We had a great week learning a new math fact game! Plus we learned how to log in to our Go Math website and played math games there as well! Check out the photos below!
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Now that we have been in school a few weeks the classroom is buzzing with activity! This week the students were introduced to center rotations and they rocked it! They followed classroom expectations around safety, work ethic, and voice volume. They were earning buzz chips left and right this week because of their hard work! Here's how centers work: Each day students visit three literacy centers. Each literacy center is typically 15 minutes long. They are either working independently, in small groups, or with a teacher during these rotations. Activities include: poetry journal, independent reading, buddy reading, journal writing, word way (phonics practice), listening center, and many more to come! The centers change daily depending on our daily objectives/standards. This type of activity allows students the freedom to work whenever they would like in the classroom, gives amble time for movement breaks, and allows students many hands on opportunities to practice new skills. Below you can see the students hard at work during our first week of centers!
Tuesday was the first grade's Family Math Night! It was a smashing success! I was thrilled to see so many families attend. I particularly love watching how excited the students get teaching their parents and siblings how to play all the games they have learned so far this year! They are so happy to share their knowledge and try to beat their parents fair and square at all the games! This year we even included a "Make and Take" game table, where student could make the game "Toss It" and bring the materials home to play! I'm also happy to announce that every student (even if they couldn't attend the game night) received a packet of ALL the games from math night to play at home! Thank you again to all that could attend!
Check out the gallery below for photos! Thank you to Bonnie Hoskeer Kirchner for nominating our class for Classroom Of The Week in The Berkshire Eagle! It was an honor to be able to share what we do every day with the Eagle and the students LOVE that we are in the newspaper. The website for the article is below!
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/stories/classroom-of-the-week-from-adjectives-to-empathy-samantha-farellas-class-finds-fun-ways-to,535261 You all know how much I LOVE the 100th day! Well this year was no different. We had TWO days of 100th day fun, all because a snow day pushed the actual 100th day to half day of school. The activities included:
What can you do in 100 seconds- This math activity required students to predict how many times they could do something in 100 seconds. Then they preformed the task and compared their actual answers to their predictions. Some tasks were writing their name, saying the ABC's, and clapping. They had a great time working together to count each others tasks in the 100 seconds! 100th Day Crowns: Students were given different craft materials to create ten strips of ten to make 100 objects hanging from their crowns! Check out the class website this weekend for photos! If I were 100 Years Old: Students wrote about what their life would be like if they were 100 year old. Then they created self-portraits of themselves at 100. This is one of my favorite writing pieces of the school year because the students are so created and funny with their thoughts about what happens when you are 100. Pigs In Counting: I read a book called Pigs in Counting about 100 pigs that play hide and seek. Then the students search the classroom for 100 hidden pigs! They worked together to put the pigs together to make a giant 100's chart. I think this may have been many students favorite activity this week! 100th Day Necklaces: Students worked to make necklaces today using different colored beads. The goal was to make a pattern with their beads and use 100 of them, of course! 100's Grid Name Pattern- Students created a color pattern using their name written over and over in a blank hundreds grid. Students also were expected to make a 100th day project made out of 100 of the same items. Students then presented their projects and explained what they created, how they created it, and why they chose to create it. This years projects were AMAZING! Finally, we had a wonderful turn out of family members coming to our 100th day project showcase! The students just loved showing everyone their hard work! Check out the gallery below of all the first grade 100th day fun! A lot of fun happened in December! I'm a couple weeks late posting, but first grade accomplished SO much! We finished the scenery and props for our reader's theater AND had our performance for the parents. We had a wonderful turn out! I'm happy to announce that someone for EVERY family was present. It made the students feel extra special to have a family member there for our show. The students were amazing (but I'm not surprised by that!). :) They even closed the show with an impromtu Doubles Rap performance requested by Mrs. Buchinski.
The fun didn't stop there! We closed out our week before vacation with a gingerbread unit. Our unit consisted of reading multiple gingerbread stories, comparing and contrasting the stories, creating art project surrounding the stories, and finally working in teams to create a GIANT, LIFE SIZED gingerbread person. It was such a fun way to close out December. Check out the gallery below for all the fun! So we have had a wonderful week learning about doubles addition facts! We have explored with connecting cubes, used flashcards, completes doubles sorts, learning about doubles plus and minus one, and even learned a rap song to help us remember these important facts! The students are LOVING the rap song and are really getting into the movements that they have put to the song. Ask your child any doubles fact. I bet they can give you the correct answer! :)
WOW! This month has been fantastic! We have really jumped right into fun in first grade! We began our math center rotations and our literacy rotations, which occur daily in the classroom. They are filled with journal writing, games, computer enrichment, and small group instruction. The students are LOVING them!
We just finished up writing a How To Carve A Pumpkin flip book in writing. The student were great at describing the steps in sequential order and illustrating their own jack-o-lantern. We had our FIRST SECRET READER! Thank you to Natasha (Remie's mother) for volunteering to be our first secret reader. She was wonderful and the students were excited to hear 4 brand new stories! We can't wait for the next secret reader to arrive next month! We took our first field trip (in the pouring rain!) to Ioka Valley Farm in Hancock to pick pumpkins and learn more about their life cycle. The students fed farm animals, traveled through a hay maze, heard a read aloud called Spookly, took a rainy hay ride, and pick their very own pumpkins. The rain didn't put a damper on our day at all. We all had a terrific time. Finally, we rounded the month off with our Pumpkin Extravaganza! We spent the morning doing fun pumpkin centers! Each center included math, science, and writing. There was Pumpkin Sink or Float- where students predicted if they thought their pumpkin would float or sink and explain why, Candy Corn Estimation- where student estimate how many candy corns are in three different jar and then see how close they were, Pumpkin Measurements- where students weigh their pumpkin and determine their height in cubes and circumference using a tape measure, Pumpkin Shapes- where students play a game where they have to make a jack-o-lantern using pattern blocks, and Mystery Pictures- where students have to solve addition and subtraction problems and color by number to uncover a mystery picture. Right after lunch we dissected pumpkins and counted their seeds using ten frames. And we ended the afternoon decorating our own pumpkins using googly eyes and Sharpie Markers. Needless to say...This has been an AMAZING month in first grade! Check out the gallery of some of our events below. This week was the first full week implementing math centers during our math block. And the first graders ROCKED IT! (I know you're not surprised!) They were able to follow the center expectations, stay focused, complete their work, and log on to the computers almost independently! It was amazing. I have 4 stations that students rotate to throughout the week: teacher table (that's me!) where I reinforce the daily lesson tailored to each group's needs, math journals where students complete the problem of the day, math memory where students practice the math skill taught the previous day, and computer corner where students log onto GoMath and complete daily math modules (and games, too!) reinforcing the daily skills. Because the students were so focused and excited about centers, they earned Fact Fluency Friday! This is a morning filled with math games that reinforce addition and subtraction fact fluency. The students played four games: Bump, Addition War, Numbers Undercover, and Numberopolis on the computers. It was a great morning and, although at times it was a bit loud, the students had a wonderful time! They will have the opportunity to earn Fact Fluency Friday each week based on their effort during math centers during the week. Check out a few pictures of the games below!
It's always exciting to start a brand new school year! The students arrive excited to see the classroom, learn about the classroom routines, and most importantly learn about each other. The start of this school year has been no different. The classroom is already busseling with student conversations about what they did over the summer, what they hope to learn this school year, and of course, what's for lunch!
We have already done so much in two short weeks! Last week was filled with excitement! The students completed a Math About Me project which is currently hung up in the first grade hallway. They learned how numbers and math surround our daily lives even when we don't even realize it- the number of family members, pets, birthdays, teeth lost, etc. They loved trying discover new ways to find math in their every day lives. They also create our personal book bags and picked individual reading spots in the classroom. Ask your child what STAMINA means. They learned all about how to build their reading stamina and the class was able to read quietly (read the words, read the pictures, or create stories of their own) for 6 minutes and 55 seconds! That is incredible for the beginning of the school year! We are readers already! Check out the gallery below to see the students jumping right into their books during last weeks independent reading time! |
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