We have had so much fun these past two weeks in first grade. There have been so many new things that we have learned. It's hard to believe that it is already nearing the end of October. But, you know what they say...time flies when you're having fun!
We had our Parent-Teacher conferences at the beginning of the week. It was such a fun experience to be able to share with our parents all of our hard work and just what we do each and every day. Mrs. Maggart was so proud of all of her Tiger Team for doing such an incredible job sharing their accomplishments, goals, and work with their families. Way to go Tigers!
In Math, we worked very hard on completing our addition unit. We have learned all about what "adding" and "addition" means when it comes to numbers and to every day experiences and events. We learned all sorts of fun strategies as well. One strategy we learned is how to do "magic"! Well...it seems like magic. We learned how to discover the missing part of an addition sentence if we know the sum and one other number. Here is our chart we did during Math Workshop.
Then, we worked independently using 2 different colored counters to "shake and spill" and create various number sentences. We discovered that the sum was always 11 and there were so many different ways to make 11!
We used playing cards to practice addition. Here is our poster where we added the 6 of diamonds and the 2 of diamonds to get the sum of 8. We shared our strategies with the class.
Then, we played with a buddy by flipping over two playing cards, adding the digits, and determining who had the great sum. We are so great at this game!
One day, we explored with our 100's chart. We learned how to use it to add 10, take away 20, add 1, and take away 1. We discovered a cool trick! Can you see the pattern?
Then we practiced with our buddies in a fun game! We were so lucky to have our Watch D.O.G., Mr. Lee, with us for the day because he was able to walk around and help all of us with our game until we got the hang of it. Thanks Mr. Lee!
After we completed our addition unit, we were ready to begin something new: graphing! First, we learned what the math word "sorting" means by reading this great book for mathematicians.
Then, Mrs. Maggart gave us a snack of goldfish. We decided we could sort our snack by color. We really wanted to eat our snack but Mrs. Maggart said we had to show our parents how many of each we had, which we had the most of, and which we had the least of. How could we do this and eat our snack?? Create a graph of course! Here we are graphing our results!
In Science, we concluded our matter unit by conducting a few fun labs and experiments where we changed the physical properties of the 3 states of matter. In one experiment we mixed baking soda with vinegar and got...gas! It was able to expand our balloon! We were so excited by this!
In another experiment we took 3 different liquids and wrote about their physical properties. Then, we predicted what would happen to their properties when we froze each one. We were excited to see the result...they had changed into solids! We had fun exploring and recording their new physical properties.
In another experiment, we joined with Mrs. Riley's class to take different solids and add a little heat to them. We used Mrs. Riley's microwave and predicted the results. It was exciting to see what happened!
Here are the solids before...
Wow! Look what happened when we heated the Ivory soap! Cool!
Remember our class book we made of all the Science safety rules good scientists follow? Well, it arrived all bound and laminated! We hung it on our Science board for all of us to see and use.
This week, we began to explore energy. We learned that there are 3 types of energy: light energy, sound energy, and heat energy. We explored with many objects like flashlights, alarm clocks, toy cars, (unplugged) irons, hair dryers, cameras, etc. to determine what types of energy they provided.
In Language Arts, we learned more about the writing process. We learned about revising a piece (or "fixing it up") and editing a piece (checking spelling and punctuation). We learned about the common punctuation we will use this year and posted these in our Writers Meeting area.
On Wednesday, we had a very special visit from the author of the chapter book we have been reading: Julie Sternberg who wrote Like Pickle Juice on a Cookie. It was exciting to hear about how she became an author, how much she loved to read, and how she worked through the writing process herself to create this book. She even has a new book coming out titled, Like Bug Juice on a Hamburger. Mrs. Maggart has already pre-ordered it and we cannot wait until it comes in!
Here she is talking about working with her illustrator to find the right "look" for the characters, the look she had in her mind.
We are continuing to learn about making inferences when we are reading. We use our schema (what we know) and what we read and see in the pictures (clues) to make an inference. We read another book about one of our favorite characters, David, and came up with some great inferences about why David does what he does.
Here's the finished product!
We celebrated a member of our Tiger Team and her birthday this week. Her parents were so sweet to send a delicious treat for all of us. Yum!
We also started our "Tiger of the Week" celebrations. Each week, we talk about who in our class has been demonstrating leadership both inside and outside of the classroom. Then, we get to celebrate one leader of our Tiger Team for an entire week! They get to take home our "Tiger of the Week" bag with our mascot, Stripes, and do some fun activities.
Here is our first Tiger of the Week! Way to go!
As part of the Fall Fair auction, Mrs. Maggart donates items up for bid. One item is to be the Student Teacher for the day. Mrs. Maggart sets up their very own desk and has real lesson plans and tasks for them to complete as Student Teacher. Our Student Teacher for the day did an awesome job!
On to another week. We have Red Ribbon Week, Early Release Day, and our Harvest Day celebration. Bring on the fun!
Love,
