Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

A Very Happy Birthday to our beloved Dr. Seuss.  Please check back on Monday (camera got left at school in all of our March Madness Family Fun!) for pictures of our Dr. Seuss breakfast and reading celebration!  And a special thank you for the wonderful Dr. Seuss quotes found at http://www.mamiverse.com/30-dr-seuss-quotes-to-live-by-4920/

Valentine Party

What  a fun time we had at our Valentine’s party!  Thank you so much to Mrs. Haan for organizing the event for us and for all of our dedicated parent helpers.  It is always a pleasure spending time with you all.  Students (and Mrs. Heath!) loved searching for candy hearts in whip cream, playing bingo,  winning cupcakes in the cupcake walk.  Enjoy our pictures of fun!

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Sorting and Classifying

 

As we embark on our newest science unit, we are learning more about sorting and classifying.  Scientist sort and classify animals by groups – mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, fish, and insects.  We will be learning about each of these groups of animals as our unit continues.  But to begin our practice of sorting and classifying we did not start with animals – we started with random items.  Groups of students were given a collection of items to sort and classify.  They had to choose a sorting rule and then make sure that all of their items fit into a group according to the rule.  They had a fabulous time determining the rules and then sorting the items to fit.  It was enlightening to hear their sorting discussions and to see some of the categories they came up with!  Markers were sorted by brand, color, and type; buttons by shape, color, and number of holes; and candy by type, color, and whether or not they “like” it!  All in a days work for a this budding group of scientists! 

Fluency

When we talk about learning to read, there are many different components that must be considered. Parents often times are not sure what they should concern themselves with – do they need be concerned with accuracy – the ability to read the words on the page either by sight or by breaking the words up to  decode them?  Or should their concern by with comprehension – do they understand what they are reading enough to retell the story and discuss it using higher level thinking and reasoning strategies?  One thing that parents may fail to consider when thinking about their child’s reading is fluency.  According to reading expert Timothy Rasinski, in his book, Effective Teaching of Reading: From Phonics to Fluency:    “Fluency is the ability to read accurately, quickly, expressively, with good phrasing, AND with good comprehension.”   Fluency encompasses ALL of what we are looking for in good readers – accuracy, comprehension, pacing, phrasing, and expression.  In 1st grade students are assessed on their fluency twice a year using the following rubric:

 

As with any other assessed content, we spend time in class teaching and practicing fluency.  Much of the teaching and practicing is done in small guided reading groups, but we also use other opportunities to focus on fluency.  One way fluency is taught and practiced is through poetry studies.  Students receive new poems for their poetry notebooks most weeks.  In addition to comprehension discussion on the poems, students hear the poems modeled with fluent reading and  practice reading the poem using their fluency skills:  expression, smoothness & accuracy, phrasing, and pace.  Another way they practice fluency is through the use of Readers Theater scripts.  Readers Theater allows students to practice the same text many times, increasing their fluency each time.  For 2nd quarter I have instituted Fluency Fridays where students have a scheduled time that is set aside to improve fluency through poetry and Readers Theater practice.  This past Friday we focused on Readers Theater. 

Focus on the components of fluency while reading aloud with your child.  You can print out the rubric above and discuss with them where they see themselves at.  Remind them that rereading is a great way to improve fluency!

 

:) Mrs.. Heath

Groundhog’s Day!

Groundhog’s Day found this teacher at a district science training, but that didn’t stop our 1st grade friends from learning all about Groundhog’s Day!  They read a story, made a puppet, and discovered that the famous groundhog,  Phil, saw his shadow and forecasted 6 more weeks of winter.  BUMMER!

But on Friday, this teacher  was back and ready to continue the Groundhog fun!  For science we discovered what  a SHADOW really is – the  absence of light!  Some other interesting facts that we learned: 

All solid things make shadows – both living and non-living.

Night is really just a  big shadow when the Earth’s position is blocking the sun from shining on our part of the Earth. 

You can change the size of a shadow by putting an object closer to or farther from the light.

A clear, colored shape (like our purple clipboard) will actual leave a COLORED shadow.  (That was new to this teacher!)

Flashlights are really fun to make shadows and play with!

Take some time this week to have a little fun with shadows at your house!  Flashlight tag at night is great fun!!

Picture Slide Shows

I have taken the slide shows off of the blog because they seem to slow down the loading.  I am linking them below so that you can still access them if you'd like!

Are You Taller Than a Penguin?

 Winter Holiday Party

Pumpkin Fun

Specialist Heath Visit Our Class

On Wednesday afternoon my first grade friends and I got a special surprise; Specialist Ben Heath, newly returned from serving his country in Afghanistan, dropped in for a visit.  Ok, I’ll admit it – it wasn’t a SURPRISE to me, but it sure was to the kids!  Ben took time to show off some of his medals…

give us a world geography lesson (the red line shows how he got to Afghanistan)…

and of course answered our questions.  Even using images from Google to show us what a Chinook helicopter looked like and a qualot (Afghani mud house).

The kids asked some wonderful questions about Afghanistan and how it differed from Nebraska.  They also asked some other interesting questions like…Why do you have Mrs. Heath’s name on your uniform?  Do you like playing with Barbies?  Do you like Hello Kitty?  and of course Did you know Mrs. Heath drew a picture of you with a big head and a big nose?

Thanks for coming Specialist Heath.  We had a great time learning from you!

100 Days Smarter!

100 Days of learning and 100 Days of fun.  I truly don’t know which is better!  Didn’t our first grade friends looked amazing in the 100th day finery?  We spent the day playing with numbers and discussing place value.  Our class book of what we will look like and do when we are 100 years old is a hoot to say the least!!   One of the highlights for me was when we joined up with the other first grade and kindergarten classes to put the numbers in order from 1 – 115.  The only problem was that we were missing number 100!  No worries though, Mr. 100 (aka Mr. Snyder) came out just in time to save the day.  He needed a little guidance in figuring out where he fit, but we had brilliant students who were able to help him out.  I would have to say that the kids enjoyed their 100th day snacks the most – that or building necklaces out of 100 Fruit Loops (eating any extras of course!).  All an all it was an amazing celebration of our 100 days together.

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Timelines

Today we made a timeline for our first grade year.  Our blog was the PERFECT tool to help us remember the things that we have done!  How fun it was to go back and see what we have learned this year and to see how much we have changed.  We noticed lots of new holes in our smiles and some smiles that have filled in with grown up teeth!  Some of our favorite memories include past science experiments, class visits and field trips, and of course our classroom celebrations.  We hope you enjoy spending time on our blog learning about our classroom!

Week 23 - Filling Buckets with Mr. Snyder

We LOVE our principal - especially when he comes in to read to us!  On Friday Mr. Snyder visited our classroom to remind us to fill one another's buckets.  What a great lesson in being kind and following The Golden Rule it was.  Thanks Mr. Snyder for being a fantastic example to us all.  For more information on what filling a bucket is, please visit www.bucketfillers101.com

Week 22 - Measurement

We are learning all about measuring in our classroom!  Students are getting the opportunity to measure things using a variety of non-standard measurement tools, including their feet!  Other tools we are using are:  paper clips, inch tiles, craft sticks, baby feet, and basketball player feet.  While we introduce the concept of standard measurement using the inch tiles, our focus is more on understanding HOW to measure something - starting at the beginning of the object and ending at the end, putting your tool in a straight line, not leaving gaps, etc.  Students are also getting experience comparing the lengths of objects using the vocabulary of shorter and longer.  We are becoming measurement wizards!

Week 20 - Penguins!

Did you know that an emperor penguin can dive 900 feet down in the water and stay underwater for 20 minutes?  And did you know that not all penguins live in the ice and cold or that baby penguins are fed regurgitated food from their parents?  Well, we learned all of this and more as we studied penguins this week!  Students read many books and did online research to find out facts about the 17 different species of penguins.  They wrote about why they were glad they were NOT a penguin and it seems that many of our first grade friends do not like to eat fish--especially regurgitated fish!!  Two of our favorite activities were passing penguin eggs from mom to dad using only our feet and posing next to a life-sized emperor penguin poster to see how we measure up.  I have posted a slide show of all of our penguin pictures at the top of our blog but here are some more pictures and fun videos for you!  One note on our penguin display - students created their penguins from scratch - they did not have a pattern to trace.  I'm pretty impressed with their creativity!

New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year to all of our friends and family!  We were excited to get back to school with our first grade friends for a brand new year of learning!  On our first day back we reflected on what we did in 2011...

 and made some resolutions for school in 2012.  Some of our favorite resolutions were to work on math facts, spend more time reading, and work on centers.  Here's to a great 2012 in 1st Grade!!