What a Week!
Wow! What a wild, crazy and fun week! We had so much excitement going on this week. Monday marked the first day of library, which we were super excited about!! Not only was it exciting to get to explore all of the books in the library, but we also found out that first graders get to check out 2 books each week! We could barely keep our excitement in! Additionally, this week included Late Start Monday, Spirit Week and Early Dismissal on Friday! Our friends were very happy to see their classmates come to school each day dressed for Spirit Week! The weather has also been a little up and down this week so we made sure to find a little extra time to be outside when the weather was nice!
In math this week, we continued looking into patterns of numbers between 0-10. On Tuesday we began the dialogue of doubles. We have also been looking at math mountains, which were introduced last year in kindergarten, and our tiny tumblers. We have also been spending a lot of time talking about adding and subtracting with 0 and 1 more and 1 less. Our class has spent time learning about the terms partners and addends and how they are added together to find a total or sum. Each day has focused on a different total. This week we worked on numbers 5-9. Check out the video below to learn about how we use math mountains as a strategy to find our partners.
We have been learning through hands on practice. They have also been practicing how to use our materials and manipulatives the right way, as well as practicing putting them away correctly. In the pictures below you can see how our friends are using their materials during a math lesson. Each student has their own math mat, marker, eraser and unifix cubes. They are using their cubes to find partners of 9 and then writing the switch partners on their math mats.
During Spelling and Phonics this week we focused on the short i vowel sound. We continued building our routine and working on learning that medial sound in words. We spent time identifying and saying the letter sound, building and writing words with the short i in the medial position, as well as reading stories and writing sentences containing our words! Below our friends are practicing matching sentences with corresponding pictures and then rewriting the sentences below. Each sentence contained at least 1 medial short i word!
During Daily 5 we continued to work on staying on task the whole time! On Friday we all worked very hard and kept our voices quiet enough so that surrounding stations could work! During this time, Mrs. Quist was pulling students to read with her and to work on ball words! We have a lot of friends who have already passed levels in ball words this week. Don't worry if your child already passed a level in Kindergarten, we are starting over at the beginning of first so that we can see where everyone is at! Ball words have become an option to practice building, spelling, saying and writing during our Work on Words station!
Our Focus Story in reading workshop this week was Matthew and Tilly by Rebecca Jones. This is a great short story that focused on the theme of Friendship. We held class discussions all week on what friendship is and what a good friend looks like. As we read the story, we learned 5 new vocabulary words. These words were crabbiest, customer, rescued, picky, and squiggly. Ask your child to teach you the definitions using their "mirrors" and actions! As we progressed through the week we conducted a few different writing activities which got the students to go back in the text and prove their thinking. They had to write about the event(s) in the story that made the two characters upset with each other. Our class also sequenced the story, using our transitional words from our writing workshop (first, next, then, and last).
We ended our week in reading talking about how we can be a good friend. To make this a fun and memorable experience, we made a friendship salad. During our lesson, we took a bowl and turned it into our classroom. We added one kind of fruit and talked about how these are the 'kind' friends in our class. Next, we added another a couple other kinds of fruit ('hard working' friends and 'sharing' friends). Then, we added marshmallows (this was very exciting)! The marshmallows represented all of the sweet and kind words we can and should use in our classroom. We took time to talk with partners after each new item was added to the salad and what those characteristics would look like in our class. Finally, Mrs. Quist pulled out a rotten, squished banana! All of our friends responded with "EWWW! Don't put that in!" We then talked about what a 'rotten banana' friend is (someone who calls names, doesn't share, refuses to do work, bugs other people, uses their hands to solve problems, etc.). This was a great opportunity to talk about why we don't want rotten bananas in a friendship salad and made a connection to our own classroom and how we should work hard to follow the rules and have good manners! Below are some pictures of our friends enjoying their yummy friendship salad!
We have started our writing unit on personal narratives or small moments. We began our discussion by reading a story called Stella Writes a Story by Janiel Wagstaff. This was a great introduction on how to organize your thoughts, jot ideas down in an organized way and then write and edit a story. We continued the topic by listening to a couple of Little Critter books that focused on a very specific and special day. We will continue on in the next few weeks, talking about how to come up with ideas to write about, narrow down our topics, formulate our ideas and how to write about them!
We wrapped up our week with a little book shopping and relaxing time reading to self and eating our popcorn, and doing a little calming yoga! Try some Yoga at home!
Enjoy your weekend and be safe if you head out to the parade and football game tonight! Don't forget, Forest View will have a designated meeting area across from the skate park, just look for the balloons! Have FUN!