Reading Partners

We've added a new piece to our daily reader's workshop. Students now practice independent reading along with partner reading each day. We've learned about how reading partners sit with each other, how they hold their books, and the voice that they use to read. Throughout the year reading partners will support each other by practicing reading skills, sharing books with eachother, and talking about their reading.

Studying Seeds

In science right now we are studying seeds. We started by learning about the parts of a seed. To see these parts for ourselves we dissected lima beans. We learned that seeds have seed coats, embryos, and food. Last week we learned about how seed travel. We learned that there are many ways seeds move to new places including by wind, water, and animal. We looked at examples of different seeds from outside and thought about how they traveled. Then students made their own helicopter seeds.

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Butterflies

Last week we were lucky to have some monarch chrysalises donated to our classroom. We spent the week watching them change as the butterflies prepared to come out. The chrysalises became clear and we could see the butterflies inside. On Friday we got to watch a butterfly emerge and dry its wings. In the last few moments of our week the butterfly was ready to go outside and we got to release him. Students will learn much more about butterflies in the second grade monarch unit, but we enjoyed the chance to watch this process!

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!