Jan

28

Valentine’s Party

January 28, 2012 | Room 104  |  Leave a Comment

Our Valentine’s Party will take place Tuesday, February 14, from 2:45-3:25ish.

All parents are invited to join us for the party! 

I will be sending out an e-mail to those parents who signed up to help at the party (way back in August).  This time around the first grade teachers came up with a craft and game idea.  We would love your help to gather donations, run each station and plan/prepare the snack.  Please send me an e-mail if you would like to be added to this list of volunteers!

We will also have a classroom valentine exchange before the Valentine’s Party.  Below, I’ve included our Class List for your reference as your child has fun creating, writing, and/or filling-out their valentines.  Plan to send your child’s valentines into school in a bag labeled with his or her name as soon as they are ready.  Please send in enough valentines for everyone in our class – 28 students.

I would love to have all the valentines to school by Monday, February 13.  Our valentine exchange will take place before our party, so please don’t wait until the party to bring them in.

Jan

28

Reading Update!

January 28, 2012 | Reading  |  Leave a Comment

This past week, we introduced a self checklist for the kids to work with during reading workshop time.  We introduced this to help the kids keep track of the choices they are making each day.  The kids were given a certain number of choices for each of our reading activities and they needed to check them off each time they made a choice to make sure that they weren’t monopolizing any of our reading tools.  They did a great job of keeping track of their choices: read to self, listen to reading, word work, and reading group.  Each day they have at least one read to self time and one reading group time each day and then they could make a choice for their extra times.

We also continued to work on making text to self connections. We focused on how the best connections remind us of something that has happened to us, include a feeling and are connected to the heart of the story.  We talked about how we make lots of little connections as we are reading, but the connections that help us understand a book even better are often connections that are connected to the main idea of the story of the lesson a story is trying to teach you. This week, we talked to the kids about how they often make connections to books that I read aloud to them, but they also make connections to the books that they read on their own.  We had time each day for the kids to read on their own and mark pages in their books that they had connections to while they were reading.  It was easy to see all the thinking that was going on in the room when you took a look at all the post it notes that were hanging out of books!  We then had time for the kids to share their connections to the class.  There was not enough time for us all to share our connections and in order for us not to forget or lose those important connections, we taught the kids about how readers often write their connections down to keep track of their thinking.  The kids tried writing down their own connections on Friday using the following template to guide them:

Title reminds me of ______________. I felt _________.

Jan

27

Writing Update!

January 27, 2012 | Writing  |  Leave a Comment

Again this week, we started the week by allowing the class to start brand new stories, but gave them the goal of revising as they wrote by adding some of the techniques that they have learned in our revision unit to make their stories better. Good writers: reread their stories, play the movie in their heads, add details to the words, add details to the pictures, add dialogue, take away details that don’t make your story better, make your lead sentence exciting, and put the heart of their story at the end of their story.  This sounds like a lot, but you would be amazed at the writing that they are doing…these stories will knock your socks off!!  We can’t wait to celebrate next week!

Toward the end of the week, we talked about how sometimes writers choose to revise their story ideas by changing the shape of their story.  Instead of writing in the shape of a story, writers can take their ideas and change them into letters, postcards, emails, list, how-to directions, songs, poems, and even newspaper articles.  The kids worked hard to look at their stories and take the same idea that they wrote about in their story and change the shape into a new genre of writing.  They had so much fun experimenting and created some great pieces of work!

Jan

27

PORT: A Service Project

January 27, 2012 | Georgetown  |  Leave a Comment

Lily Wressell, a fourth grader in Mrs. Huizenga’s class, is asking her fellow Georgetown students and families to join her in supporting the Pediatric Oncology Resource Team, P.O.R.T., that operates with Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital. 

P.O.R.T. provides much needed resources and hands-on support for families with a child diagnosed with cancer or life-threatening blood disorders. 

Lily will be collecting items to put into theme baskets for the P.O.R.T. Winter Night Out fundraiser in February. 

In particular she is requesting items related to kids arts and crafts such as; paints, crayons, paper, stencils, stickers, etc. 

She is also looking for gift wrap items; paper, bags, bows, ribbon, cards, etc. 

If you are interested in donating items there will be a box located in the lobby until Monday, Feb 6 that you may put them in. 

Thank you for helping Lily reach her goal of providing two baskets to help P.O.R.T.

Jan

26

Book Share!

January 26, 2012 | Reading  |  Leave a Comment

Jan

25

Twin Day

January 25, 2012 | Room 104  |  Leave a Comment

Super cute kids :)

Jan

24

Spelling

January 24, 2012 | Spelling  |  Leave a Comment

Our spelling words for the next two weeks are: with, they, & at.

The kids helped me brainstorm different words that fit in the ‘at’ family…and ‘et’, ‘it’, ‘ot’, ‘ut’. They were busy writing and emailing on their iPads and then we sorted them out on the projector.  The kids are getting quick at emailing!!

UPDATE: Day two’s try…

Jan

23

Social Studies Update!

January 23, 2012 | Social Studies  |  Leave a Comment

Your student may have received something in the mail last week… and if it hasn’t gotten there yet– it’s coming soon!  We will continue working on practicing and learning our own addresses and would love extra practice at home, too!

Last week we continued the man made vs. nature made learning.  We talked about different kinds of landforms:  river, lake, ocean, plain, mountain, and forest.  We know that each of these things are nature made.

We read the book, “The Little House” and talked about how the land around us can change.  The students were shocked to see the transformation from a little house in the country to an entire city being built up around it.  We introduced the word “adapt” to the students– getting used to something new.  We will continue to work with this word in the coming week!  :)

Jan

22

Math Update!

January 22, 2012 | Math  |  Leave a Comment

Our first graders worked hard this week to prepare for our Unit 3 assessment.  We spent our math switch time on Monday and part of Tuesday solving missing total, missing partner and subtraction stories using the great strategies that we’ve learned during this unit.  We also practiced with our red, yellow and orange quilt cards to prepare our brains to solve all different types of equations.

The kids were definitely ready for the assessment and performed very well.  Woohoo!!!

Still, they will be asked throughout the rest of this year to solve stories, and we don’t want your child to lose any of the great strategies that they’ve gained from our learning.

To support your child at home, please encourage him or her to always PROVE THEIR ANSWER when solving a story.  For a missing total story, your child can write an addition equation and count on.  For a subtraction story, your child can write a subtraction equation and use a circle drawing or our counting up strategy to find the answer.  For a missing partner story, we have encouraged our students to make a math mountain (with the total on top) to find the answer.

We appreciate all the time that you take to encourage your child on their math homework.  Practice makes permanent and we don’t want our first graders to lose these wonderful strategies!!!

Next week, we will dive into our new learning in Unit 4 which focuses on teen numbers, place value and strategies for solving equations with larger numbers.  On Friday, every first grader was given a pre-test to evaluate their skills and prior knowledge to determine the best fit math group and math teacher for this new unit.

We look forward to helping your child grow even more as a mathematician!

keep looking »