Hundreds Day Capes

In the envelope today there was a shared homework assignment.  The hundredth day of school is on Tuesday, February 3rd.  We are having a SUPER hundreds day.  Each child was asked to make a special hundreds day cape.  The blank cape came home in your Wednesday envelope.  The cape needs 100 of something on it.  The letter attached to the cape gives a little more direction and has some ideas.  I can't wait to see what you come up with!  Feel free to call me with questions or concerns.  Here are some pictures from other classes to help with ideas.

Place Value Bootcamp

We are working hard on place value concepts.  We have been counting objects, grouping objects in sets of ten, and using base ten blocks to compose and decompose numbers.  Base ten blocks are a math manipulative specifically designed to help children concretely understand place value concepts.  The blocks are composed of tiny cubes to represent ones, rods to represent tens, and flats to represent 100.  We even did a little place value boot camp.  I found this great video by the Teacher Tipster.  Hilarious! 

After watching the video, we made ourselves into base ten blocks to build numbers.  Standing tall meant ten and making yourself into a small ball meant one.  The students were really showing understanding and could easily figure out the number by counting how many tens and how many ones.  Watch these students make numbers!  The students at their desks are writing the numbers made by the students up front.  Then, the students acting out the number count off.  We were able to get every student but the camera man in this short clip.  Rest assured, the camera man did get a turn, just not on the video.  What awesome students! 



Also this week, we checked out the Chromebooks to practice place value concepts through games.  There are some great interactive web sites to practice our place value objectives.  Click on the links below to play.

Shark Pool Place Value

Dino Place Value

Base Ten Fun

Base Ten Bingo

Of course, don't forget there are ways to practice these important place value objectives on the ipad as well.  Montessori Numbers has students building and ordering numbers for $2.99.  There is also the app called Base Ten Bingo for $1.99. 

Martin Luther King

In anticipation of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day we discussed kindness, cooperation, and peace. It is so interesting to talk to young children about the injustices of the world. They are so pure and innocent and don't understand how people could be treated so unfairly. We can all learn from our children. One activity we did was pick a birthday present for Martin Luther King, Jr. I had one present wrapped in a fancy gift bag with ribbon and tissue. The other present was in a brown paper bag. I asked several kids which present they would choose. Of course, everyone chose the pretty package. When we opened it....there was an empty water bottle. However, the paper bag had a big, delicious bag of M&M's!

We discussed how the outside of the package doesn't tell you what is on the inside. Just like, the clothes someone wears and/or the way someone looks doesn't tell you what the person is like on the inside. Further, it is what is on the inside that counts, not appearance. Last, we had to taste test! But before we all got M&M's we had a few children experiment. I put a blindfold on the "taste tester" and gave them one M&M. The child had to guess the color of the M&M. Well, needless to say, every child that tried the blindfold test couldn't tell which color it was. My favorite answer to "What color is it?" was "CHOCOLATE!" Of course! Again, it didn't matter what color the M&M was, what is important is the sweet inside!

 "I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!" ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

Royal Readers

The children were so excited to find out who would be crowned our first Raz Reading King and Queen.  I had been tracking our reading minutes on Raz Kids all Christmas vacation, anticipating the first Friday crowning.  WOW!  The students really worked hard!  As a class, we read 4,071minutes!  Amazing!!!!  However, there was only one king and queen for the first week.  Our queen read over  3 hours during the break and our king read an incredible 5 hours and 38 minutes. Drum roll please......

 

Our first crowning really inspired some more reading!  Our royal readers get a crown and a reading scepter.  They get to lead our line everywhere we go and they make a special visit to the principal's office.   Our next crowning would come the very next Friday.  This time the students had only one week to add up their Raz minutes.  I was so pleased to see the great effort!  This time, our king read over 2 hours in a week and our queen read a whooping 4 hours and 24 minutes!

While our royals are very special, there was also other great reading achievements to recognize.  There were 7 children that read over 2 hours this week, that is more than 20 minutes every night.  For being so bright, these 7 students got a glow bracelet.

Congratulations readers!  Our next crowning will be Friday, January 23.  Read, read, read!

Snowy Day Investigation

     To work on the reading comprehension strategy of inferring, the Connected Ones became investigators this week. To infer in reading, you have to use your schema (your background knowledge) and the clues the author gives you to infer things that might not be written on the page. We read a story about Tim and his grandma. Tim and his grandma were spending a snowy day together while Tim's mom went to work. When she came home at 4 o'clock, Tim and Grandma were no where to be found. However, they left many clues about what they had been up to during their "snow day."   As inference investigators, each group of students got an envelope with some of the evidence Tim's mom collected. As a group, the investigators went through their envelopes. They would write down the piece of evidence and then infer what Tim and his grandma might have been doing. For example, one group had a McDonald's french fry container, so they inferred that Tim and Grandma had McDonald's for lunch.

Some of the evidence was tricky.  The investigators really had to think.  For example, one group had a wrapper and some of the group members inferred that Tim and Grandma had a cupcake for snack while the other investigators in the group thought maybe they ate muffins for breakfast.  Great ideas, both could be correct.  Later, the group found a recipe for muffins and decided the wrapper was in fact from blueberry muffins!  The groups did a nice job collaborating before they wrote down their inferences. Teamwork!

The investigators used the evidence to figure out many of the activities that Tim and his grandma did all day.  They still had a question to answer, where were Tim and grandma at 4 o'clock when his mom came home.  The groups all got together and discussed all their findings.  They were able to make a timeline of the day.  One group had a movie schedule with the 4 o'clock showtime for frozen circled.  That was it!  Great job inference investigators!  

Show and Tell

The children really enjoyed "Show and Tell" on Friday. It was fun to see all the fun gifts! Wow! What lucky kiddos! First, the children read their riddles about the special gifts. What great descriptive writing!  Thanks for your home support with the writing.  They used our class microphone for their speaking. The students were excellent guessers.  They listened carefully to the clues and then used their knowledge of each classmate to infer what the special gifts were!  Last, the students revealed and shared a couple more things about their show and tell.  They took questions and comments from their audience. Here is just a peek at Friday's special show and tell:

Show and Tell Riddles on PhotoPeach

Our Snowy Days

The children loved listening to the book Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats.  We made our own class book about what we like to do in the snow and used the same illustrating style of the Caldecott winning book.

We have had a very snowy January.  Not only is the snow outside but there is snow much learning going on inside.   In writer's workshop, we worked on adjectives and verbs to write beautiful snowflake poems.  We also made a winter word web and wrote poetry about winter.  Take a listen!

Stop Motion Animation

Stop Motion is an app that allows you to take a series of pictures and turn it into a video.  For each picture the students move a small part of the scene. When the pictures are put together in the app, it creates an animation.  Our first animation project was to make words. The children were given a group of magnetic letters.  Their assignment was to animate a series of words.  They had to change the beginning, ending, and middle sound sometime during the animation.  The students worked in groups of two and three.  After their animation was created, we uploaded it to Youtube where I have complied everyone's 3-4 second word animation.

 

These tech savy first graders were ready for their next animation project.  For our second project, we used stop motion animation to illustrate how things move and change.  Our latest reading inquiry unit has been study just that, how things in our world move and change.  In reading group, the students have read books about animal locomotion, geysers, volcanoes, matter, seasons, weather, the moon, and more!   For the project, students chose both their groups and the topic they were most interested in.  They had to research their topic further, create an illustration using construction paper, direct the movement of their piece, then take their series of photographs, and compile the animation.  All in a days work for these smarties!  Check out their creations.

Math Masters

We have been working hard on many important math standards this quarter under the domain of "Operations and Algebraic Thinking."  We have been exploring the properties of addition.  The students are able to make fact families when given three related numbers (2+3=5, 3+2=5, 5-2=3, 5-3=2).  With the understanding of addition properties, we are able to meet some other standards as well.  For example, students have to be able determine the unknown number in an addition or subtraction sentence relating to three whole numbers.  In the partner game below, the first graders are doing just that.  They have to figure out where the number tiles go in the different equations.  The first player to fill up their side of the game board wins.

We have also been working hard at understanding that the = sign means "the same as" in equations.  We compared the equal sign to a balance and determined if certain equations were true or false.  Finally, this quarter, we have spent time daily developing fact fluency and strategies for addition and subtraction.  Such an important math foundational skill.

There are so many fun ways to practice developing fact fluency.  Here are some awesome apps we love in class.  Quick Math for $1.99, students have to write the answer on the ipad.  This app increases in difficulty and includes multiplication and division.  If you have older students it is excellent for them as well.  Math Bingo ($1.99), in this app the children are so busy playing that they don't even realize how much math practice they are getting.  Check out Addimals (free), it goes through different addition strategies.  Last, I recommend Add and Subtract within 20 ($0.99), this app works on missing numbers in equations.

 Don't have an iphone or ipad?  Here are a couple links to interactive web games that work on fact fluency.  They even have a winter theme!

 Snowball Fight

 Build A Snowman

We are so lucky to have the opportunity to use ipads in our classroom.  With all the important math objectives we have covered, the ipads give students the opportunity to get tons of practice at each child's optimal level and receive immediate feedback on their progress.  As we have been working on objectives in the Operations and Algebraic Thinking domain, we have been using a program called Front Row.  We have a class account on Front Row.  Students log in using their ipad with our class code.  The app gives them a pretest under the domain we are working on and then has the students practice the skills each individual student needs to master the domain.  While on Front Row, students are being challenged at their exact level.  On skills that require more practice, the students are given that targeted practice and video tutorials.  When students need more of a challenge, they are moved up.  Of course, I am still teaching the skills whole group, but this program enhances what we are learning in class.

Even better, Front Row is available on the ipad and the computer.  You can get to the site by clicking on Front Row.  Then, log in with your child's first and last name and our class code is flnuvy.  Then click on the domain you want to practice.  Right now, we are working on the domain that is colored black in the program: Counting and Cardinality, Algebraic Thinking.  Next quarter, we will focus more on Numbers in Base Ten if you want to use Front Row to work ahead.

The last screen before you begin practicing the math has a blue box and green box.  Select the blue box, adaptive practice, so that your child is practicing at his/her level.  Since each child has his/her own identity under our class account, any practice they do at home or at school is recorded.  I can see areas of strength and places I need to work with them more on.