Weekly Update 2/23/19

The students are underway with their project based learning activities in social studies. The children are working in groups based on their choices of which region of Native Americans they were most interested in learning more about. Each group has selected a project to create and present to the first grade students in a "Native American Museum". This week we focused on creating plans for Google Slides and poster presentations. Then, the children conducted research using books and websites. Now, the are beginning to create their projects. I can't wait to see how they turn out!

In math, we are continuing to work on Chapter 8, which focuses on money. Any practice students can do with counting loose change at home is encouraged. Next week, we will finish the lessons in the chapter to learn about word problems with money and different ways to combine coins to make $1.00. Here are a few more robots from our STEM bins.

The children are practicing writing summaries about books they read. They listened to Chicken Sunday by Patricia Polacco. This book helped to model how to include all important story elements in a summary.

In writing, most students are wrapping up their drafts and editing their work. Next, week each student will pick one of their two informational books to make a published copy of. The children continue to learn more lowercase letters in cursive. They are very excited to be able to write some of their first words now that they know enough letters to combine them together!

Weekly Update 2/15/19

The children had a fabulous time at our Valentine's Day Party! Thank you to all of the parents who volunteered to help plan and run the party. Students made bags to collect their Valentines the day before. On Valentine's Day they enjoyed all of the games and crafts, including make some beautiful canvas paintings. Some students also created digit Valentines for a family member and posted them to Seesaw.

In math, we have wrapped up subtraction. We started our first lesson on money on Friday, which focused on identifying and counting groups of pennies, nickels, and dimes. We will continue to work on lessons about counting quarters and mixed groups of coins in Chapter 8 next week. Reviewing skip counting by 5s and 10s at home will be helpful to students during this chapter. The children began creating robots with their STEM bins this week as well!

We read a Scholastic News article about Tisquantum and the Wampanoag tribe during reading. This related nicely to our study of the Northeast Woodlands region of Native Americans in social studies. We also learned that characters can have different points of view about the same event in a story. 

We have finished learning about each of the regions of Native Americans in social studies. Next week, we will begin our group projects. Take a look at our map we have made with pictures to remind us of the various types of food, clothing, shelter, and cultural activities each region had.

In writing, most students have finished writing their three subtopic sections of their informational books. They worked in partners to share a subtopic with each other. Then, each person left a sticky note for their partner telling them something about the topic they would like to learn more about. The children used the sticky notes to help them revise and elaborate with more facts. Students also learned how to revise their heading and chapter titles to make them more catchy. They used alliteration and sound effects to help grab their reader's attention.

Weekly Update 2/10/19

Wacky Wednesday and the Global Day of Play made for a fun day last week!

We have been learning about different regions of Native Americans from around our country. Students are comparing and contrasting the shelters, food, clothing, and cultures of various geographic areas. So far, they have studied the Pacific Northwest, the Northeast Woodlands, and the Plains regions. Each child has a folder where they are taking notes on foldables for each region.

We have finished up all of the lessons in Chapter 7 for math, and have been reviewing for a test on Tuesday, February 12th. Review pages were sent home in your child's green folder on Friday. Our next chapter will focus on counting money. The children have really been enjoying the new stem bins and other games in math centers. Take a look at the boats they built!

The students are learning how to write in cursive! They are very excited to learn this new skill. We are beginning with lowercase letters and are learning a few new letters a week.

The children are almost halfway through their second drafts of informational books. Each student brainstormed a new topic and went through the steps of webbing out their facts. Some students are doing additional research in books or using Pebble Go to add more information to their writing. We have been studying published non-fiction books to see that many authors use text boxes to add special facts or definitions. The students are working to include their own "Fast Fact" boxes to their writing.

In reading, we are learning the difference between summarizing and retelling. We will be looking at different ways we can write a summary of the most important parts of a book.