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! 

Salamanders!

Oh the fun we've had with salamanders lately! Have you see our amazing art? We painted paper like Eric Carle, then cut the paper into salamanders, adding googly eyes for extra awesomeness!

Please come see our awesome board!

We've been digging into information text in a very purposeful way as well. We read many salamander books, and watched videos, to help us understand more about them. We're writing a book all about salamanders!

Here's some of our research. We record thinking by drawing and writing. Then we took pictures and added them all here to this ThingLink.





We used the information we learned, and our salamander art to make an amazing informational movie!

Each student used ChatterPix to animate their salamanders. See each individual movie by using the Symbaloo below. We would love for you to leave a comment on our blogs about them!



We've also been working hard to write how to books! We even wrote one about our salamander. Check back soon for more about our salamander how to book, and individual stories!

Fraction Graham Crackers

We've been working to understand fractions as part of a whole shape.

Here are the charts that both classes made to help us anchor our understandings.

We also had some hands on fun with Graham Crackers!  Each student got to break a graham cracker and decide if the pieces were equal or unequal, as well as if it was in halves or fourths if it was equal.

Then we used Skitch to label our pictures, and either Twitter or Kidblog to share our understandings.

Here are our Tweets ...

Click here to see Mrs. Peterson's Class blog posts, and here to see Mrs. Zig's class blog posts.

Please have a safe and restful spring break! Looking forward to seeing all our happy faces back on the 23rd!