Marvelous Monday

* All Library Books Are DUE this Wednesday
* Field Day of Friday: Wear Community Teams Shirt; Families are invited

Questions for the dinner table:
Using Seesaw, what comment did you leave your author today?
What is the difference between "feedback" and "feedforward?"
Share about Charolette's Web. What has surprised you in the story thus far?
Website to practice counting money: http://gregtangmath.com/coinbubble
Show your families the correct way to make a lowercase g, s, and r.

Fun Friday

What a fun day of friends, hard work, and celebration!

Questions from the dinner table

How do you spell the word "donate?" What chunks do you notice? What parts do you recognize in the word "temperature?"
Why did Fern get upset at the beginning of Charolotte's Web? What do you think is going to happen to Wilbur?
What is the difference between a weather vane and an anemometer?
We read Harrison's story about Flash and Dash. What advise did you give Harrison? How did you support your writing partner?
To celebrate our hard work in writing, we created our book boxes. What does your book box look like? How many series have you put in your book box?
During community teams today, we played different games. What did you do with your community team during the picnic?
We are exploring a new app called Seesaw. We will use this app as a tool for feedback (both from our peers and our families). Next week we will begin sharing our writing, reading, and math thinking on this app. What did you create today?
How can you make 54 cents using pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters? Try a different way. And a different way.

The Hot Seat

Throughout the week, we have discussed the book Islandborn by Junot Diaz. We've had many great discussions and used informational text to deepen our understanding the book. Today, our first graders practiced a  structure called "The Hot Seat." Four students took on the role of four characters in the book. They were charged with the task of thinking about what we already know about the characters to answer questions. As always, I was blown away not only by our four friends who took on the role of the characters but also the text-based questions that the other students developed. Some questions included,

A student asked "Lola,"-  Of all the stories you collected from the community, which story was your favorite?
One student asked "Ms. Obi"- Why would you have an assignment in which the students had to research the country that they were born?
One student asked "Mr. Mir"- Why did you leave the country if the people had destroyed the monster?
One student asked "Mr. Mir"- Why were you rude to Lola at the beginning of the story?

As our children move into more complex stories, it's important that we stop to talk with our kiddos about what they are reading. Having your child put himself/herself in the shoes of the character will aid in deepening his/her understanding of the text.

Marvelous Monday

Reminders:
Math homework came home today.
Book orders due this Friday, May 18th (McCallister class code: R4JLZ)
Please see the calendar below.  I will send a hard copy of this calendar home with everyone tomorrow.


Questions for the dinner table/bedtime
We've almost finished Islandborn. Where do we suspect Lola was born (Dominican Republic)? What clues from the text did we find (maps, photos, phrases like "he said,")? How did we use other sources (maps, other books, google) to help us clarify our thinking?
How do we know take is spelled "take" and not "taek?" (knowing how to spell words like make, help us recognize words like take, partake, mistake, etc.)
How did you plan your writing of your book today? Did you finish another book in your series?
What time does the clock show below: (7:30 or half past 7)

Magic House Field Trip

We had a wonderful field trip to the Magic House. Thank you for all of our family volunteers who were able to attend.

  

Day in the Life of First Grader in May

Day of the Life of a First Grader in May

Handshake, high-five, or hug + lunch count

 Class meeting

Our friend taught us a new game for class meeting called "Meatball." She had the whole class giggling with her fun new game!

💙💚💛

 Science/Discovery

Quick review of the types of clouds

Creating different weather scenes and capturing the name of the type of clouds. 

 Read Aloud: Islandborn

During our reading lesson today, we read the book Islandborn. About this time, our AMAZING superintendent came in to see our first graders. Our class shared with him their interpretation of the book. Our kiddos talked about the "symbolism" of the monster, thinking the monster could actually mean a wild animal, a strong storm, or even a new government. Good job, first graders. Good job!

Private Reading

Audiobooks, online reading, and exploring topics that we are interested in

Shared Reading: Reviewing decoding and comprehension strategies together using a text that supports our science learning 

Recess

"Hanging around" at recess

Writing

We've been working on writing realistic books that are turning into series. Today we focused on organization, planning on our fingers to include only one problem and solution.  We then spent time duct taping each story together. Our kiddos LOVED this part of writing. Everyone is incredibly motivated to write more books in their series as the idea of duct tape must be super cool in first grade.

Author's share: These two students have been working tirelessly on a shared series. It's exciting to see what happens when our students combine passion, choice, and new learning.

Specials

We're off to P.E and Spanish. 

Movement Break 

After specials, to prepare for math, we do some type of movement break. Today, the kiddos ran/walk a lap on the blacktop. And they're off...

 Math

What day of the week did May start on? When will May be over?  

Building and exploring numbers

Reviewing subtraction strategies

Working on telling time to the hour and half hour

Practicing our skills using a calendar

Building math fluency using gregtang.com math games

Having fun building numbers in different ways.

Science

And then....my phone ran out of space! Such a bummer! We finished the day with some science fun. We took bubbles outside and explored what happened to the bubbles with the wind.