Pumpkin Investigations

Everything is coming up pumpkins in our classroom on this Halloween Day!  We weighed and measured, counted and graphed, read and wrote -- all about pumpkins, day long!!Students learned about pumpkins and got the chance to taste some pumpkin goodies.  The overwhelming favorites were pumpkin whoopie pies, pumpkin cookies, and pumpkin popcorn.  A special thanks to all our families for making this fun day possible!  Here are a few pictures, I'll be posting a slide show with all of the pictures soon!

Love,
Mrs. Heath

Fall Party

Thank you so much for all the help with our Fall Party.  We had a TON of fun pumpkin bowling, drawing jack o'lanterns, pitching candy corn, watching things sink and float, and getting some pumpkin body decorations.  We appreciate Mrs. McLean for organizing and for all the help and donations that made it possible. 

Week 11 - More Science

One of my very favorite pictures!  The students are flying kites to learn about wind direction and speed.  Learning at its best!

I am sad to see our first science unit wrap up this week!  The kids have loved learning about science using inquiry -- a hands on method that allows them to create the learning for themselves.  I would like to write a sternly worded letter to Mother Nature however.  We were seriously lacking in wind this week and last when we were trying to test our wind vanes and pinwheels!  Of course it was always windy in the afternoons -- just not in the mornings when we had science!  On Friday we took our test and I was thrilled to see the students explaining what they had learned about air and wind.  We will be coming back to science in a few weeks and will be learning about weather, seasons, and the cycles of the moon.  Stay tuned!!!

Week 10 - Writing How To Books

Students have started on a new course for writing -- How To Books.  We began this week by doing an oral practice for giving instructions.  Students worked with a partner and attempted to verbally tell them how to create the same shape they had.  The catch was they couldn't see each other and had to do it all with words!! Afterwards we had a great discussion on how you had to give EXACT and CLEAR  directions for the project to work!  From there we looked at a variety of How To Books to see what important information we needed to include and discussed how the author uses pictures as well as words to explain.

Our class "How To Make a Peanut Butter Sandwich"

Our next step was to write a How To book together.  We choose to write about how to do the reading center "Read to Self".  Students then went on to write their own How To Book - a book explaining how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  I told them that I would use their exact instructions the next day to make a sandwich for them and to make sure they told me everything I need to do.  Of course when it came time to read and follow their instructions we found that many of them forgot important details (such as to use a knife!) and it resulted in a few minor problems for sandwich making!  All and all it was a fun experiment and helped the students to understand the importance of being exact and explaining ALL of the steps.  After we tried out a few of their instructions we worked together to write clearer instructions to follow.  I then used those instructions to make a sandwich for each of them.  This next week they will choose something that they know how to do and write their own How To book.  I can't wait to read them!

Jonas did the best job of creating a How To book for sandwich making!

Have a super week,
Mrs. Heath

Week 9-Learning Can Be Fun

Who wouldn't love a week filled with ship building, rocket blasting, firefighter visiting, letter-writing, and parent-student-teacher conferencing??  I LOVE that learning can be fun -- we prove it every day in our 1st grade classroom!  Our week got off to a busy start on Monday when we celebrated Columbus Day by learning about his explorations and building a ship of our own AND we celebrated Fire Safety week with a visit from the Papillion Fire Department. Wednesday students had the opportunity to experiment with balloon rockets and discuss what actually made the rockets move.  It isn't the air "inside" the balloon - it is the air coming OUT of the balloon that propels it down the the line!  Thursday we drafted our letters to special family members asking them to share with us their memories of 1st grade.  I can't WAIT to receive their replies and learn all about how things have changed.  This year's letters will be even more exciting as we have two letters coming back from people who attended first grade in other countries.  How interesting all of the letters will be to read and discuss!
I hope that you get to hear all about these fun-filled learning experiences at home.  I know one of my favorite parts of the day is at dinner each night when I ask my own children to tell me about their day.  The rule in our house is that they have to tell me two things:   the BEST thing that happened that day and one NEW thing that they learned.  It is an amazing experience to hear what excites them and to be honest, I learn a thing or two myself!! 

As always - thanks for everything you do to make our classroom a fabulous place to spend the day! I hope you enjoy your sneak peak into our fun and learning.
Love,
Mrs. Heath

Writing Continuum

I had spoken of the writing continuum in the newsletter last week and neglected to post it.  The following document is how student's writing is graded.  At this time of year we are looking for mostly 3's with some 2's.  By the end of the year the students are expected to have all 3's and 4's to be proficient.  By the end of 2nd grade they should have mostly 5's.  As always if you have any questions about writing or how we assess writing, please feel free to let me know!

Click here to access the Writing Continuum

Love,
Mrs. Heath

New Book Bags!!

Drumroll please.....Here they are, our 4 new Take Home Bags!!  Make way for learning about Apples, Space, Robert Munsch, and Birds.  A special thank you to the Halsted and Koehler families for their purchases that helped make the bags a reality!!  That bring our total take home bag count to 23 -- enough for everyone to have one each week with 2 leftover.

:) Mrs. Heath

Week 8 - Authors

Students have been reviewing previously taught comprehension strategies this week through the study of "There Was an Old Lady..." books.  They have reviewed the strategies of asking questions, making connections, and visualization.  Let me tell you, visualization is very interesting when you are visualizing an old women who is eating strange things such as pumpkins, bats, whales, and cows!  To wind up our unit the students worked together to write their own "There Was an Old Lady..." book.  With one minor name change (the original title was "The Was an Old Mrs. Heath") they great work of "There Was an Old Teacher Who Swallowed a Ruler" was created. I will be letting kids take turns bringing it home in their new book bags next week.  It is quite the fun story!

Copying the writing style of favorite authors is a super way for students to practice their writing skills.  Do you have a reader who LOVES Clifford?  Have them write their own Clifford adventure.  The same for Magic Treehouse, Fly Guy, or any other book series.  We will be beginning to write how-to books in the coming weeks.  My Lego lovers can write how-to manuals for building their favorite designs and my Pokemon fanatics can write manuals of how to win against their friends.  Anything you can do to get them to buy into writing is a winner in my book!

Happy writing!!

Blogging Fun!

There is a neat thing online called "wordle".  You put in a piece of text or the address of a blog, and it takes the text and creates a word doodle (wordle) of the most common words.  This is the wordle of our blog so far this year.  Fun!

Pushing on Air

We have been learning all about air in science.  Monday the students had the opportunity to create and test parachutes.  Some of the parachutes did not work so well.  Some of them flew CLEAR away.  On Wednesday they used syringes and tubing to create systems to compress air using pressure.  Enjoy some of our pictures and a few videos of the students explaining the principles at work.

Love,

Mrs. Heath

Week 7 - Pattern Block Fun

Dear Parents,
I am not very organized I guess!  I managed to leave my camera at school on Friday and even though I spent 2 hours at school today (Sunday), I STILL managed to forget it!!  I will add pictures to this post tomorrow from school.  Also, our online grading system (which is where I access your email addresses) has been down all weekend.  That means I have not been able to send out the weekly newsletter yet.  I am adding it to our newsletter page here on the blog and I will email it to you as soon as our access is reinstated.  Thank you for your understanding!

This week our focus has been on new science and math learning and our writing celebration.  Students LOVE science (see our blog from earlier this week for more on that!).  They are also really enjoying our new geometry unit in math.  On Friday they brought home several of their recent pattern block pages.  As you can see, our geometry unit is very hands on.  You can support that learning at home by having them look around the house and identify shapes in everyday items.  The roof is a ___________________, a chair is made up of ______________ and ______________, and the artwork on the walls has ____________.  They can also create pictures or artwork of their own using shapes.  Fun idea:  have them design your holiday cards using shapes!

On Friday we had our first writing celebration with the other first grade classes.  Authors need a chance to share their work and this celebration provided that.  Students worked with partners this week to improve their writing by fixing misspelled words and adding details.  Then they rewrote their stories onto clean paper, created artwork with colored pencils and markers, and gave their stories an appropriate title.  I can't wait to share these wonderful works of writing with you at conferences in a few weeks.  The students have already made so much growth as writers this first 7 weeks of school. 

Have a great week and I'll get some pictures up ASAP!
Love,
Mrs. Heath

We LOVE Science!

Investigating the materials from our unit.

Experimenting with air.

Jonas' "I Think, I Wonder" entry

I honestly think that the kids would be thrilled if I just spent all day teaching science!!  They are absolutely LOVING our unit on air and wind and we've only done one experiment so far! They had a bag of items that they used to experiment with air.  Air was blown through straws, balls were rolling all around the floor, balloons were emptied of air to make feathers fly, and foam balls were stuck in balloons and then the balloons blown up with an air pump. Hands on learning at it's best!  They are going to love it even more tomorrow when they try to keep a paper towel in a vial dry after submerging it in water.  What I am loving the most is that our new science curriclum engages all of them, and not only when they are doing the experiments.  The writing in their science notebooks is phenomenal as well.  Take a look at our first few days of science and I'll be sure and post more pictures soon!

Love,




Mrs. Heath

Hard at work writing in our Science Notebooks

Week 6- Test, Test, Test, Test.... and Oh Yeah...Test!!

We have been Frolicking in 1st Grade for 6 weeks now and it is time to ASSESS what we have learned!  Assessment is not just the "Fancy Nancy" word for a test, it is really a better word to describe what we do!  I am not really "testing" the students but are assessing their learning to determine what still needs to be taught.  The word test implies a one time event where you either get it or don't.  My philosophy, and that of our district, is to use assessment to determine what the students know and what they still need to learn.  We do not assess and then just move on; students will continue to receive instruction in the material if needed. 

Now that you have had a little "assessment" tutorial of your own...What exactly have we been assessing this week?  Students completed their first social studies unit this past week and were given a social studies assessment and an oral speaking assessment over community helpers.  All students were also given their first math assessment which covered numbers to 20 and the concept of addition.  This one was a bit more difficult as they had to EXPLAIN in writing what strategies they use when they are adding!  They also had their third math fact assessment over combinations of 5 (or 6 if they had previously passed 5).  Finally, students were given individual reading benchmark tests to determine their instructional and frustration reading levels. 


I am happy to say that overall students ROCKED their assessments!  They have learned a lot in our 6 short weeks together and we all have a lot more to learn.  I'm grateful for assessments that remind me how much my 1st grade friends are learning and growing!  :)  I will be sharing all of these assessments with you at conferences in two weeks.  I can't wait, can you???

Mrs. Heath doing her "Happy Dance"

Love,
Mrs. Heath

Weekly Newsletter Page

Yikes!  I have totally changed the layout of the blog this year and as such I keep forgetting to update the weekly newsletter page.  Please forgive my oversight.  I will try to do better as we go forth in the year!

Love,
Mrs. Heath

Vehicle Day Field Trip

It was a chilly, damp day on Friday but we headed out to see the vehicles anyway! Students LOVED that they got to get in and check things out up close and personal.  Here are a few of their observations from the day.
I hugged Dollar Dog. - Garrett
We sat in the limo.  - Meredith
I sat in the mailman's truck. - ?  Forgot to put their name on! ?

I like the Cox Car and the plumbers car. - Macie
I go to the Fed Ex truck. - Sophie
I loved the zoo car.  - Elle
My third favorite was the fancy police car. - Ben

I honked the big truck's horn.  - Ethan
I like the fire truck. - Zak
My other favorite was the corvette.  - Hunter (?  Must of missed that one!?)
I got to get in the limo. - Jade
I liked when we went on the bus. - Amy
We got to see a K-9 Unit.  - Jonas
I like the big truck. - Mya
I like all the cop cars. - Dannika