Committee Work!

 Our Committee Work is underway! 

In Room 612 we have jobs, but we work together to get the jobs done.  We have four committees:  the Reading Committee, the Writing Committee, the Math Committee, and the Group meeting Committee.  Each committee has two jobs that the members rotate between for each quarter of the year.  When we choose new committees, the old committee members train the new ones.

Here are some of our committee members getting their Morning Committee Work done! Because of COVID, much of our collaboration is sharing and trading off the work, instead of working so closely together. Here are a few of our committee jobs:

Accountants count up the milk and fill out the order slip

Woodworkers make sure we have enough sharpened pencils

Librarians make sure the library is in order and books are returned

Electricians make sure all the folders are turned in and passed out

Secretaries write the short date on the calendar display

Messengers fill the milk order

Teacher Assistants lead the Morning Message

Way to go, Room 612!

Inferring Minds Want to Know...

A new comprehension strategy that we worked on in April was inferring.  We infer while we read.  Inferring is when we get clues from the text and pictures and use our schema (what we know from our personal experiences) to understand what the author is trying to say.  For example, what can you infer about George & Martha from this picture?

We practiced making inferences on our morning message.

Hmmm.....

This is what we inferred:

What can you infer about this picture?

Float or Sink?

Grant brought in a special shark model after Spring Break.  He wanted to have the class predict if it would sink or float.

He thought it would make a good morning message question!

  What do you think happened?

Nonstandard Measurement

We started off our morning by adding Anderson's wonder, lifted from our Wonder Window, as our question for the day in our morning message:

We also found out through the morning message that we would be measuring with popsicle sticks in math.  Part of the Common Core Standards for math engages kids with measurement by using nonstandard units to understand that length means a number of smaller same-size units laid end-to-end with no gaps or overlaps.  This will help us understand measurement more deeply later when we use the standard measurements of inches and centimeters on a ruler.

We measured *lots* of things in our classroom with popsicle sticks.  

We measured tables...

bookcases...

huge rugs...

chairs...

double tables...

windowsills...

 ...and even each other!

We estimated before we took an actual measurement and then recorded our results in little booklets.

What could you measure with at home that is a nonstandard unit?

Serious Readers

We started our day by drawing ourselves walking the wire with Philippe Petit on the Morning Message.

Anderson made a throwing star by following printed directions (literacy in action!):

...And we had a fabulous Reading Workshop time.  We talked about why we read a lot in first grade.  Room 408 said we could get smarter, we could learn new words, we could read better when we're an adult, and it helps us learn to talk.  We discussed what the students' job is, as well as what the teacher's job is.  Here we are getting smarter by reading!


What have you been reading?

First Day in First Grade!

We started out our day with early specials followed by our Morning Meeting.

We started our poetry collection by adding two new math poems to our Fluency Notebook, and we came up with hand motions for each:

Here is a video of our day together:

What was your favorite part of our first day together?

Officer Grignon: AKA, Logan K.'s Dad

For Sharing this morning during Morning Meeting Logan brought....his dad!  Logan's dad is a police officer on the Menominee Indian Reservation.

He was able to share lots of tools that he uses to help keep everyone safe.

I have never seen them so focused and attentive!

He uses sound waves to hear the dispatcher.

He carries lots of tools with him like a gun, taser, handcuffs, a knife, and pepper spray.

He uses a flashlight (light waves!) to see at night.

The kids especially loved the taser and the sound it made.

Thank you for sharing your time with us, Officer Grignon!

What was the most interesting thing you learned about police officers?