Busy Days...Reading at Home Tips & Much More!

September continues to fly by and the students are settling into First Grade Routines. With district reading assessments behind us, students are ready to step up their learning through Literacy Groups, Daily 5 Literacy activities and Writing Workshop.  Books will be coming home in your child's yellow Reading Folder so please remember to listen to your child read aloud each night for a minimum of 15 minutes.  A new book may not come home every day, but it is very important to re-read familiar stories to build fluency (words per minute).  Your child may read other books from home, library book, etc. but you only need to write in 1 space on the reading log (in yellow folder). If your child struggles with words as they read, make flash cards of those words and practice them daily until they become known words.

Even though our week was short due to early dismissal days, it was full of some great learning.  In Math we are learning alternate ways to recognize numbers in a "snap" by using tally marks (practice at home!) and ten frames.  Here are some of the fantastic first graders playing a ten frame memory game (and being really good sports!)

Also on this week's agenda was a visit from Ms. Vitek's Fourth Grade Class.  They shared a project they created using iMovie and read a book to our kids and had some great discussions!  Hopefully they will come back and see us again one of these days!

We love visitors!



And we are really getting excited about our very first "global project" called the Global Read Aloud.  This is a world-wide project where we will read a chapter book over the course of 6 weeks (I will be reading to them). We will be incorporating lots of our reading standards into this project as well as connecting with first grade classrooms from Oregon and Illinois!  We will be posting to Twitter  along the way so be sure to follow us @BCEFirst Grade and/or @MSimmons1212.  Use the #gra13 and see all the incredible learning!  If you are thinking to yourself right now:  "No way am I dealing with Twitter!" - Never Fear!  I will keep you updated on this classroom blog as well!  Here is a picture of our class Skyping with Ms. Manion's First Grade class in Oregon!  We were making predictions together about the book we will be reading through the Global Read Aloud Project! (Not to mention learning where Oregon is and how very different their weather is to our weather right now!)

We have also been working on Project Based Learning (PBL) lesson on Citizenship in and around Bear Creek.  Students used a web based site called Padlet to post how they think Good Citizens should act in certain areas or during certain events here at school.  Click on the link below to see their Padlet "Wall". 

http://padlet.com/wall/GoodCitizensatBCE

There are some interesting rules for good citizens to follow here at school! "Do not waste band aides" is something every good citizen must know in Specials!  And I especially like "Do not run crazy" during Fun Events. What great citizens we have here at school!

Speaking of Good Citizens - here are a couple of our very best examples.  Bear Brags recently awarded to (from the top):  Alectra, Ayah, Ellie and Julia!  Very RESPECTFUL Students!

See You in September...

The Super Month of September continues with lots of hard work by the students - mixed with fun as we learn!  We are practicing number concepts from 0 to 50 which includes so many aspects.  Not only are we counting forward from 0-50, but learning how to count backwards too! We are skip counting every day by 2's , 5's and 10's.  Parents can help at home by practicing these skip counting patterns with your child and being sure your child knows how to "read" numbers when they see them in isolation.  Students are also building models of numbers and beginning to talk about which numbers are greater than or less than other numbers.  Here is a picture of one of the "staircases" students built this week. 

 

 

Students also are loving using the Spelling City app to practice Spelling Words.  You can always find our current list on Spelling City by using the school zip code (76039) in the "search" box.  Lots of great games to practice our words and you can even print off lined sheets for your child to practice at home.  You can also access Spelling City from my web page on the Bear Creek website.

 

 

 

Another great learning experience from this past week was a visit by our school counselor, Ms. Martinez.  She led the students with a fun (and funny) lesson about using kind words with each other!

 

 

 



All week students practiced learning how to "Read to Someone".  This is a part of our "Daily 5" independent literacy routines.  Students learn how to sit (EEKK!) and how to ask for help (Coach or Time) and most important -- how to "listen" to the other person reading.  Students have the responsibility to retell in their own words  what they hear their partner read aloud.    We always practice the right way to "Read to Someone"... but one of their favorite things is to practice the "WRONG Way to "Read to Someone!"   Enter "Stage Right" please!  The actors and actresses come out and put on a hilarious performance!  Here is a video example of the "WRONG Way to "Read to Someone"... followed by  the "RIGHT Way to "Read to Someone"!!!

 

WRONG Way to "Read to Someone"

 

 

 

RIGHT Way  to "Read to Someone"

 

 

Hilarious and Wonderful!  Are we having fun or what?  And here are the sweet kiddos all Reading to Someone the "RIGHT WAY!!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know about your child... but Ms. Simmons is EXHAUSTED!!  We are working hard.  Please share our classroom blog with family and friends from other cities, states & countries-- and encourage folks to "comment".  Every couple of weeks we visit the blog during class and the sudents LOVE reading your comments! It would be wonderful to have out-of-town comments so we can incorporate some geography and find those locations on our maps!!   A Special Thank You & SHOUT OUT  to Ms. Wooley and Mr. Johnson who are in a crazy race to see who comments first!  Can anyone beat them...?

 

 

 

Rachael's Challenge, Windsocks, Tallys & Nouns and much more...

We had a very  busy week discovering nouns, tally marks, the weather around us and how to spread kindness and compassion to others!  Here are a few photos of fabulous First Graders hard at work (and fun!)



 

Rachael's Challenge is a district wide kindness campaign!  We had our first whole school assembly on Friday for the kickoff of this incredible program at Bear Creek!

 

And last, but not least we had loads of fun playing a Noun Bingo Game! Here is a live action video!

 

 

"We Love First Grade!"

Ok, so this was (I thought) a pretty simple beginning of the year iPad activity using the app "Paint Sparkle".  Each student created one letter (or heart and exclamation point) for the statement "WE LOVE FIRST GRADE!"  (with 2 hearts in front of and behind the word LOVE).  The students were excellent with their creativity!  But little did I know how hard it would be to take one picture of the final product!   To have them all sit still, holding their iPad creations (without one of them blacking out & going to rest...) and no glare from overhead lights, or someone sneezing, or a bug crawling across the floor, etc. etc. !!  This is the best I could do after the students did so well!  The bloopers are saved for another time!  We really do LOVE FIRST GRADE!



This week was full of practicing learning rotations of our "Daily 5" time. Daily 5 is a system when students will be working on literacy skills independently when I begin to work with small reading groups (after DRA2 Reading Assessments).  It takes quite a bit of modeling, training and practicing  to become a successful independent worker - but these kids can do it!  Here are a few pictures of the hard workers:

Learning how to help each other as we play a punctuation game. (The white spot on bottom left is a corner of a student desk.)

"Reading to Self" is a way we build "stamina" and become better readers!

Listening to stories on our new MacBook Airs! 
 

Back-to-the-Future:  Teaching kids how to use an old-timey (gasp!) cassette player!!  Books on tape never get old!

Playing a rhyming game with classmates.

 



It was a very good week!