Daily Five Begins

We have started building our stamina for Read to Self.  We first started by talking about the three ways to read a book. 

Then we began our study talking about why people read (the orange stars) and then what it looks like when people read (in the student area).  After building our anchor chart we began practicing these reading behaviors.  

Take a peek at what Read to Self looks like in the classroom.  

A Look Back at The First Week

 We read the book First Day Jitters, then read a poem and looked for words that rhyme and enjoyed some Jitter Juice (Fruit Punch and Sprite) 

Sharing FACE homework and community building activities

Magic Play-doh Excites New Students

First graders were introduced to a poem called Magic Play-doh  (from Pinterest).  After reading through the poem, each student was given a ball of white play dough.  They were able to knead the play dough inside a zip-lock bag.  As students were smashing and mixing the ball around, they discovered the fun surprise.....changing colors!  Some students ended up with red, some green and some blue.  They were very excited that it meant we were going to have a GREAT school year (as they read in the poem).  Read the poem and check out the pictures of some of the fun below.

Magic Play-doh

Magic Play-doh, 

Oh so white,

Make this wish with all my might.

If another color does appear, 

we're sure to have a

GREAT school year!

Discovering Math Tools

My first grade math friends had fun exploring some of our math manipulatives (we call them math tools).  They were able to discover many interesting things that can be done with unifix cubes and pattern blocks.  Check out some of the designs and patterns that were created!

Our Class Name Graph

We read the story Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes today.  We talked about how unique Chrysanthemum's name is and how she felt when her classmates teased her about it.  We realized how wonderful it is that everyone is unique in their own way and that we should respect and enjoy differences in each other.  Next, we wrote our names on colored paper, cut apart the letters and glued the letters to white paper.  We counted the letters in our names and created a class graph to connect our literacy and math learning.  Here is the graph that we created!
 

Look at how many of our friends have 6 letters in their name!

WELCOME BACK FIRST GRADE FRIENDS!

We are very excited to have you in our class this year.  

Love, 

Mrs. Zweber (PM) and Mrs. Sauber (AM)

Extra School Supplies

First grade families,
This is a reminder that we have a few additional supply requests for our students.  Please send a package of Post-it notes, 2 additional spiral notebooks, 1 composition notebook and a set of headphones (to use with our iPads) to school with the other school supplies from the first grade list.
Thank you for helping your child come prepared for the first day!
-Mrs. Sauber and Mrs. Zweber