Welcome to the First Grade Bat Cave!
What a week! This week we celebrated Halloween as well as wrapped up our two week Bat Study by turning our class in to a Bat Cave!
Throughout the week, we read a new focus story called Nightsong, by Ari Berk and made both character and story comparisons with our focus story from last week, Stellaluna, by Janell Cannon. We also took a look at both stories and made text-to-self connections; thinking about a time we had to be brave, just like the main characters in both of our focus stories! Additionally, we read about bat facts from different books including National Geographic Bats and Fly Guy Presents Bats. To wrap up our Bat study, our friends came to school equipped with headlamps, mini lanterns and flashlights. We went through our regular routine with the lights off and windows darkened in order to simulate a bat cave. We had a lot of fun pretending to be bats, we even listened to a small clip of bat sounds! One friend suggested turning all flashlights off to pretend like we were sleeping bats. Next, we turned our lights on and used our 'echolocation' to see. Take a look at our friends during math centers, using their flashlights to help them see!
This week we also continued focusing our writing time on personal narratives. We are starting to get the hand of completing our graphic organizers prior to writing to help us map out our thoughts. This week's writing focus was our Weekend News. Next week we will begin a new Small Moment Story, this time with a topic of our own choosing! Below you can watch a video of our class hard at work during writing workshop. You can see some of our friends using various writing strategies to remember spaces between their words. Some use crayons or fingers to separate their words on the page. Additionally, some friends are sounding out their words and using our word wall to help them spell. As you can see, we work hard to stay focused during writing workshop. During this time, we play instrumental music to help keep us calm, relaxed and focused and we make sure not to talk to our table partners while they are working. It has taken some time but we are finally getting the hang of making sure to work independently during this time!
Our focus in math this week has been on subtraction! We have been taking a look into various strategies we can use to help us subtract. We have been listening to various story problems with all known numbers as well as story problems with an unknown number. in order to make sure we have the write answer, our friends have been working on making proof drawings to prove their answers are correct. We will continue this coming week on reviewing subtraction as well as learn about fact families and have an opportunity to put our lessons into practice with new math stations! Below you can see our Math Fact Bats that we made. On the wings of each bat are both addition and subtraction problems. We are always looking for ways to help build our math fluency!
Our new spelling and phonics skill this week was on consonant digraphs. We began learning about our H-Brothers; th, ch and sh. We have learned that a consonant digraph is made when 2 successive letters represent a single sound. We spent time each day learning about and practicing these sounds in a variety of ways. Our class was also excited to learn that we would not be having a spelling test this week. Because these sounds are extremely important to learn and to be able to differentiate from one another, we will be focusing on them for two weeks. On Friday, instead of having a spelling test, we used iPads to manipulate and build the words using an app called Magnetic Alphabet.
We are really getting into a groove and are putting our learned rules and routines into practice. We have found that when we are focused and can stay on task we are able to get a lot more done! We can't wait for all of the fun learning experiences still ahead!
This coming week we will be focusing on Veterans Day, as well as holding a class election, beginning a Science unit on Sound, introducing new math stations as well as doing reading records (we have been working hard during our reading groups with Mrs. Quist and can't wait to see how our hard work is paying off)!
In the meantime, take a peak at our Halloween Party fun! We had a blast on Monday getting to dress up in our costumes, have a parade and party, visit the 3rd grade Wax Museum and have our 4th grade Reading Buddies come down and read with us! THANK YOU to all parents and grandparents who came in after lunch on Monday to help get students into their costumes and then stay after the parade to help get our yummy snack ready! Also, I would like to thank everyone who sent in goodies (both food and paltes/silverware)! We couldn't have had such a fun afternoon without all of your help!
