Our Neighborhood Walk

On Thursday 23rd September our class went out into the world to explore our local Woodlands neighborhood. We went on a Fact finding mission to discover what buildings, stores and jobs we have in our local Community. It was HOT and TIRING work but we did it!

Look at our photos to see what we discovered. Click here.

Thanks to Mr. Hvide and Ms. Shetty for helping us on our walk.

When we returned to school we began to map our local Community and

then started to "build" our local Community using craft supplies.

Writing Celebration

Last week we celebrated the end of Our First Writing Unit of Study- Writers Build Good Habits.

Children selected one of their stories to "publish" and then spent time Fixing and Fancying it up. They added a front and back cover.

They agreed that they can now:

• use pictures and words to tell a story



• choose an idea and write about it



• add details to their pictures



• add details to their words



• do their best and keep on going

They shared their FANTASTIC writing in a small group of friends and ended the celebration with a toast of juice- to good writing! Yeah!

Click here for more photos.

Reading Celebration

On Friday we completed the first Unit of Study in Reading- Readers Build Good Habits.
To celebrate we joined other classes in the first Grade Group room to practice how we Read to Self. The children also signed a "Read to Self" contract that reminds them that they must always:

• Read the whole time


• Read quietly


• Stay in one spot


• Get started straight away


• Build their reading stamina


• Take good care of books

Altogether the children read for 20 minutes, and then celebrated with a story from Mr. Hoss.

Grade 1 are very proud of themselves!!! Look here for photos of our Reading Celebration.

Our next Reading Unit of Study is "Readers Use Strategies to Figure out words".

The Stone in the Road

On Thursday, we were invited to the High School to watch a HS Drama production of The Stone in The Road. The children enjoyed the Fairy Tale and were involved in asking the cast questions at the end.

Ask your child to RETELL the story to you.

Use these pictures to prompt their Story Telling.

Writing Number Stories

After we became Wild Things and acted out our Number Stories we recorded them on paper. We had to draw a picture to represent our Number Story, write a Number Story and also a Number Model.

Math is a lot of FUN! See more of us writing Number stories here.

More Wild Things

We really enjoyed becoming Wild Things and creating Number stories.

This is what we looked like as Wild Things- BEWARE!!!!!!

For more photos of WILD THINGS click here.

Being Wild Things!

Before our students are asked to practice number facts, we find it important that they experience addition and subtraction as real world operations that can be represented with words or number models.
“Wild Things” is designed to help the kids develop these connections. As the students role-play, tell, write, share and solve number stories, they begin to learn the addition and subtraction language and symbols. The most important part is that they have having tons of fun in the process.
Hooray for the Wild Things! Here are a few and there will be more tomorrow!

Making Wild Things

Today we began to create costumes for Wild Things!

We read the story Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and then acted out the way that Wild Things behave and made a list of their features. We used colored paper to make Wild Thing bodies, arms, claws, legs and feet!

Tomorrow we will roar our terrible roars, gnash our terrible teeth, roll our terrible eyes and show our terrible claws as we act out Number stories in Math.

Come back to our Blog later and you will see some of our work.

Math explorations

Just like Christopher Columbus we explored!

We explored Geo Boards

We explored Base 10 blocks

We explored Pattern Blocks

We discovered thet elastic bands can stretch a long way and that we can make shapes and patterns with them.

We discovered that Base 10 blocks can balance on each other and create tall towers.

We discovered that Pattern blocks can be stacked on their sides to create patterns that go up!

Partner Reading

We love to share books and the best way to do that is to read with a partner.

• We sit EEKK- Elbow to Elbow, Knee to Knee.
• We use soft voices to read the book together.
• We stop and talk about the book and check our understanding.
• We read the whole time, with each other or page by page.

Ask me who my partner for reading is, and what types of books we like to read.