Personal Word Walls

Each child in Room 408 has a Personal Word Wall filled with words we need to know in a "snap."

Words that each child can spell in a "snap" are highlighted on their Personal Word Wall.

  

Each week the student chooses a word to work on that is not highlighted.  S/he makes the word in a variety of ways in hopes of learning the word so s/he can access it in a "snap" when s/he is reading or writing.

 

Then we take pictures of our hard work to document our work.

Today was our first day exploring our Personal Word Walls.

I think it was a success!

New Committees

Since we are about a quarter of the way through our school year, it's time to switch committees!

In Room 408 we have jobs, but we work together to get each job 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!

Our Accountants on the Math Committee count up the milk order before giving it to our Messengers.

Our Librarians from the Reading Committee return books and straighten up our classroom library.

Our Postal Workers from the Writing Committee pass out mail to mailboxes.

The Electricians from the Math Committee make  sure everyone's folder is turned in and put them in number order.

The Woodworkers from the Writing Committee make sure we have lots of sharpened pencils.

Our Secretaries from the Group Meeting Committee write the short date in our Number Corner.

The Teacher Assistants from the Group Meeting Committee lead our Morning Message.

The Messengers from our Math Committee get our milk.

Way to go, Room 408!

How Many Feet?

We have been working on making estimates and then checking our estimates.  In Math Workshop, we read the book How Big is a Foot?

The story was about a King who has a special bed made for his Queen's birthday.  The King measured out how tall and wide he needed the bed by using his feet.  By the time the carpenter's tiny apprentice made the bed, measuring with his tiny feet, the bed did not fit the Queen!

We made estimates about how many "teacher feet" long a jump rope was.  Then we got our actual measurement:  it was 10 teacher steps long.  Then we estimated and measured with different student feet.  Some were quite different!

Then each student got to estimate and measure how many of their steps long the jump rope was and added their actual measurements to the chart.

We got pretty good at estimating!

Kindergarten Writing Partners

About every two weeks LEADS 1st graders partner up with LEADS Kindergarteners to share our writing.  Here are some pictures from some of our writing partnership sessions:

October Learning Mural Day!

The first day of the month is Learning Mural Day!  We reflected on all our learning in October by brainstorming a big list.

We take turns inviting friends to work on a topic...

...and then collaborate to make a representation of that learning.

When we finish one we label it and erase it, and then we go back and choose another!

Here is our finished October Learning Mural: