Science...Matters!

Dear Family,

What a fun week! We worked so hard in all subject areas, but I think that most of us really enjoyed our Science unit this week: classifying matter.

We reviewd the 3 different forms of matter and what the word PROPERTY means when we are describing matter.

Then, we were ready for our Science lab. Before we begin a lab, we have to have jobs to help make our lab run smoothly.

We looked at a frozen popsicle, a melted popsicle, a gummy worm, a frozen gummy worm, a deflated balloon, and an inflated balloon. We observed and investigated and then recorded in our Science Notebooks the different properties of each form of matter. Then, we compared them to see how they were alike and how they were different.

The next day, we went on a "Matter Hunt" in our classroom. We explored ALL over the classroom and recorded as many solids, liquids, and gases that we could find. We had some really creative discoveries! The person who found the most of each type of matter won a prize! We were so determined to find the most that this game was probably the quietest we have ever been as scientists! :-)

It is important that scientists are using the correct vocabulary so we learned about different scientific words and their definitions.

Look how our Science bulletin board is changing and filling up with all of the things we are learning!

This week at our writer's meetings, we looked at a piece of writing that Mrs. Maggart had done. But something just didn't look right about it.

Her punctuation was missing! It had taken a vacation! We read a book about punctuation and how important it is to have it in our writing so readers can read our work.

We helped Mrs. Maggart put her punctuation back into her writing. Then, we played "Punctuation Police" and checked a buddy's Word Study Notebook to make sure that when they had written their sentences, they had started them with a capital letter and ended the sentence with...punctuation!

We also learned about how important details are in a story and what a difference it makes when we add details to a good story. We looked at author Mo Willem's Writer's Notebook and his story about a pig, an elephant, and a toy.

Then, we saw how he added details and we read his book with lots of pages.

Wow! We all agreed that the book with pages and details was much better for us as readers. We experimented writing with pages and turned a story about a day at the library into a story with 4 pages! We were able to add lots of details.

In Math, we talked about making groups of 10 and all of the ways we could make ten. Mrs. Maggart showed us how to play a new game about making ten in different ways.

When we are being mathematicians during Math Workshop, we sometimes choose to play a math game. Sometimes, the other people at our table are working with Mrs. Maggart at her table or have chosen another acitvity to do so we don't have someone to play a game with. But that doesn't stop our Tiger Team leaders! We are proactive and find a way to play that game and practice our math skills...even if we have to play with a furry friend!

We ended our week by learning about another historical leader: Eleanor Roosevelt. Ask me about why I think she was a leader and how I am a leader just like her!

Love,

Working Hard and Having Fun!

Dear Family,

Our Tiger Team had a super week! We are working so hard...and having fun doing it!

This week, we started working on different Word Sorts based on what I need. Mrs. Maggart works with each group on Monday morning and we practice sorting our words based on their spelling patterns. We learned about the "at" family, we learned about the "s," "h," and "sh," sounds and how they are different and alike when blended, and we talked about the long and short "a" sounds.

Our 3 groups

The "at" family

"s, h, and sh" words

Long "a" and short "a" words

After we work with Mrs. Maggart on Monday, on Tuesday our Morning Job is to come in and practice our sort again! Then, we get to glue our sort into our Word Study Notebook where we will keep our collection of words for the entire first grade year. On Wednesday, we practice writing a sentence for 5 of the words we made. We make sure that our sentences start with a capital letter and end with punctuation. We will be learning even more about punctuation next week.

We had some great Writer's Workshop Meetings this week. We learned about doing our best! Sometimes, we go back to write in our Writer's Notebook and we have a really great idea for a story...but we don't write it because we aren't sure how to draw it. We helped Mrs. Maggart solve this problem for her story about Mrs. Vogelpohl helping her one day. Now, we know how to draw an idea the best we can so we don't miss out on some great pieces of writing.

We also learned about stretching words ... just like a rubber band. Sometimes, we cannot find a word in our dictionaries and Mrs. Maggart is busy conferencing with someone so she can't help me yet. So, instead of giving up on our writing or getting frustrated, we can stretch out our words and spell them the best we can. When we get ready to publish, we will look at all of our words more closely, but until then...we do our best!

We "stretched" words like "front," "great," and "hungry." We did the best we could. When we publish we will go back and look at these words more closely.

This week for Reading Round-up, we started 3 independent activities for the day. Wow! Here are a few pictures of some of the activities we do independently.

Finding words and making words with specific "chunks" that we roll on our dice.

Playing word games at "Word Zone."

Reading stories and then retelling them using our flannel board, making sure we remember to tell the beginning, middle, and the end of the story.

Reading nonfiction books and writing down the main idea along with interesting facts we learned.

Mrs. Maggart has been reading with us in our reading groups each day too. Sometimes, we read a new book and learn a new lesson. Other times, we answer questions about the book we read. We do book reports on books and give book reviews too.

We learned about character traits this week. We read some really funny books with very special main characters.

We discussed each character and what we learned about each of them based on what the author wrote and what we inferences from the text. To help us keep track of all of the great characters we are learning about, we created Character Trading Cards. Here are a few examples of some giant trading cards we made. We also get to make our own trading cards about the characters in our Tiger Team Library books during Reading Round-up.

Making our own trading cards. I wonder what character he will choose?

In Math, we are continuing to work on on learning about our tens and ones blocks and how to make numbers using these tools, count and write the numbers that these blocks represent, and compare these two numbers. We read a great mathematician book this week about comparing numbers. We found so many great math words and we did a great job determining if numbers were odd or even.

Every day in Math Calendar, we are practicing determining if numbers are even and odd and talking about the strategies we use to determine this. We look for patterns on the 100's chart, we look at the last place-value, we divide the number to see if it can be divided "equally," etc. We are also really working on our Fact Families. We know there are 3 numbers in a family and they can make two "+" sentences and two "-" sentences.

We are still working hard on our daily Problem Solving.

Double-checking our work using math tools

Re-reading our problem to make sure we understand

Here are some great mathematicians' problems that made our Strategy Walls. See how they have a picture, number sentence, their answer is circled, AND they justified or explained how they got their answers Way to go!

We always check our Question of the Day when we think we're done to make sure we followed all expectations and using our other Tiger Team members' examples if we do not understand.

We learned how to "buddy check" this week too. We share our finished Question of the Day with a buddy, justifying how we solved the problem and showing them our two strategies. We always synergize and help each other.

In Science, we finished up our "Science Safety" unit. We talked about some really great "Science Rules" we should have when we turn our classroom into a Science lab or when we go to the Science lab. We signed our contracts and are ready to be scientists this year!

We read a book about matter and the 3 types of matter: liquids, solids, and gases.

We talked about some properties of a bunch of balls we found in our classroom and made a list of these properties, or ways we could describe each.

Then, we noticed something in our classroom. There was a huge crack in our window! Someone had used one of the balls in our room to throw at the window.

But how could we decide which ball? Well, we decided, we were going to look at the property of mass, or the heaviest ball. We used our primary balances to determine which ball was the heaviest.

We found out it was this red ball! Great job scientists!

We learned about another historical leader this week: Clara Barton. After reading a book about her, we made a list of all of the habits she practiced that made her such a great leader. Then, we reflected about what we learned about her in our "Leadership Journals," a special place for us to write about leaders, write about how we're leaders, and even write stories about leaders.

We also had library this week. We learned about picking out a "Just Right Book" by using the "5 Finger Rule."

We also had picture day this week. We did a great job posing and we looked so nice!

Love,