Earth Day - We Love Bugs

We're celebrating Earth Day (April 22nd) all week! We started with bugs!

We started out reading two wonderful books - Step Gently Out & Some Bugs.

Watch the book trailers for an idea of what we read.

Then we were inspired to write a poem! 

We published it with drawings from the Paper app on our iPads. We added the drawings to iMovie and recorded ourselves reading the poem. Then we listened to all the theme music and decided on the best one to fit the mood of our poem.

Here's our published poem!

Several students were also inspired to write their own bug poem! 

Kagan's poem

Sybil's poem

Amanda's poem

Keagan's poem

Be sure to visit our student blogs if you'd like to leave a comment for any of these amazing poets!

Tomorrow we continue the celebration with a trip to the Texas Zoo in Victoria! 

Butterfly Virtual Field Trip

Yesterday as we enjoyed our virtual field trip to learn about Monarch Butterflies we all sat and recorded our thinking as we listened. We traded iPads and also used our Reader's Response journals. 

You're going to LOVE some of the creations that were made. The app we used is called Paper by 53. 

Use these images to spark your learners memory about what they learned and have a great conversation about the life cycle of a butterfly. Not everyone chose to record in this way, but I'm sharing what I found saved on our camera roll. You can also visit our student blogs to see more thinking about butterflies. 

Also - our very own Monarch Caterpillars should be joining both first grade classrooms on Monday! 

Gabriel

Keagan

Easton

Emma

Kagan

Chloe

Lexington

Rodrigo

Magnolia

Noah

Mrs. Zig

Jump Class Jump

We've been working on measurement in math, and today was so beautiful, we decided to get outside and do some frog jumping! 

We used chalk and a ruler to measure out a place to jump. Each mark represents 1 foot. 

Then everybody got to jump an mark it using initials. It was SO fun! Each student looked to see what foot marker their jump was closest to. 

Here's the "Frog" class ...

We made our graph with Haiku Deck, and took pictures. We added some of our thinking in a Pic Collage.  

 

Here's from the "Owl" class.

We made our graph with the Number Frames app, and added our thinking in Pic Collage. 

What a great way to spend the afternoon!

How To ...

How to enjoy 1st grade writing ...

1. Click the ThingLink.

2. Choose a book to read.

3. Smile as you enjoy the story. 

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 as much as you like!

We have been working so hard to share what we are experts at with others through writing. Our How To stories are meant to be clear to the reader, who should be able to follow our directions. 

These published stories are just a sampling of what we wrote, and they're amazing! We used a publishing menu of apps. Ask your child what they used to create their video book!

We really hope you enjoy our stories! Be sure to see both versions of our class story - How To Feed A Salamander! 

We'll post our work on our Kidblogs too, so be sure to comment there for your amazing writer and their friends!

In the mean time, have a wonderful and relaxing Easter weekend!

Herbs Galore

Today we all went out to visit our herb garden as a class. Usually we visit in small groups to water and harvest. 

Today we made a list of all the herbs available to harvest. 

We also smelled and tasted som herbs! 

We took a few great class pictures too! Look for them in the paper soon. 

Herb orders will be coming home tomorrow. Remember that any change we collect will be donated to charity at the end of the year. Last year 1st grade chose the ARK at UTMSI!