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!

Busy Days in First Grade

We are continuing our focus on how we can be kind to others and to ourselves.  This is illustrated beautifully in these books:

and Sad, The Dog

We did a lesson about how words can help and heal our hearts.
As we read a book, each time the character's heart was hurt by others we crinkled a paper heart.  When someone was kind, we smoothed out the wrinkles.

However, we realized that the wrinkles/negative words never really get all the way smoothed out.  This illustrates why it's important to do our best to use kind words.

We have also been talking about our Hopes & Dreams and decorated balloons for our Hopes & Dreams.

 We look forward to sharing these hopes and dreams with our families during conferences these two weeks!

Deep Thinking

We are starting a new Reading Workshop unit on thinking deeply while we read.
We started our unit out by reading Ira Sleeps Over, a book that I had when I was a child.

We all have different schema (background knowledge) so we all make different connections to the story.  We illustrated these connections after reading the book.

Throughout our unit, we have thought deeply while reading books such as Owl Moon and My Father's Dragon.

As we read these books, we found we were making predictions, predicting, noticing powerful feelings, visualizing, and inferring.

Coalescing Our Animal Research

With the Exploration Celebration right around the corner, it was time to start coalescing our research.  During this stage, we group similar facts from our post-it notes that go together. It leads to some great conversations as they work!

Then, we label each group of post-it facts with the "Big Idea."

We are so proud of our research!

Next up...creating our life-sized animals!

Animal Immersion Stations

We're entering the Immersion Stage of our animal inquiry.  We have a lot to get done before our Exploration Celebration on April 16th.
We explored a variety of animal immersion stations:

We have an ocean flannelboard activity mat...

...a desert flannelboard activity mat...

...various animal models and matching photo cards...

...hundreds of animal photo cards to sort and read...

...a habitat matching game...

...two big tubs full of animal models...

...and animal x-rays.

As the students engage in these experiences, it's a great time for me to listen in on their conversations to find out what they already know about animals.

For example, observing and listening in on exchanges between students I learned that Gavin knows about the difference in teeth between carnivores and herbivores.  This kind of information is very helpful as we move forward in our animal inquiry.

Look at how engaged they are!

Self-Affirmations

We have been talking about how important it is to believe in yourself.

I shared the following quotation with Room 408:

We talked about how positive self-talk is very important, especially when things get tough.  

We made a ring of self-affirmations to keep in our safe zone.  

Each student decorated a self-affirmation card for the ring.

They worked so hard to make sure people would feel good when they looked at them!

Here is a great video about believing in yourself.

Time Machine

We introduced a new tool to help us work through our problems.  It's called our Time Machine, and it's a way to rewind time and solve our problems in a more productive way.

When someone has a problem, we make sure we are willing to work on the problem.  If we're willing we stand at the ends of the mat.  Danica and Aloura offered to demonstrate:

Next, we step onto the mat and take a STAR breath (Stop, Take a breath, And Relax).

After that we wish each other well.

Next, we say, "1-2-3, Let's do it!"

One person tells the other person what s/he did that s/he didn't like, and asks them to stop. The other person does their best to understand the problem and help by saying, "Okay, I can do that."

Finally, we seal the deal with a high five, a handshake, or a hug.

If needed, the two switch places and do it again.

Using the time machine really diffuses our problems and makes it easier to work them out!