Author Celebration/Popcorn party

During our Narrative Unit we spent a lot of time on the story Ira Sleeps Over which is about a boy who can't decide whether to take his beloved teddy bear on his first sleepover.  Ira is very worried throughout the story and keeps changing his mind about what to do, especially after his sister keeps teasing him.  He finally decides not to bring his teddy bear but then goes back home to get him after he sees that his friend has one of his own.  We took what we knew about Ira and wrote our own Ira stories  with a new problem. Using a familiar character was a great and fun way to try out some fiction writing.   Some of our stories were about Ira losing his teddy bear on an airplane, Ira being worried about the first day of school, and Ira being scared to go on a ride at Lake Compounce.   

 To celebrate all of our hard work on our stories,we had an author celebration with some freshly popped popcorn from an old fashioned hot air popper.  The children were so excited to see the popcorn start popping that they were practically popping out of their seats.

 Children were proud to share their stories with their friends.    I look forward to sharing them with all of you during conferences.

 

Thanksgiving Fun

I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving holiday.  After spending weeks learning about The Mayflower, The Pilgrims, and what the holiday is all about, we were happy to celebrate with some delicious pie.  Thank you to everyone who donated pie and came in to help.  We are thankful for all your help in making our pie tasting event a success.  

Grace's mom printed out these great recording sheets.

Our 5 different kinds of pie.  No worries...the children did not get this much. 

Our results.  Chocolate was the big favorite.  Thank you to Addison's mom for the homemade chocolate pies.  

Friday Fun

Every week, students work together to earn enough happy faces to get a "Fun Friday" reward.  Rewards can be dance videos, games, an art project etc.  Last Friday, students were excited to come in to see they could play games with friends instead of doing their usual morning work.  They were all phonics and reading games but that didn't seem to make a difference to them.   Having these fun activities on a Friday is a great way to motivate everyone to work hard throughout the week and shows that you can have fun and learn at the same time.  That's the goal!

Veteran's Day

What a beautiful day to celebrate our Veterans.  Students were very excited to wear the red, white, and blue hats they made and show off their patriotism.  They sat very respectfully and listened as each Veteran was introduced and speeches were made. Mia was especially excited to have her mother honored and everyone thought it was very funny that one of the visiting Veterans was my Gym teacher when I was a kid (some of them were pretty taken aback to learn that I was actually a kid once too).  Hope everyone enjoyed the day off today.

"Weather or Not"

What an awesome program today from High Touch High Tech.  We had so much fun being scientists that I forgot to take pictures. Sorry.  Hopefully your children have told you all about it.  We learned about air pressure and what happens with high pressure meets low pressure.  We learned about condensation and how clouds form. We even made a cloud appear in our classroom.  We learned about lightening and explored static electricity.  Touching a lightening ball even made some children's' shoes light up.  Pretty cool!

We will continue learning about weather during science.  This week we will be observing clouds and learning about the different cloud types.  Next week we will be learning about wind speed and wind direction.  If you have a chance to watch a weather report on t.v. with your child, please do.  It will help   them with our weather vocabulary such as "fahrenheit", "meteorologist" and "air pressure".

Halloween!!

After many days of counting down, Halloween finally arrived. The children couldn't have been more excited!  Here's how we celebrated in Room 8...


                            Having fun at our Halloween Parade

            

Some of our marvelous mummies

 And last but not least, the first grade teachers as characters from the Laura Numeroff books (If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, If you Give a Cat a Cupcake, If you Give a Moose a Muffin etc.)

Was a fun and exciting day.  Hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween and a restful weekend. Will be back to normal on Monday.  

Fall Fun

Something very nice about watching children enjoy the simple pleasure of playing with leaves on a beautiful Fall day.  Hope this weather continues.

Mystery Walkers

Did you hear about our new Mystery Walker game?

Each student has a number.  Every morning, I pick a chip with a number on it to see who our Mystery Walker is going to be but I don't show it to anyone.  Only I know who the Mystery Walker is.  Every time we walk in the hallway, I check to see if the Mystery Walker is walking nicely.  Since no one knows who the Mystery Walker is, everyone has to do their best.  If the Mystery Walker does a good job then at the end of the day I announce who it is and that student gets to take home an award.

Good luck everyone!

Super Readers

Congratulations to our first two Super Readers of the Week.

Andrei wrote about the book The Giving Tree and I got a chance to read it to the class.  We had a great discussion about the book.  We talked about how giving to others is a nice thing to do and it makes you happy.  However, the boy was a little selfish because he took too many things from the tree.  He also left the tree for long periods of time.











Sophie wrote about Dolphin Tale 2.  She shared about her favorite parts of the book and students were very interested in how people saved the dolphin. They asked thoughtful questions about the book.













Keep up the great reading everyone and you will all get a chance to be Super Reader of the Week!

We are Authors!!

We had our first Author's Celebration today.  We worked so hard going through the Writing Process in order to publish our stories.  We had to celebrate!

Since the first day of school, we have been learning about what good writers do.  Here are some of the things we learned...

GOOD WRITERS...
-Choose ideas
-Plan the Beginning, Middle, and End of their stories
-Write the best they can
-Write a catchy lead
-Add details
-Use descriptive writing
-Add an ending that wraps up the story
-Revise their story by adding or deleting information
-Edit for Capitalization, Organization, Punctuation and Spelling (COPS)
-Publish their writing

Check out these awesome authors...

Growing Readers

One of my favorite times of the day is Reader's Workshop.  I love to read and it is my hope that I can instill a love of reading in my students.  Here are some ways that I try to make reading enjoyable in our class...
-Allowing students to choose their own books
-Providing comfy reading spots
-Varying reading activities (independent reading, buddy reading, reading on the computer and at the listening center)

While students engaged in their books, and are practicing reading strategies taught in class, I am meeting with small groups doing Guided Reading and targeted skill instruction.

 Take a look at some of Room 8's wonderful readers

Welcome! We have had a great first couple weeks of school.  We have been busy getting to know each other and learning all of our new routines.  Some of the favorite activities have been our math games such as "Monster Squeeze" and "Top it", Buddy Reading, and our first science investigation exploring how air makes things move.  Please remember to turn in your Emergency Forms and Internet Permission/Photo Release forms.  I can't wait to post pictures showing all the fun and learning going on in Room 8. Stay tuned.