Weekly News!

We were off to a thrilling start this week, as we learned on Tuesday that Mo Willems had written back to us! If you remember back to our letter writing unit, we had written letters to Mo and sent them off, crossing our fingers and waiting for a reply. We received a letter in the mail from him that answered questions about his life as an author, as well as two posters for our classroom! He autographed them, one reading “Yay Mrs. Glaser’s Class!” and the other, “Dryden Kids Rock!” with a drawing of Piggie from his wildly popular Elephant & Piggie books. We were so excited to hear from him!!

This week, Leilani was our class photographer, and she was snapping away, capturing her favorite moments from the week! Here are a few of her photos, along with her captions:

"Kate was doing the project on the iPad with our science experiment. She's really good at the iPad."


"Lily and Andrew were playing our math game. We rolled the dice to see what number was rolled the most times."


"Katerina is treating the iPads really nicely."


"Isabel is concentrating on her math work."


"We were learning about a long time ago, an artist named Rembrandt, and shadows and lighting. Hey! Kind of like in Treasures!"


"Ellie was drawing a portrait of a very good friend Luciana because they were partners."

Reading

This week our Treasures theme was “Me and My Shadow”. Our spelling and word work lessons focused on consonant digraphs (ch-, wh-, -tch). During grammar instruction, we learned about past tense verbs. As we read this week, we identified the main idea of the selections, as well as the details that support the main idea. This week during small group time, I completed the AIMSweb testing to measure the students’ growth from the fall. This, combined with the running records to determine guided reading levels, gives me a well rounded picture of where each student is performing in reading, and will help me to set goals for working with each of them. Looking ahead to next week, our Treasures theme will be “Our Families”. As we read the selections for the week, we will practice generating questions and making predictions to help us think about what is happening in the text. Our spelling and word work lessons will focus on long /i/ words. Our grammar lessons will focus on when we use the word “is” (when talking about one person, place, or thing) and when to use the word “are” (when talking about more than one person, place, or thing).


Writing

This week in writing, we began our How-To writing about our individual topics. The students first brainstormed four ideas of things they might be able to write about. We evaluated these choices and decided which one we would like to pursue. Next, we planned out our steps, and edited our steps to make sure they made sense for our readers. Students partnered up to practice acting out the steps of one another’s writing, and it was very eye opening for some of the students! They realized that they needed to add many more details before someone could successfully carry out the steps of their directions! Next week, we will use the Story Kit app on the iPads to publish our writing. The students practiced typing sentences on the iPads this week using the Pages app in preparation for the typing portion of our publication!
Math

Our math lessons this week tied into addition and subtraction skills. We solved number stories, practiced addition facts with dice sums, and learned how doubles facts can help us to solve many types of addition problems. Now is a great time to start committing those doubles facts to memory! (1+1, 2+2, 3+3, etc) The students really enjoyed having the iPads during math time each day, as they used the Doodle Buddy app to work out problems, draw pictures to solve problems, or write number models to go along with the number stories. Having those tools right at their fingertips was so motivating for them to think about the problems, work them out, and explain how they arrived at their answers. When we finished our regular math work each day, we also had time to explore some of the fabulous math apps we have on the iPads. Since our focus for the week was on addition and subtraction practice, we focused mainly on apps that contained some sort of fact practice. Some of the students’ favorites in this category included: Math Bingo, Math Drills, Sums Stacker, Under Sea Math, and Piggy Math HD. Next week, we will review the fact strategies that have been introduced thus far, learn the “What’s My Rule?” function boxes, where students study the pattern of numbers to determine what action is being performed on the numbers each time. For instance, the rule may be count up by 2s, -3, +10, etc. Finally, we will practice applying these rules, so the students will be given function boxes and rule and they will figure out what number will be produced after performing the rule.

Science & Social Studies

Focusing again this week on living things, the first grade scientists explored plants by dissecting and examining lima beans. We learned that seeds have a seed coat, as well as stored food and an embryo inside. We discovered that a seed germinates and a sprout begins to grow into a new plant, so all of these parts are necessary for the seed to grow. During our dissection, we used the Explain Everything app on the iPads to take a picture of the dissected bean and label the parts. We also composed a sentence to tell one thing we wondered or one thing we discovered during our experiment. This was a neat way for the students to organize their thoughts and create a meaningful product to document their observations and learning. Next week, we look forward to examining roots and celery to learn more about the parts of plants and the purposes they serve!

Art Appreciation
Today, Luca's mom joined us for another art appreciation lesson! The students studied the painting, "The Night Watch" and learned about Rembrandt, along with some important techniques he used, like changing his colors to reflect the shading and light in his paintings. We also learned that he painted portraits, or paintings of people. Next, we had the opportunity to draw portraits of our seat partners, ourselves, or a friend or family member. They added some nice details to these drawings! What a well rounded group of talented kids we have!

Enjoy the snow this weekend and stay warm!!

Mrs. Glaser ☺