We have finished another fun and successful week in first grade! Your first graders have impressed me so much with their attention and stamina to complete tasks. This week in Reader's Workshop, we dove right in to Daily 5 which will promote good reading habits and independence. My goal is for each student to have fun while reading and to also become independent readers at their own reading level. During Read to Self, we learned about the 3 ways to read a book - read the pictures, read the words, and retell a story. We also learned how to choose "good fit" books to put in our book bins. They were so excited to hear that many of the books in their bin will be books they get to choose. We learned a fun song called "I-PICK" to help us understand how to pick a good fit book. See below for the acronym.
I - I choose
P - Purpose (Why are we reading this book - for enjoyment? Do we like the character? Is it part of a series that we enjoy? Do we want to learn something new?)
I - Interest (Do we like the book, topic, characters, pictures?)
C - Comprehension (Do we understand?)
K - Know (Do I know most of the words in the text?)
Next, we learned the 5 finger rule to picking a "good fit" book. After looking at the cover and flipping through the pages, we discussed how we need to turn to a page and start reading. The students were instructed to lift one finger each time they come to a word they are not able to read in a "snap." Books that are too easy are represented with 0-1 finger, books that are too hard have 4-5 fingers and JUST RIGHT books have 2-3 fingers. The kiddos really enjoyed "shopping" for new books and are looking forward to adding lots of books to their bins. We talked about what read to self should look like and sound like. Some of us had some fun showing what this should NOT look like, which of course made us giggle and laugh! Believe it or not, my first grade friends built up their independent reading stamina to 12 minutes. Next week we will start talking about the second part of Daily 5 called Work on Writing. Each student will have a special notebook in their book bin for many writing purposes: journaling, book reviews, lists, letters, etc. We will talk about what this should look like and sound like in a first grade classroom. The students will also learn some strategies for what to do when they get stuck and cannot figure out a word or they have difficulty coming up with a writing idea.
We began our formal Writer's Workshop this week as we discussed Personal Narratives. My writers are certainly full of wonderful stories and I am excited to see their folders fill up with outstanding writing! So far we learned that good writers THINK of an idea and PLAN before writing. When we plan, our writers will touch and tell their story across the pages, jot key phrases in the top corner of the page and then sketch a quick picture. Once our stories are planned, we begin adding the text. Many writers have finished or are nearing the end of their first books. Some writers have even started revising by adding more with their revising pencil (colored pencils)! We are off to a great start. In the week ahead, writers will learn to stretch words to spell them, zoom in to focus on small moments, and we discover that writers talk to other writers about their writing by storytelling their ideas out loud.
In math the students have started playing several math games that are helping them recognize patterns with numbers as well as part-part-whole number relationships. We are going to continue working on part-part-whole using a variety of manipulatives to help us create a concrete understanding as we build up towards an abstract representation of addition sentences. At our October conference I will provide each family with a password to an Xtra math account which will help your child build on his/her math facts this year. I highly encourage you to use this resource once we discuss it at our conference.
This week we will have a lot of fun learning about apples and fall. We will read about and investigate apples this week. We will taste apples, learn about their parts and their life cycle, weigh apples, measure with apples and even experiment with them later this week. We will read about Johnny Appleseed and discover his many contributions. His birthday is on September 26th. We will plan on making applesauce on Monday September 28th instead of Friday the 25th because we have PE at the end of the day. This is always a lot of fun!
I apologize for the lengthy post, but my goal is to keep you as informed as possible. Please contact me with any questions or concerns. I hope you had a terrific weekend!
Kerry
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