Settled in and Set for Success!
Wow, our week has just flown by! We are are settled in to our first grade routines and have become successful STAR Firsties!! This week we have been learning a lot about how to be independent workers. We have started learning about some of our Daily 5 literacy stations and how to work on our own during our day. This is a time when Mrs. Quist gets to work with students 1-on-1 and with small groups and all of our friends get to continue their learning through independent practice of skills we have already learned! This week we focused on how to Read to Self. During this literacy station, we get our book boxes and find a quiet spot to sit by ourselves and do the following:
1. Stay in 1 spot
2. Start right away
3. Read the whole time
4. Read quietly
5. Build our STAMINA!!!
This week we learned a fun new word - STAMINA. We found out this means that we can work hard for a long period of time without getting too tired or giving up. Our goal was to build our stamina up to 20 minutes of independent and on-task reading. It took us 7 attempts throughout the week to build our stamina up to 20 minutes and on Friday WE DID IT! Watch our video below, you can see we were working hard to do ALL 5 things for Read to Self!
During spelling and phonics this week we have begun learning about how to blend and segment words and have started learning new spellings for our sounds. We have also learned about nouns and how they name people (places, things and animals too) in our phrases, how to write some of our letters correctly on the lines and have started learning Tricky Words. Tricky words are words that do not follow the 'normal' spelling/sound patterns. We learned the Tricky Words a, I, no, of, and so this week. We get very excited to learn about our new Tricky Words and can't wait to keep learning more!
During our Reading block we have started learning how to listen attentively to read-alouds and discuss the stories we hear with our partners and with our group. We have been listening to fabels, which we found out are short, fiction stories that are intended to teach the reader a lesson. We have learned what the moral (or lesson) of two fun stories were. This week we listened to The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Milkmaid and the Spilled Milk. Click on the names of the stories and you can watch a version of the story that is similar to the ones that we heard this week! We also made our own interactive reading journals this week. We will be using these to help us reflect on our learning and discuss/describe various features of the text we will be learning about!
Our class has been working extremely hard to build our stamina in all areas of our learning. We found out that we mix work with play and when we work hard, we can earn time to play and relax our brains. This week we worked so hard on our I-Ready tests to show what we know and remember from Kindergarten that we earned a few minutes of extra recess - we definitely want to soak up as much sun and warm weather as we can!
We also had the opportunity to explore and use our Outdoor Classroom on Thursday! We were able to spend time getting to know our friends a little better and write about one of them. We had to find out how old they are, what they like to do and their favorite food. We even got to draw pictures of them. Some friends chose to work inside instead of outside. We all had fun learning more about our friends!
As always, we LOVE having the opportunity to have Free Choice on Friday afternoons. This is our time to chill, eat our popcorn, play and continue building relationships with our peers!
We are so excited to continue building our stamina and growing our smart brains ALL year! Soon we will start learning about Science and Social Studies and will be switching classes. Mrs. Powell will get to teach First Grade Science while Mrs. Quist will be teaching First Grade Social Studies. Our firstie friends will be switching classes on these days and so it is going to remain extremely important that our rooms are safe for our peanut/tree nut allergy. That being said, Mrs. Powell and I have been discussing ways in which to do this safely and efficiently. Both classes make sure hands are washed and tables are cleaned after anytime food is eaten. Our classroom would appreciate and greatly benefit from any donations of hand-wipes you could supply. This will help to cut down on the time it takes to wash hands as well as make sure that tables and surfaces are wiped down. We want to keep our friends safe and provide a fun/safe learning environment for all!
Enjoy your weekend and the warm weather it brings...get outside, soak in some sun and fresh air and come back Monday re-energized and ready to learn!!!
