Observations in Science

To kick off our science lessons for the year we've been practicing making observations and asking questions. To get us started we went on a nature walk on the Southeast trails. We smelled, heard, saw, and touched all kinds of things. In our class someone noticed how the color of pine needles changes when they fall off the tree. We took some fresh pine needles and have been watching them in our room to see how long it takes for their color to change to brown. We've also been lucky to get 4 monarch chrysalises which we've been observing. We should have a butterfly soon! 

Ten and More

This week in math we are working on building number concepts up to 20. Today we played a matching game pairing "ten and more" facts with double ten frames. This is one of the models that we'll use to visualize numbers and support operations throughout the year.

Short Vowel Hop

We've started our year reviewing the vowel sounds. So far, we've focused mainly on short vowel sounds. To help us quickly practice the short vowel sounds we've done a few short vowel hops. Each student hops from vowel to vowel and says the short sound out loud. This has helped support our spelling as we've been working on short vowel words.

Reader's Workshop

This year in first grade we are using a workshop model for reading instruction. Each day we meet for a mini lesson focused on a reading skill, and then students go off and practice independent reading. During this reading time I meet one on one and in small groups with students to work on specific reading goals. At the end of our reading time we meet once more to reflect on a skill or strategy and share about our reading that day. The main component of our reading workshop is spending quality time in text. This month we've kicked off our workshop by looking at ways to pick just right books, learning about foundational skills that readers use consistently, and building our reading stamina. We have gone from 3 minutes of engaged reading to 7 minutes and we track the growth in our reading stamina each day. Look at all of these engaged readers!