In Science, we continue to collect and examine living things. Today, we dissected two types of flowers and discovered their pistil and stamens. We were a little sad to "destroy" a flower, but I said in the name of Science and discovery, it would be okay!
Room 112 Firsties have been introduced to the penny and nickel. We observed both coins and noticed similarities and differences. At home, have your Firstie practice counting nickels and pennies together. They can also practice exchanging 5 pennies for 1nickel. We are almost finished with our launching unit in reading workshop. Today's lesson focused on making sure to have a balanced reading diet. Just like we need to eat a variety of foods to stay strong and healthy, we need to read a variety of books to become strong and healthy readers. We looked at several of the books from our first unit and put them under the correct genre on our "Balanced Reading Diet" plate. We talked about how we should try to get books from all three genres in our book baskets to become strong readers.
We have completed our launching unit in writing and each first grader published an autobiography. To celebrate our hard work we got together with Mrs. Copersmet's class to share our writing with friends. We rotated three times so that each first grader could share their autobiography with several friends. Our first grade writers were so excited to celebrate all their hard work!
An important part of reading workshop is independent reading time! In order for first graders to be independent during reading time, they need to find "just right" books that they can read on their own. We spent some time "shopping for books" this week. Each group shopped for a variety of books. They picked mostly "just right" books (from bins at their independent reading level), a few non-fiction books and one "look" book. A "look" book is a book about a topic that they are interested in and they are allowed to pick it even if the words are too hard for them to read. The students were very engaged in this process! We will each shop for new books once a week.
Here are some pictures of our firsties learning to "stop, think and write" during reading workshop. You should have received a letter explaining this process along with your child's work and a think mark sheet. We encourage you to use this process at home when you are reading with your child! They are fabulous thinkers!
Our first grade writers learned that authors show their work to others before it goes for publication. These writing partners or "editors" help the authors to make their writing even better! Our first grade partners worked together to see if their autobiography writing made sense and to ask questions or share ideas on what else could be added to the words or pictures. They did a fabulous job helping each other to get their writing ready for publication!
The firsties love when they get "choice" in how to practice their word work words for the week! Once a week we get to choose how we practice our word wall words and word pattern words. Some friends rainbow write the words, others write bubble letters and some make spelling scribbles! Ask your child to tell you about their favorite way to practice their words. Here are some pictures of our firsties hard at work!
We are coming to the end of our launching unit in reading workshop and the firsties have done a fabulous job! This week we reviewed the three different genres that were introduced during this unit: poetry, fiction and non-fiction. We then reviewed the features or characteristics of each of these genres. We worked as a whole group to sort some books into genres, and then worked with a partner to create a poster about our genre. We created our posters on the ipads using the Pic Collage app. Here are some of the posters we created!
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