like, "My mom's phone."  We also learned about problem and solutions in fiction writing. 

Modeling Subtraction

Building upon what we learned yesterday during math, today we learned about subtraction number models.  We learned that when subtracting, we always, always, always must start with the larger number.  We also learned that, like addition, all of the numbers go together in a family.  We practiced writing number models, exchanging pennies for nickels, and telling time to the nearest hour and half-hour. 

We reviewed nouns and the different kinds of nouns and started to generate a list of them.  Proper people was our favorite kind of noun, we love to talk about our siblings and families.  We also continued to discuss characters, setting and a major event in stories.  We filled out a graphic organizer to help us with our ideas.

In writing, we're working to make sure every sentence starts with an uppercase and ends with a period.

We had such a fabulous day today!  We had to interrupt our learning to celebrate such awesome, ready to learn behavior!  Everyone was sitting up tall with their eyes forward.  We are SO impressive!    

Wild Wednesday

Wow!  We learned SO much today- it was non-stop learning around here! 

We began by practicing our SWR words and word families and moved quickly into a brand new idea in math- number models.  We use number models to show addition.  (Subtraction is tomorrow.)  We discussed the + sign and the = sign and what they mean.  The most important idea we learned is that as long as the information on both sides of the = sign is the same... it's EQUAL!  It doesn't have to be in "regular" order and it doesn't have to look the same.  We learned that 6+4=10 AND that 4+6=10 AND that 10= 6+4 AND that 10=4+6.  It's ALL the same with addition.  We couldn't believe it!  We had so much fun making silly number models that were equal such as, 3= 1+1+1 and 5+5= 6+4.... we were flabbergasted!  This will of course, take a little more practice before we are experts at it! 

We had a special presentation from important commmunity members- firefighters!  We learned a lot about how firefighters help the community.

In reading we continued to identify the main idea and key details, then we learned about plural "s".  I wrote the most amazing, beautiful sentences with capitals, finger spaces and periods, but the first graders informed me that they weren't actually the BEST sentences because I didn't show more than one with a plural "S".  They were right! When I added an "s" at the end of the noun to show more than one, it sounded much better!  My sentence changed from, "I have two cat." to "I have to cats."  The first graders were getting so frustrated and saying, "Mrs. Hershman!  Can't you hear the "ssssssss" at the end that's supposed to be there?  ADD IT!"  Luckily, it was an easy fix!  We practiced adding s's to the end of nouns to show more than one.

In writing, we read through our work to make sure that each sentence started with an uppercase and ended with a period.  We are such hard workers! 

This first grader did an awesome close-read of this week's poem! 

Four Winds

We had our very first Four Winds of the school year yesterday.  Many thanks to Mr. McAuley and Mrs. Petterson for coming to our room and being our guest teachers.  We are so lucky!  We learned all about the sun, the sun's light and the earth.  Many of us realized that when the sun is not directly pointed at Vermont, we have winter, and when it is... we have summer!  Mr. M. and Mrs. P.  you'll be happy to know the first graders recalled everything they learned this morning during morning meeting- they learned a lot! 

We worked to count collections of coins in math today.  We are working hard to count by 5's and then 1's.  We have done a great job remember to always start with the coin that is worth the most- that makes it easier to count up! 

We have been learning about Christopher Columbus because Columbus day is approaching.  Yesterday, we read a fiction and a non-fiction book about him and kept track of the key details as we read.  We are such great readers! 

In writing we are making our characters move, think and feel.  We realized this makes our characters more interesting!