Sound of Winter Poem

Today we read Red Sled by Lita Judge. It's an awesome almost wordless book, so we did a lot of inferring as we read. Watch the book trailer below.


We noticed that the only words in the book were really just sounds! This inspired us to write a poem called "Sounds of Winter"!

Here it is ...

Listen to us read it with enthusiasm here ...

You can also come by our classroom to see it on our bulletin board, and use Aurasma, to watch it there! You'll enjoy our snowman too! It's made of student created snowflakes and art! We love it!

Santa Letters!

Yesterday we started leaning the parts of a letter, and what better way to do that than write to Santa?!

Since we found out that we are going to see the Nutcracker in a few days, we were so excited to ask for all things Nutcracker!

Here's our letter ...

Mrs. Zig emailed it to Santa & he promptly sent the Nutcracker music and a letter!!

Today we labeled the parts of a letter & started writing our own. You'll be able to read them in the South Jetty!

Thankful 1st Graders

Last week we discussed lots of things we were thankful for, and celebrated them in different ways!

Here's the Turkey shaped "word cloud poem" we made together ...

Then we worked on a Haiku Deck to share what each one of us are thankful for. Here it is, so sweet!

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Hope your Thanksgiving was very blessed! 

Rotting a Pie Pumpkin - What happened!

So here it is ... Our final results are in! The pie pumpkin rotted for 32 days in our class, and got really gross! We loved watching it.

Day 1 

Day 32 

As part of our observation process, we created a Haiku Deck presentation to share the things we noticed. Our class came up with some wonderful observations!


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Hands on Math: Hundreds Chart - An App We Love

Sharing some of our recent math - It's been REALLY busy & we have been wanting to share these things!

Recently I discovered the app Hands on Math: Hundreds Cart. 

It's $1.99 in the app store, and is only compatible with the iPad. First grade mathematicians are loving this new too! 

Students can use different colors to highlight, check, circle, box, cover or cross out numbers. There is even a feature that will read the numbers that students touch. This math manipulative app is my favorite type of app! It allows students to make their thinking visible and can bring number patterns to life!

After students had some time to build number patterns, they too screen shots and used the Educreations app to add an explanation of their thinking to the picture! How cool right?!

Here are a few of our examples:

This app would be a great tool to use at home for so many math concepts - composing & decomposing numbers, showing patterns, playing missing numbers (more on that to come when we get back in school!) and much more!

Story Retell vs. Summary

Today we learned what a summary was - a quick retelling with important parts, but not ALL the details.

To show the difference we made two videos about There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly - one of the Folk Tales we've been enjoying!

Here's the retelling ...




And here's the summary that we wrote together and recorded ...




We used an iPad stand to hold it steady - that's the red thing you see.

We noticed that the video for the retelling was MUCH longer, and the summary was very SHORT.

What do you think about our retellings and summary? We'd love to read your comments!

Composing and Decomposing Numbers

In the past weeks we've been working really hard to compose and decompose numbers within 10.

Compose and decompose numbers? It's adding and subtracting, but we're finding ways to break apart and put together numbers so that it creates a deeper understanding of what adding and subtracting really is.

We started out with playing "Shake & Spill" with 5 two color counters, and then made this Popplet to represent the fact families of 5 that we discovered.

They especially loved that we could draw the dots inside the popples!

Then we moved on to the next landmark number - 10.

Here is the shake and spill mat that we use with 2 color counters. I created this version, I really don't know who to give credit to for the idea though, this game has been played in so many forms with so many recording sheets! Please download it and you can use it at home with beans, buttons or anything else. If you don't have 2 color counters you can separate whatever you're using into two groups.

We use this mat with any number up to ten. It's a great resource!

Click here or the picture to download this mat.

Then Friday brought even more fun! To show some of the ways to compose ten, we made turkeys! The feathers represent the combinations of ten. Some students chose 2 colors, and others chose 3. They each stamped their hand twice, and recorded the number sentence before adding they turkey body and details. I love the way they turned out! Thanksgiving fun, with a math twist!

Created with Pic Collage

Ask your child what it means to compose and decompose numbers! You'll be impressed!

Word families

We learned about word families. If you can read or spell one, you can read or spell lots of words! 

We used the app Popplet Lite to organize our word families, and recorded them on paper as well. 

Read-A-Thon Pumpkin Competition

Our class entered the Pumpkin competition for the Read-A-Thon.

We voted to make our pumpkin Skippyjon Jones - the Siamese cat whose ears are too big for his head.

Here he is! Pretty great huh? Our students did the whole thing, except hot glue on the ears, but they did draw them! 

Here' sour Skippy with all the other pumpkins ...

Don't forget to log your minutes and collect pledges for our reading fundraiser for PTO!

Have You Ever Seen A Pumpkin Song & Video

This week we started working on making Mental Images and visualizing while we read. We started out with a familiar topic - pumpkins!

First students drew their mental images to 2 pumpkin songs we read and sang.

Then today as a class we created collaborative images for one of the songs using our iPads, Apple TV and projector. You'll notice that we used the details in the songs to create our pictures.

We were able to pass the iPad around and work on drawing the mental images in Doodle Buddy, while it was projected to our screen through the Apple TV. It was awesome! We love sharing, writing together and seeing all the action as it happens!

Then we used iMovie to add the images and record our song.

Here's the finished product ... We are all so proud!



Did you spy the round one, the tall one, the bumpy one and the squashed one?


PS - Here's what our rotting pumpkin looks like today (10/25). Lots of gross mold!

Rotting Pumpkins!

We started rotting our small pie pumpkin on Monday of this week.

Here are some pictures of what we've observed so far ...

Today we saw mold! Eew! 

Pumpkins! Ooey, Gooey Pumpkins!

We have been having so much fun with pumpkins in the past weeks!

We've used this ThingLink with resources - hover over the image to see some interactive icons that will let you watch the videos we've been watching!




We've also read Rotten Pumpkin: A Rotten Tale in 15 Voices

And yes, it's every bit as gross as it seems! We LOVED it!

Today we cut into our pie pumpkin, and put it in a jar to rot! We'll be taking pictures each day to show the gross process! We are thrilled!

Here are some pictures ...

Writers Publish & Celebrate

Today both first grade classes shared their very first published stories. Look for them in backpacks today!

If you can read ...

In word study we are working on practicing that we can read and write words if we know their endings. We call them word families!

For example: If you can read mat, you can read splat, chat or pat.

Here's the chart we made ...

We also love watching this short Between the Lions song!

Fall Playdough & Pumpkin fun

We added fall playdough to the science station today!  We really had fun figuring out the two scents - cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice!

Click here to find the recipe that Mrs. Zig used to make it.

We have also started our pumpkin investigation, and are working on several fall projects!

Small Moments with Closed in Endings

Today we talked about keeping our small moment stories all in one place. Basically, keep your story in one place, and about one topic.

Our awesome class likened it to a turtle in his shell - all in one place!! 

Here' style chart we made to help us remember & pictures of the sign language symbol for turtle! We're going to use it to help us remember to keep our stories "inside the turtle shell".

Star Wars Reads Day 2013 - Pictures

We had a great time on Friday celebrating Star Wars Reads Day!

Here is a Haiku Deck with some fun pictures from the day ...

Star Wars Reads Day - Celebrating Tomorrow!

Star Wars Reads Day II is on October 5th.

We'll be celebrating tomorrow morning during station time!

We'll be using books, apps and activities to celebrate!

Here's the official Star Wars Reads Day II trailer ...




Here's a link to a bunch of resources for you  - apps, books, and more! Click the picture below.

Students are welcome to bring a book, or other Star Wars related item to share, as long as it is school appropriate and you as the parent are okay with them bringing it!

We are very excited! 

Haiku Deck Graphs

We've been working really hard in math collecting and analyzing data.

On Thursday and Friday we culminated the unit with a really fun project!

Students -
   - came up with a survey question
   - collected data from their classmates
   - analyzed the data and made a comparison statement
   - translated their data into a graph using the Haiku Deck app
   - typed and illustrated their comparison statement

Then we published their slides and shared the data with each group.

Here are their finished products. Student initials were used for the titles, so find which one belongs to your child! Click through the slides - the initials are included on the last slide.

Not quite everyone got finished (some wanted to do two surveys & didn't get to finish publishing) I'll share those next week!


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad


Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app for iPad

Pretty AWESOME huh? I think so! I'm so proud of our little mathematicians and their thinking!

Fall Fun

We're creating this chart about fall together. 

We read 

And watched this video to get our brains thinking! 

What else can we add? 

Fun with Dogs - poems, books and more

The week before last we read A Ball For Daisy & Ball - both nearly wordless books that made us think about our thinking (metacognition).  This week the 2 books were in our story retell station.

We also painted dogs, read several dog poem books and wrote a dog poem together. Here's some of our work ...

We used the Haiku Deck app to collaboratively write a poem. 

We also enjoyed this fun song/video about dogs  -

Nouns

We started learning about nouns today.

Here's our chart -

Then we made a Pic Collage on an iPad together. We loved using this app! We used it in math too!

You can share about nouns at home. :)