Domino Fun

 We will be using dominoes to help us focus on our math facts for the next few weeks.  We learned the traditional Dominoes game.

We are also learning how to be good sports.

Good game!

Popsicle Stick Measurement

 In Math Workshop we are learning about nonstandard measurement and using popsicle sticks to measure length.  We learned that when we measure, the units we measure with shouldn't have any gaps and they should be as straight as possible.  Mathematicians are very careful and double-check their work to make sure it's accurate.

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.

Here we are working with our partners, measuring like mathematicians!

We record our estimates in our booklets before we measure.

 Then, we compared our estimates with the actual measurements to see if we had a reasonable estimate.

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

 We even measured each other!

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

Talking Partners

 We missed out on Wonder Wednesday this week, so instead we had Thinking Thursday!  We wondered about roller coasters and why people don't fall out when they go upside down.

We are also working on our collaboration skills. An important part of collaboration is listening to your partner.

Today we fine-tuned our Turn & Talk skills while discussing Mystery Doug and roller coasters.

Talk is an important part of our learning!

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!

Hopes & Dreams

We started talking about our Hopes & Dreams for first grade by reading a book about Philipe Petit called The Man Who Walked Between The Towers.    

You can reread the book here:

Room 612 was surprised to find out that this was a true story!

Here is the newscast from that morning back in 1974.

Here is a more recent video in which we hear more of the story behind Philippe Petit.

Philipe had a dream to walk on a high wire between the Twin Tower buildings, and he didn't stop until he had accomplished his dream.  

We will have our Hopes & Dreams conferences this fall.  Parents, teachers, and students will be sharing our Hopes & Dreams with each other.

What are your Hopes & Dreams?

Friendship Day

For our Friendship Day celebration, we found out that we would get to work with 4K to create something for our Friendship mural.

We had a project time with 4K to create "friends." We *loved* being the big kids and helping 4K with this project.

It was challenging to try and get all four of our LEADS classes together for a Friendship Day celebration, so we had a quick gathering in the Community Room and then we all contributed projects to a Friendship mural.

Second graders taught us about what a good friend does through a song.

Here is a video of our Friendship Day activities!


Here is our finished Friendship Mural!

Strong Collaboration Skills

We have been working on fine-tuning our Turn & Talk skills.  We came up with this anchor chart to describe what good partners do during our Turn & Talk times.

We also added a new idea to our collaboration skills chart:  compromise.

When several partnerships started to display the art of compromise, we added it to our collaboration chart and discussed this important skill as a group.

Our guidance counselor, Mrs. Keup, shared a great video to further explain compromise.

Turn & Talk

This week we are fine-tuning our Turn & Talk skills.  We watched a video about the importance of listening and conversational moves.


We discussed what makes good Turn & Talk partners and came up with these ideas:

Next, we read the book Which Would You Rather? and discussed our answers, focusing on our listening skills.

We are improving on our listening skills!

Number Detectives

We enjoyed playing the Number Rack Detective game with partners today.
We were given a number to make using one or two strings on our number racks, and kept it hidden from our partner.

Next, the Detective partner listened to the Clue Giver partner give a clue about how many s/he moved on one of the strings.  The Detective had to then figure out how many beads were on the other string.

We're getting to be stronger mathematicians every day!

Number Racks!

In first grade we will often use number racks to think about number relationships of 5 & 10.

Today in Math Workshop we made our own number racks.

This is what they look like when finished:

We worked on ladybug math problems.  We asked how many ways could we have ten ladybugs on two leaves (leaves = top row and bottom row of the number rack)?

What is a way you could show 10 on the number rack?  How many on the top?  How many on the bottom?