How-To Publications!

The first grade authors have been hard at work on their How-To projects. Each child selected a topic, planned their steps, typed their directions, and took photos to demonstrate each step. Finally, they emailed me a link to their books! All of their work is 100% their own! They did each step independently using the iPad 2s. I am so proud of how much they were able to do! If you are having trouble decoding their writing, ask them to read it to you- some of them that were difficult for me to read made so much sense once they told me what they were writing! Great job first graders! Click on each child’s name below to view their books.

Lily

Ellie

Luca

Andrew

Mick

Emily

Katerina

Mykolas

Isabel

Leilani

Jill

Emilia

Luciana

Joe


Matthew

Peter

Luke

Kate

Jesse

Advice for the First Grade class of 2011-2012

Recently, we have been practicing our speaking and listening skills as we took the letters we wrote to next year's first graders and stood in front of an audience of Kindergarten students to read them! The students were so excited to share their wisdom about first grade, and had a ball standing in front of a "real audience" to read the letters they had written. Thank you Kindergarten students for being such respectful listeners!

Signed, Sealed, Delivered!

Today was an exciting day in Writer's Workshop! We've been working hard preparing our letters to authors! Each child chose to write to either Jan Brett (author of The Mitten and many others) or Laura Numeroff (author of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and many others). First, we brainstormed ideas of questions we could ask the authors or things we could tell them about. Next, each child wrote a rough draft, remembering to include the heading, greeting, body, closing, and signature of the letter. Then, we met with our writing buddies to revise and edit our letters. Finally, we wrote our final drafts in our nicest, neatest handwriting. And today we completed the last step when we addressed the envelopes to mail our letters off to the authors! We will cross our fingers and hope for a reply!

Author Celebration!

On Friday, we celebrated the end of our first unit of Writer's Workshop with a first grade author celebration. The students published their autobiographies, and met in the LMC with other first graders to share. We used our microphones within our groups to identify which author was sharing. It was an exciting way to wrap up our focus on autobiographies before moving on to our next unit, which focuses on writing about "small moments". The autobiographies will be hanging outside of our classroom for all to enjoy! (You may enlarge any of the pictures from our author celebration by clicking on them.)

Writer's Workshop

We are writing away, and enjoy sharing what we've written with the other authors in our classroom!  These photos are from a sharing session in which the authors read a selection they are interested in sharing with the class.  

Remember to take any opportunity that presents itself to write at home!  This includes letters to friends and family members, shopping lists, personal narratives about family outings or experiences, make believe stories from your imagination, poems, songs, etc.  Happy writing!