Busy Day!

What a busy day!  Today we talked about lots of different things...here is a snap shot.

In writer's workshop yesterday we worked on writing a small moment story together.  Then today we went back and used "acting it out" to help make sure we made the characters move, talk, think and feel.  Our changes are in red...what a difference!

We also worked with our new word families -og & -ot.  I was amazed at the words they came up with: including blends and multisyllable words.

Classroom Update

Parent Information

• Don't forget to send in the Acceptable use policy.  We need it signed to allow students to use the computers.

• We will be having our Halloween parade and party next Thursday.  Please send in your child's costume that day.  Any make-up should be applied at home.  The parade will start at 1:30.  We will be parading around the school.

• Please send in the class email form.  I would like to give them out so the room parents have them for the Halloween party.

Math

• Continued working with story problems focusing on using the most efficient strategies we can: counting on or better yet...known fact
• Continued working on showing our thinking, record a number equation and label our answers
• Worked on problems with multiple combinations.  Students iidentified some target words..."some, target number & how many of each". 

***Check out our guest blogger Sean's system he uses to solve this type of problem.

                                

Social Studies

• Read several different stories about Christopher Columbus

Literacy

• Worked with the short vowel I.  "I...itch...i"
• Worked with the ig & ick word families
• Learned that you use -ck at the end of a word or syllable that has a short vowel
• Began working with short O.  "O...octopus..o"
• Worked with the -ock & -op families
• Writer's Workshop:  learned how to "unfreeze our stories" by making our characters move and talk

Global Read Aloud

We continued to read books by Eric Carle as part of our global read aloud.  This week we focused on The Mixed-Up Chameleon.  In our library/tech class we worked on making ourselves into animals.  The students used "fotobabble" to record themselves.  I then used "thinglink" to put in all together.  Click on all the touch points to see/hear our mixed up animals.  

Math

We have been working on using efficient strategies when solving problems in math.  Our guest bloggers Katie and Carl have shared their strategies.

                              

Classroom Update

Parent Information

• Please make sure to send in your scholastic order by Tuesday if you are interested in ordering.
• Picture day is on October 10th.
• The list of words coming home each week are the words that we have worked with for the week.  The words that are starred are the "word wall" words that they must be able to read and spell.  Practicing reading and writing the "word wall" words and words with the families we have explored would be beneficial.

The Great Read Aloud

All around the world first grade classes are reading books by Eric Carle.  Last week we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar.  We then watched videos from Eric Carle himself.  In our tech time in the library we worded together using tagul.com.  This web site works on build word clouds.  We put together words that reminded us the story.  You can move the mouse over the words and ask your child to explain them to you. Take a look at the cloud we made! 

http://tagul.com/preview?id=199350@9&name=The%20Very%20Hungry%20Caterpillar

Literacy

• Began working with the short vowel I.  "I...itch...i"
• Worked with the in & it word families
• Worked with new centers:  Work on Writing & Word Work
• Talked a lot about how to "frame our thoughts":  capitals and end marks
• Writer's Workshop:  learned how writing partners can help us with our planning and revising our stories

Math

• Worked with story problems
• Began identifying different ways to solve story problems:  counting all, counting on and know fact
• Talked about how important it is to show our thinking, record a number equation and label our answers
• Continue to work on being efficient, making the decision to count accurately but quickly

Social Studies

• Talked about what fall or autumn brings
• Read stories about apples
• Sequenced the life cycle of an apple
• Read a "tall tale" of Johnny Appleseed

Whole Body Listening

Over the last 20 days we have been talking about "Whole Body Listening"; why it is important and what it looks like.  Today we looked at the visual to help us remember what it takes to listen.

Below you will see the visual we are using.  We talked about how you need to use "Whole Body Listening" at home, brownies, cub scouts, soccer...etc.

Enjoy :)