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October 6, 2008
October is here and we are in our 6 th week of school! Wow! I can't believe that the leaves are changing, Halloween is near and Student-Led Conferences are just around the corner. Science was great fun again last week. We constructed mobiles and worked with the concept of weight and counter weights. We won't have science this week, but the following week we will be investigating balance and motion through the construction of twirlers and other “flying objects”. Reading Testing is over! Math Framework Testing will begin the week of conferences. Framework tests check the acquisition of grade level skills that have been taught. There will be a Framework Test about every 6 weeks. This test is given to the whole class and takes one, sometimes two, math periods. The basic addition fact lists that are in the homework this week are included in the first Framework Test. This is a sharp class! I know that they will do very well on the first of these tests. This week's literature unit is If You Give a Mouse a Cookie . The children will be sharing their collection of literature units during their Student-Led Conferences. After conferences, the units will come home with the students on the Monday following completion. There are two great events coming up this week. We have our official Walk to School Day and our second Team Time. Meet all the Meredith Hill staff at the walk start point and walk to school just in time to start our second Team Time! Boy, we will be getting loads of oxygen to our brains on Wednesday! Have a great week families! SYLA, Mrs. B
Last week was our first week of thematic literature centers. We spent the week with Bernard Most's, If the Dinosaurs Came Back . We graphed, painted with brushes and sponges, wrote and used the thinking skills involved in synthesis and finding evidence. This week we will be examining different versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears . Our activities will reinforce the thinking skills involved in observation, sequencing, summarizing, comparing/contrasting and responding to a problem/solution question in writing. We may even make Bear's Honey Crunch Peanut Butter Balls! Science has started! We began a great unit on Balance and Motion . We found the balance points for arches, triangles and crayfish. We balanced these items using our finger tips and Popsicle stick suspension boards. Using clothespins attached to the crayfish, arches and triangles we examined the concept of counterweight. The new vocabulary that we discovered included: balance, balance point, stable, weight, and counterweight. This week we will be doing the pencil trick and, if time allows, making a balance mobile! Who-o-o-o Ho-o-o-o! We are STILL testing, but it all ends this Friday! Maybe Cookie Day on Thursday will help us make it through the last few tests! Have a great week families! SYLA, Mrs. B
I can't believe this is week number four! We have had our first Cookie Day and our first visit with Mrs. Eagle-Cruz to talk about Kelso's Choices. Our Reading Block Centers are running smoothly now and we are ready to begin weekly, thematic literature units during that block. We are still testing in reading. A few students will be pulled each day to test for instructiona l DRA levels. Read Well levels have been established and Grade Level Standard levels have been measured. Five students have passed their first Critical Word lists! Way to go! Spelling Tests have been outstanding, homework has been turned in on time and classroom behavior has been awesome. Getting library books back to school on time seems to be our only problem. There are a few exciting things that will start this week. First, we will begin our study of Balance and Motion this Friday. Also, the first PTA Fundraiser will be launched. Look for Fundraiser information to come home this week. Last, and most importantly, our parent volunteers will begin working during our Reading Block Centers! Who-o-o Ho-o-o! We will have more eyes and ears to work and problem solve with our boys and girls! Oh! I almost forgot! The first Questions for the Teacher will be posted on this site this week. Have a great week families! SYLA, Mrs. B
We are now in our third week of first grade! Friendships are blossoming and the room personalities are popping up! Room 127 is full of boys and girls who care very much about one another and are eager to get along and have fun! This is, indeed, a very mellow group of first graders! (Not dull or necessarily quiet, but very peaceful at heart!) To help maintain this beautiful peace every student has adopted the “I” message as a way of settling disagreements on their own and preserving friendships. Last week we spent many hours taking the DRA, Developmental Reading Assessment, to determine just where we are going to start in our reading centers. We also spent time learning how to rotate centers and how to behave while doing center activities. Once all the parents who signed up to volunteer in the classroom have been contacted, many of those centers will be directed by a Parent Teacher! Also, we took our first spelling test! Whoo-hooo! Our scores were outstanding!
Everyone seemed to want to talk to our room last week! Mrs. Kelsey came in to talk about school rules and how important it is for all boys and girls to follow them. Mrs. Copeland reviewed all the playground rules so that everyone will be safe and happy during recess. A group of teachers from the Vision Program set up five centers so that our class could experience all the tools used by the visually impaired. The secret boxes were very cool! Next week Mrs. Eagle-Cruz will begin coming in every Wednesday for six weeks to review Kelso's Choices, our school program that emphasizes good choices and problem solving techniques. This week we will START our academic centers, get our first Hot Cookies on Cookie Day (Thursday the 18 th ), continue to put stickers on our cards for awesome choices and homework completion and look for the arrival of our first science unit, Balance and Motion . So, let's do it! SYLA, Mrs. PB (Guess what the “P” stands for!!!!) September 4, 2008
Today we tackled centers for the first time. We learned how to follow directions and complete assignments while working independently at two centers and with the teacher at one center! Next week we will start using our center time as part of our morning reading block. I guess that means that Room 127 is going to be tested early next week to find out which reading group each student will be working in. That will be great, because there are some awesome readers in room 127. We have been so busy! We wrote two stories, did our first math Investigations Story Problem, started Math Journals, worked on our Me Books, created Me T-Shirts, began Print Practice (Mrs. Picky Boggs likes neat print!), highlighted special words in Poetry and started earning stickers for our Sticker Cards ! AND….Mrs. Boggs has not even started Squiggle Books, Grammar Skills, Making Words, Literature Circles, or Friday Problem Solving! Oh, man! Making Words is one of my favorite things to do! AND I live for Grammar !!!! SYLA, Mrs. PB (Guess what the “P” stands for!!!!) -------------------------------
Wow! We had a terrific first day in First Grade ! We started our day out by marching through the First Grade Balloon Arch in front of the school. Then we said the pledge with the whole school and listened as the other grade levels were introduced After we returned to our classroom we put our supplies away and set up our desks. Then we began to learn some of the routines that first graders need to know. After we talked about routines for a while we read about the different ways children around the world get to school, completed a group activity about transportation and made a giant class graph about the ways Room 127 gets to school. Last, we began a House book that we will use tomorrow for our first writing assignment. Yep! Room 127 is off to a great start! Recesses were happy times, music with Ms. Lee was exciting and lunch took a long time to arrive! Throughout the rest of the week we will check out a few more classroom routines, go to PE, figure out how morning centers work, begin to explore math and get ready to pretest for reading group placement. Hey! First Graders work really hard! Go First Grade! SYLA, Mrs. B
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