Day in the Life in April

Day in the Life of a First Grader in April

 Class Meeting

Students write the date, create our schedule for the day, pick lunch choices, connect and discuss events in our lives. Ms. Kavanaugh and Mr. U, our instructional interns, often join and lead our class meetings.

 Discovery Time with Ms. Winkler

In the words of one our students, "Today we learned if we are introverts, extroverts, or ambiverts. Know what you need. Know more about yourself."- Ruby
Ms. Winkler lead us in a discovery of how we learn best. The students will use this information to monitor their own learning needs. 

 Library

Mr. Bober has a background in using primary resources as a tool in learning. Today he guided our learning regarding our current social studies unit titled Long Ago and Today by using pictures of streetcars. Instead of front loading the information about transportation from long ago, we encouraged our first graders to notice details in the pictures of streetcars from Saint Louis. The students asked questions and wondered about this mode of transportation.

One of our oasis tutors acted as another primary source giving us direct information from his memory during this time period.

 Private Reading

Rainbow loved listening to a nonfiction book about how to take care of a dog.

A collector of interesting words. Today she found the word boisterous.

 Recess

Word Work

We've been learning about different vowel patterns including words that contain vowel, consonant, e (cake, hike, while, hope) and words with vowel teams (Sue, team, paint)

Lunch

Quick selfie in the lunch room!

Writing

Today students finished their book reviews, self-selected writing tasks, and editing and revising to prepare for our upcoming writing celebration.

Math

We have the honor of welcoming Mrs. Caracciolo (Mrs. C) to our classroom during math. She is a Clayton High School math teacher and our district math coordinator. We've been working on strategies for adding two digit numbers. Check out the blog tomorrow for a post focusing on the different strategies students are using to build understanding and flexibility regarding addition.

It was a great day of exploring, problem solving, learning, playing, and laughing. What a gift it is to spend our days together!

Updates

Important information for this week

Monday: Rainbow, the McCallister's new guinea pig, came to visit for the week

Tuesday: Start our MakeDo projects during discovery
Please feel free to send in any extra cardboard (boxes, cups, paper towel rolls, etc) throughout this week

Thursday: Field Trip to the Museum of Transportation (see email regarding details for this trip)

Friday: Have your child wear BLUE on Friday in honor of Autism Awareness month.

Questions for the dinner table:
How can you recommend a book you love? ( introduce the book and the main character, retell the book without revealing the ending, share the lesson of the book)
Share about Rainbow. How does Rainbow help our class community?
What revisions did you make to your book review today?
How much does 28+20 make? How do you know?

Room Redesign plus math information

Over the break I had the opportunity to read some new educational text. Part of my reading focused on the physical environment of the classroom. With this new research in mind, I made some changes to our classroom. Thank you to our resident photographers, Ava and Livie, for photographing our room. 

More space in front of the windows for natural light

Reading nook with soft lighting. One of our friends said it "makes me feel like I'm at home."

More work spaces

Standing work space

Writing Time: Today we recapped our Spring Breaks. The students are using our new spaces.

Using the white boards as a tool to write words in different ways

Math: In our upcoming math unit, we will focus on addition and subtraction of whole number with or without regrouping. We will also focus on adding three 1-digit numbers.  Some vocabulary that we will use in our classroom: