OPEN HOUSE!

Tomorrow is Open House from 6-7 p.m.  I hope to see all of you there!

The start to another great week!

Throughout last week, and into this one, so much fantastic stuff has been happening.  We have worked on creating stories from story arcs, practiced different word patterns, worked on adding and subtracting 3 digit numbers, had our first 4 Winds, and so much more.
In literacy we have been working hard with a serious focus on writing.  We are working with story arcs.  These are organizers that we use to plan our stories.  Within these arcs students are planning and using different story elements; catchy lead, turning point, strong endings, character development, character struggles and dialogue.  Using these arcs students are increasing the volume and depth of their writing as well as discovering how much detail they can create!  We are also working with word patterns and syllable rules.  Two days a week we have mini-lesson groups for syllable rules, and are lucky enough to have these sessions co-taught by Sheila Paterson!  We have also been working lately in non-fiction books groups learning about and finding examples of different features in non-fiction text that we can use to help navigate it.
In math we continue our work with 3 digit numbers.  We are working very hard on place value and adding and subtracting three digit numbers.  As you see your students bring homework home feel free to interact with them while they work on it. The concepts we are working on focus on efficiently solving three digit expressions, and if reading some of the problems to your students makes the material more accessible for them please feel free to do so. 
I will update with some photos of our work tomorrow, and hope to see all of you at open house starting at 6!

Dave

Another great week of learning

We have continued our work with caterpillars (larva) and are hoping they will pupate soon. This week our surviving larva were moved to a common tank, and we are hopeful they will pupate soon. Before the move we took some time to observe them out of a tank for one last time. During this time students made some watercolor paintings of their larva.

We have also started some work investigating nonfiction text. For this work we will be using books to find features of nonfiction, magazines to extract features, and our notebooks to keep records of different features and what can be learned from them. This week we focussed on captions and that a caption is "words that need the picture to make sense." These photos show students work in their notebooks!

We also had a PBIS celebration this week. Throughout the year we will have celebrations as our "chip bucket" fills up. Throughout the school we are using small wooden chips to recognize when students are following expectations in different areas. Thus far we have had 3 celebrations, this week's celebration was a "pinata-extravaganza!"

There is so much more to share, but for now I will leave you with a few more images of what we have been doing! Thanks again for your continued support, and if you need to contact me feel free to email or call!

 

Much ado about Monday!

Wow, Monday was exciting! We started searching for examples of nonfiction text features, had origami Monday with first graders, and painted our caterpillars, as they are about to pupate!

We are working on identifying different non fiction text features in Time for Kids. We will be searching for different features in books to learn what information we can get from them.

Origami Monday is back! Today we had our first origami Monday with the first graders. They came down and learned how to make some really cool origami bugs! If you have any square paper at home, ask your student to show you how to make a bug.

Finally we are working with our caterpillars, making paintings of them, and getting them in a tank to pupate! We will keep the blog updated as to status of our pupation. We have suffered some casualties, but have six healthy looking 'pillars in our tank!

 

Another great week!

This was another fantastic week of learning in our class! We have continued observing and working with our caterpillars, begun working with 1,000 books, created some believable characters to use for writing, and started book groups!

Ur caterpillars are amazing, they are growing, eating and producing frass! Quite soon our larva will be ready to pupate, when this happens we will begin investigating the life cycle of monarchs. As our release date for monarchs approaches I will keep you posted, and although it is difficult to forecast a release date, I will let you know so you cab try to attend if you wish!

 

Spike!

Wayne!

In math, we are working on practicing with place value. To do this we are working with 1,000 books. We have been using these books to fid different numbers, as well as practice multiplication. Ask your student which 100's chart 687 is on. We have also been being mindful to read numbers correctly, that is to say we have been focussing on the difference between, six hundred and eighty even, and, six hundred eighty seven, a very subtle difference to be sure, but terribly important for the understanding of place value.

During literacy we also started book groups, and worked on creating believable characters for our writing. We are focussing on writing about character's external and internal features. That is to say, features we can observe and how the character feels about things. We also are working in new book groups. I these groups we will be working on learning different features in nonfiction text, and identifying what we can learn from these different features.

 

 

As always, have a safe and restful weekend, and if you need ti communicate with me my email address is dwillard@u32.org, or you can call me at school at extension 318.

 

Dave

 

A word from the kitchen

Just a reminder students need to bring a snack from home or have money on their account to purchase snack items.  If your student qualifies for lunch assistance they get a full breakfast and lunch (no charge at all this year) but if they bring in lunch and want just a milk they need to pay .50 or have money on their account to pay for milks. Also, we ask that students who bring home lunch, bring in their own utensils to cut down our plastic costs. 

Thank you all !

  

 Susan

Monarchs and more!

What a fantastic week. We have started rearing monarchs, continued creating pieces of writing, and jumped into the world if arrays in math.

We had a very exciting day in Wednesday...that was the day that our monarch caterpillars arrived! We have been working hard to keep them safe, fed, and clean. We will be watching these animals develop alongside an investigation of life cycles. Soon enough these caterpillars will become chrysalis', and eventually they will emerge as butterflies. These grainy photographs are of some students 'pillars.

During literacy time we have been working on creating our own pieces of writing, as well as working on "the great writers project." Our own pieces are based on experiences that we have had in our lives, and focussed on times when we felt strong emotions. We are using these experiences to write personal narratives as well as to create original works of fiction! The great writers project is an undertaking that allows students to create their own copy of some if our favorite books! Students have chosen books that they e joy reading and are working to recreate the words and illustrations from the original.

 

 

In math, we have been working with arrays. Arrays are squares or rectangles that we can use to represent multiplication expressions. For each rectangle or square, the external dimensions are the expression. For example: a rectangle that is four tile long and two tiles wide represents the expression 4 x 2.

What expression is represented by this array?

As always, have a great weekend, and if you need to check with me please feel free to email (dwillard@u32.org) or call me at school at 223-7936 x 318.