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!