Choosing Just-Right Books...

Room 224 has been busy learning.  We continue to practice our reading stamina as we Read to Self and Read to Someone.  We even learned about a new Daily called Work on Writing.  This week we also learned about different ways to choose good fit books...

One quick way to choose "Just Right" books is by using the five finger test.  We make a fist, open up to a page and hold up a finger each time we don't know a word.   

2-3 fingers up is a goal for most books in our book box.  This way of choosing books fits into the 4th step (K-know the words) of our next way of choosing books.

In this second way, we PICK  a "Just-Right" book following each step.  We first talked about how shoes are like books. 

There are shoes for many purposes and interests, just like we choose books to fit multiple reasons.  

What is the PURPOSE of this shoe?  I choose it for running.  I am really INTERESTED in exercise, so it seems to be a good fit.  If I tried on this running shoe, it would feel great and would be a perfect fit!  

However, there are times when we choose shoes, like these dressy ones because know we need a dressy pair for a fancy event, and we know they interest us, but when we try them on, they just don't fit!

These shoes are just too big or too small.  When talking about books, these little books might be too easy and the big books would be the kind where we don't COMPREHEND what's going on and we don't KNOW many of the words.  (These books might be the books where we would be holding up four or more fingers when reading just one page.)

Our friends tested this theory out when they switched shoes that fit both their PURPOSE and INTEREST, but they realized that their shoes did not actually fit each other.   

Just-Right Books, like good fit shoes feel wonderful.  They are ones that feel great for all 4 parts of the PICK process (including PURPOSE, INTEREST, COMPREHENSION and KNOWing the words).

We practiced finding Just-Right (good fit) books for our book boxes.  This is something we will continue to do throughout the year.  We discussed how many books that aren't a good fit right now, will eventually fit when we continue to grow as readers.  

In writing workshop we are beginning to write narrative stories.  We are zooming in on small moments of time to tell our stories across several pages.  We have been learning the difference between watermelon stories and seed stories.  A watermelon is a huge topic that could contain many small moment stories (seeds) Where a seed story focuses on a detailed time.  One watermelon topic we talked about was school.  A seed topic would be one morning last week when we had a fire drill.  

This is a mentor text we have been using to learn about narrative stories (small moments).  In this book, a little boy tells (a seed story) about the one time he did not want to eat his peas!  

One of our favorite stories to read this week involved a little boy who had a disastrous picture day.  Luckily for us, we took some great pictures on Monday.

These are some strategies we have been learning to solve addition and subtraction problems in Math.  Number bonds are something we have been practicing each morning as we do calendar and learn about the number of days we've been in school.

Friday was a great day to celebrate reaching our goal of 100 table points!  We enjoyed having some extra furry friends as reading buddies.  

We are looking forward to another wonderful week of learning!  

Building Our Literacy Skills

We had another fun and busy week in first grade!

Each five day week we will be learning new word wall words.  On Monday we cheered our new words to practice spelling them.  

Our Read-Aloud Chart is growing each day.  These are the books we've read since the beginning of the school year!

We began a new Reading Daily called "Read to Someone"  (also known as Read to Buddy).  Two of our first grade friends demonstrated what this Daily looks and sounds like.  

This is our Read to Someone chart.  We learned that sitting EEKK is a part of buddy reading.  

During Read to Someone we also "Check for Understanding" as we listen to our partner read.  We recall the story, retelling important parts like the who, what, where...

We are enjoying reading together!

We have been building our reading stamina and graphing how long we have been able to successfully Read to Self.  17-1/2 minutes is our longest time yet!  

We have learned multiple ways to read a story.  We practice these ways during Read to Self and Read to Someone.  

After reading Listen, Buddy   we created a reminder about how we can be good listeners.  

Writing Workshop is in full swing in first grade.  We are learning about writing narratives (small moments).  This is our chart about how to write a story.

We wanted to share our classroom rules/expectations chart we created the first couple days of school.  We are doing very well with the 3 R's.  

This is a picture of our clip chart.  We are working hard to earn 3s, 4s, and 5s.  Sometimes we clip down, but we are learning from our mistakes, and always trying our best.

We began earning table points for good behavior and have reached our class goal of 100 points!  The class voted to celebrate by bringing in a favorite stuffed animal on Friday, September 11th.  These furry friends should be small, and quiet (no noise-making toys please).

 Awesome job First Graders!  :)