Where does the time go? There is so much learning going on in First Grade! Check out some of the things we've been up to in Room 224! Also, don't forget to check the photos tab for some fun pictures, including ones from our December Skating Unit.
Reading
We are noticing blends, digraphs, and chunks in more and more words, making decoding tricky words that much easier! Likewise, we've been learning about compound words and can find them in the stories we read.
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| This is a compound word web the students created. |
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| In this morning message, the students had to find compound words. |
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| Our sign-in question |
The students wrote and illustrated compound words.
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| The outer flaps show the two words. |
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| Open it up and the whole compound word is revealed! |
Reading Comprehension
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| We use our background knowledge (or schema) to help us read. We've been thinking of our brain as a file cabinet full of different kinds of information. (This idea came from a teacher/author named Maria Walther, who I recently had the opportunity to visit.) At Thanksgiving time, we added to our schema about the holiday. Now we are building our schema as we explore our science unit on rocks. During Reader's Workshop, we are observers and have been adding to our files physically (with 3x5 cards full of rock knowledge) and mentally as we learn more. We have also been using our schema to make text-to-self connections. |
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| Predicting is another skill we have been developing. We use our predicting skills all the time to help us understand what we read. We are constantly thinking about what will happen next. The pictures, context clues and our schema help us make predictions. |
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| Busy writing our predictions for the title of the story. |
Writing
We continue to work on developing our stories and adding details. One point of focus has been organization. We have been reading lots of books and determining the Beginnings, Middles and Endings of stories. In our own writing, we are zooming in on how to make Bold Beginnings like we have been finding in these mentor texts. We want to grab our readers with our beginnings, so they will be excited to read on.
One activity we did was work together in partners to locate books that began with a time. We then created a chart to share the different ways these books showed time.
We keep these books in a bin for our writing reference. We are also noticing how authors begin their stories with specific locations or settings.
We worked with partners to create short stories with a beginning, middle and ending. We used different colored sentence strips to represent the beginning (green), middle (yellow), ending (yellow).
Technology
Lastly, check out some learning we did using technology a few weeks ago. We learned the official McDole IPAD Expectations with Mrs. Bright and her class. They came to teach our class about using IPADs, and how to show our learning with a new app called ScreenChomp. We will be using this App throughout the year to demonstrate our knowledge in different areas of study. Below are the best audible examples of learning from our pumpkin study, as well as some photos of our afternoon of collaboration.
http://www.screenchomp.com/t/PHOnkgnqQQ
http://www.screenchomp.com/t/MD0FIICH4
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| One of the most important IPAD Expectation is to hug the device with both hands for safety. |
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| Listening in on what information we shared in our ScreenChomp. |
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| Deciding on a plan of action. |
