First Grade Science and a Student Teacher

Hello and Happy Friday!

We have had a big couple weeks so I will get right to it!  Last week we started science and learning about pebbles, sand, and silt.  We talked about scoria, obsidian, slate, granite, and limestone rock types.  We also had a blast "finding" treasures in the sandbox outside.  Treasures included pennies, polished rocks, gold rocks, and super balls that look like rocks.  Mrs. Brenner had this wonderful idea to have the students dig for the treasures by scooping the sand into sifting grates.  Boy was this a big hit!  Every single student was engaged in this activity.  Here are the pictures I took:

We looked at different kinds of rock and sorted them into properties.

Magnification glasses were a big hit!

Students could look at a guide to see what kind of rock each one was.

We will continue science for the new few weeks.

In other news we have a student teacher in the classroom from now until January 25th.  Here name is Becky Englin and she will be sending home a parent letter next week to tell you a bit more about herself.


Thanks for all you do and have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Parker

November Already!??

Where has the time gone?  I can't believe it is already November!!  As of yesterday we have been in school for 42 days. 

 I have to apologize for not keeping up with this blog as much as I would have liked to the past month.  We have been so busy during the day that I have been forgetting to take pictures of our activities.  Getting behind with posting has started to stress me out so to make myself feel better I made a deal with myself that I can just write how our week went and I do not need to have pictures posted for each blog.  We will see how that goes : ).

We had a very busy October.  We started guided reading groups the second week and I cannot believe the progress I have seen so far!  Thank you so much for working hard at home.  I can tell your children are reading each night as well as practicing their word cards.  First grade as a grade level has set a focused goal of working on sight words.  To help with that I created the weekly sight word sheets for those students that just need that extra exposure to those words.  When I assessed their sight words again last week to progress monitor every single one of them improved to the goal for the pre-primer words.  You should have gotten the green primer sight word cards because of their progress.  These next 52 words are a bit more challenging, but keep practicing with your child!  I can see the confidence soaring when I work with them each day in guided reading. 

In math we have been working on understanding the equal sign, decomposing or breaking up numbers, structuring numbers, number order, skip counting forwards and backwards, place value, addition, subtraction, problem solving, math facts of +1/-1, odd and even, and greater than/less than.  I would like to share what I learned at a math conference this summer when teaching greater than/ less than.

Students will place two dots next to the larger number and one dot next to the smaller number and then connect the dots!  All these years I was struggling with alligator teeth drawn on their work............  A simple instruction technique that students really understand! 

I also can't believe how quickly my class has taken on odd and even numbers!  They are so motivated still about odd and even numbers that we discuss at least one number every day during calendar time.  I perform these assessment checks for them each day to help monitor and drive my future instruction and I am seeing unbelievable progress!  Many of the students are ready for more challenging material so my next goal is to try to make more time in the day for daily math centers.  I am going to divide the class into 3-4 groups according to student need and then work with the neediest 2-3 days a week and the other two once a week.  I will then try to follow up those lessons with math homework.  This may take a couple more weeks yet, but it is something I am making a priority! 


Now to the fun stuff!  We had our costume parade this past week and boy were they all adorable! 

Since I do not post pictures of the students I thought this picture would be great to share.  This picture was taken when we walked outside.  Look at the amount of parents and friends watching the parade!  Keep in mind that there were even more people around the fence and along the Eddy Street sidewalk too.

Sorry for the Glare, but this was the best picture I could get.  We read the book The Fierce Yellow Pumpkin by Margaret Wise Brown.  What great descriptive words in this book!
 

We then made pumpkins by tearing the paper- No scissors were allowed!  Look how great they turned out!!  We also wrote two adjectives to explain our own pumpkins.  I just had to hang them up.....: )

Finally a close up!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!


Mrs. Parker