Our Busy Social Calendar

First graders in Room 408 track the temperature and observe the skies every day after we come in from recess.  We record our information on our personal calendars and on our skies graph.  We also currently keep track of the daily weather above our number line (it's a color-coded dot based on the temperature around noon when we record our temperature observation).  We started the year out with lots of temperatures in the orange and yellow dots, and have slowly moved into the green dots.  We recently had our first blue dots.  The kids were excited to have a new color, but I have a feeling we're in for a lot of blue and purple temperature dots this winter.  They are very aware of the weather.  In fact, today kids were reminding each other to wear their coats outside because "it's only 43 degrees out and the 'feels like' temperature is only 36!"

We now have a timeline along our number line in our classroom.  We brainstormed the things we have learned together in September and October.  Kids then signed up to help create representations of our learning to add to our monthly murals along the timeline/number line.  We are very proud of our finished murals! (can you find Philippe Petit walking between the Twin Towers and Albert Einstein?)

 You can see that September happened on our number line from days 1-20 of school.

October took place from day 21-44 of school.  Can you find Jane Goodall and James being pulled by the seagulls attached to the giant peach?

We also had a presentation from our local K-9 unit, and they came in with their German Shepherd named Getty. 

The kids were great listeners.

Makenna, who has been working on a German Shepherds book in Writing Workshop, was in heaven.

Getty

This week we also had our Family Math Night.  Families explored math activities in our classroom and then headed over to Mrs. Zoll's classroom for help with technology.
Finally, Logan S. presented our We Love First Grade book at the LEADS School Board Meeting. He did a great job!

....and it's only Wednesday!

What was your favorite part about working on the September and October murals?

Two Months Under Our Belts

Today we added details to the timeline in our classroom.  We brainstormed things we did together in the months of September and October, and then visited the blog to add even more ideas to our brainstorm.  Students chose from our list of ideas to add to a September mural and an October mural that we added to our timeline.

They loved our Plan, Do, Review project time this morning!
This afternoon we worked with our rekenreks to record combinations to ten.



Can you name a combination that makes ten?

Literacy Fun Fair

On the day of the Literacy Fun Fair, we had to have a substitute teacher: Miss Viola Swamp.  I'm sorry to say, she was the meanest substitute in the world.

If you want to enjoy the book Miss Nelson is Missing again, watch this video:  

We got together with our LEADS buddies to make videos with our ipads.  Each buddy recorded the other talking about their book character and their book.

LEADS K-2nd grade students got together for a shared reading of The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything.  

In the afternoon we worked with Mrs. Zoll's second graders and went to stations and ended the day with some treats!

Thinkers

This week our focus was how readers think while they read and scientists think while they research.  We left tracks of our thinking on post-it notes in books we read during Reader's Workshop.  Then we transferred our learning to leaving tracks of our thinking on post-it notes in the form of questions and observations while researching horseshoe crabs.

We had some good discussion while reading the book Crab Moon:

Then we watched the following youtube videos to to some research:
 

Room 408 had lots of questions and observations about horseshoe crabs, so we left tracks of our thinking on post-its.

We added our questions and observations to our Wonder Window:

Many kids were wondering about the body of the horseshoe crab and where the head is.  That will be our Wonder of the Week that we post on our classroom door.  Throughout the week kids will make hypotheses about the body of the horseshoe crab.  Later in the week we will discuss how we use sources to find information and research more about the body of the horseshoe crab.

After watching the video again, do you have any other wonders about the horseshoe crab?