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!
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!
Our very first week of school for 2013/14 was great fun! Thank you parents for helping your child begin the school year so successfully! Your children are getting an idea of what First Grade is like by learning many new expectations, responsibilities and rules all around the school! Here is a peek into a few things we did this week!
We made a headband saying "First Grade is Totally Cool" and took our very first class picture!
We looked at all our books in our desks and read stories from our "Red Reader".
We all wrote about the First Day of school and some of us got to share our fabulous writing!
We got very excited by the end of the week when our iPads FINALLY arrived! We found out who has an iPad at home and who does not -- that way we know who our iPad "Experts" can be!!! We learned MANY rules about becoming a responsible "Digital Citizen" and even signed a "Trust Card" promising that we will be very careful and respectful while we use our iPad. We got to explore a little on them... but it will take a little while to load some of the apps and work out some technology "kinks". But we are patient and looking forward to helping each other and learning together as we begin our journey to becoming "Digital Citizens"!
Dear Parents and Students - Tomorrow is Meet the Teacher Night at Bear Creek from 6:00 - 7:00 p.m. I am very excited to see all your smiling faces and looking forward to meeting every one of you! Please bring your school supplies to Meet the Teacher so I can help you organize them and put them away so you are ready to go Monday morning! Can't wait to meet you all!
Teachers spend quite a bit of time in the summer attending workshops and learning new and exciting things to use in the classroom! So I went to an excellent MacBook workshop with a couple of teacher friends and one of my assignments was to create an iMovie! So here is my very first iMovie! It could also teach you something very important... Enjoy!
First Grade Students celebrated the end of our school year with a goodbye Luau today! It was a beautiful and fun day to end our school year! Here is a short video of the First Grade students learning the hula and some quick pictures from the day! Have a wonderful summer!
So the end of the school year brings the certain "Memory Book" where students get to write and draw about their First Grade school year. One of my favorite pages is their writing and drawing about their teacher. These are very cute and touching! I think I may need a new haircut and some new clothes! HaHa! Here are just a few:
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