Creating Mental Images

This week we began focusing our comprehension study on creating mental images.

Being able to "see" what's happening in your head as you read allows students to have better recall, and make deeper, more meaningful connections to text. The "picture in your head" while you read really helps readers have better over all comprehension.

We read a wonderful story about a little bat named Chiro this week. We made mental images, drew them out on whiteboards, and explained our thinking as we read.

Here's a picture of our thinking stems chart. We use these words to help us discuss our mental images.

And here's our thinking about why our mental images are different.

Here's an interactive collage of our drawings from the very first page of Nightsong, by Ari Berk.


Our mental images helped us learn about echolocation. and picture how little Chiro felt as he got ready to fly through the night!

Want to record your child's thinking for them at home? Use the AudioBoom app. They can share thinking, then come back later and use the audio recording to help them recall what they were thinking.

Our Pumpkin Rotted - Pumpkin Fun

We rotted a pumpkin. Here is a video we made about how we cut it apart.


We predicted how long it would take for our pumpkin to mold before we cut it up. Here's our video predictions.

We also made a snail video. We wanted to see if our snails liked to eat pumpkin. We had a contest to see what they liked. We videoed it with the iPad. This video is called time lapse. It is from all day in our class.

Here is our predictions.

The snails ate the most of the lettuce.



Here's an update on our rotting pumpkin and our snails. It has been 10 days since we started.
There is lots of fuzzy mold on our pumpkin!

We are really enjoying our pumpkins!

October Pumpkin Fun

We've been really enjoying our study of pumpkins.

Here's a quick video to update you on all the pumpkin fun we've been having!


Untitled from Meghan Zigmond on Vimeo.

Tomorrow we will be cutting up our small pie pumpkin. We'll count seeds, see if our snails like to eat the pumpkin, and explore it thoroughly before we seal it up in a jar to watch it rot! Lots of pictures and projects will be coming soon!

Check back soon for our time-lapse video to see if snails like lettuce or pumpkin better!

You can also explore our Pumpkin Diagram and listen to what we have to say about it below. Hover over the microphones, then press play to hear what our students learned about each part of the pumpkin patch.


Happy Fall!
Mrs. Zig's Class

We're Excited To Be Part of the Primary Blogging Community!

Welcome to our class blog Mrs. Hogan's Class, Ms. Smith's Class and Mrs. Melnik's Class! 

This is our school - H. G. Olsen Elementary School. We live in Port Aransas, Texas. It is an island. We live very close to water and the beach. We get to swim, surf, boogie board, fish, kayak, and duck hunt with our families. 

We have 13 students in our class. There are 2 First Grade classes at our school!

It is usually very hot here. Click here to see our weather. Our Fall is usually warm. Winter is cool and it barely ever snows here. 

These are our class pets.

This is Slick. He is a Tiger Salamander. We like to watch him eat crickets. Click here to watch him eat! He is very funny when he eats. The crickets usually jump out of Mrs. Zig's hands!

These are our snails. They are very cute. They had babies. We have lots of little snails in our tank now. We feed our snails lettuce and spinach. They crawl all over, even on the roof of their tank!

We are so excited to blog with you! 

Mrs. Zig's Class

Time Schema

Last week we got our brains started thinking about clocks and time.

We used one of our favorite apps - Popplet Lite to make a thinking map for each class.

Here they are -

What else would you add?