Exciting News from Room 119!

Something very exciting is happening in room 119! Mrs. Doran found a website called "Donors Choose". It is an online charity that makes it easy for others to make a donation to schools in need. How it works is that teachers who have a need can apply for a project. Once it is accepted, the project will be posted online where people can make a donation to help fund the project. Mrs. Doran has donated to other classrooms and it is very easy to do. All donations are tax deductable!!!

Mrs. Doran has done some research and feels that iPod Touches would really help us in the classroom. In a few years the standardized tests that we will take will all be on the computer. Since technology is the wave of the future, she wants to put it in our hands now. Her project is to buy 3 iPod Touches (and protective cases) for our classroom. She has found many apps for the iPod that support our curriculum.

Please consider making a donation and sharing her project with others. You can visit her project directly by entering the address http://www.donorschoose.org/mrsdoran (You can click right on this address on the blog to go directly to the page). There you will also see additional information as well as easy ways to share our project with family and friends.
Thanks for your support and making a difference in our education!

The First Graders in Room 119

Snack Reminder

Just a friendly reminder to send in a fruit or vegetable snack each day.

We had a lot of students forget their snacks today.

Thanks!

Week 26 in Review

Greetings from room 119! We had another busy week and it sometimes felt like we had a little case of spring (or summer?) fever. We needed many reminders this week to stay on task, write our names on our papers and do other things that we had gotten quite good at. Perhaps it didn't help that when we came to school on Monday we found that a naughty little leprechaun had messed up our room (probably on St. Patrick's Day!)! We actually did a great job at getting our room back in order. Mrs. D. took some additional pictures and a video of the damage that was done and put it in the slide show.

We had a birthday to celebrate this week! Chase learned that it was "Great to be Eight!" We sang to him and cheered. He was the first person to get one of the new crowns that Mrs. D. just bought. It looks great on him! Remember if we have a birthday coming up and would like to celebrate it in school to contact Mrs. D. and let her know.

In writing, we learned how to write a "How to" story. Mrs. Doran shared some mentor texts with us (real "How to" stories that have been published) and then we wrote a "How to Play Sparkle" story together. We learned it isn't as easy as it sounds to write a "How to". You really have to think out every step. We practiced writing "How to's" in our Writer's Notebooks.

With all the books we have written lately (many of us are still illustrating our books), we haven't been sharing our Writer's Notebooks as much as we usually do. We were glad to be able to share them again. We love when Mrs. D. pulls our stick to share so we can show the class what we've been working on. We will be writing a "How to" book soon. We are regular authors in room 119!

Our insect unit will be coming to an end next week. We have brought our mealworms home, and will be letting our crickets go (our milkweed bugs are still growing and their habitat is such that we can keep it in our room). Mrs. D. was very excited to buy another type of insect for us to learn about. She got some Luna Moth cocoons!! She told us about them on Tuesday and said that we'd be able to hold them! Unfortunately Tuesday was not a great day for us. She told us if she had to continue to stop instruction (because of our behavior) that we wouldn't be able to hold them. Sadly she stuck to her word and so we were unable to hold them and she just showed them to us. She hopes we learned that she says what she means and she means what she says (we were hoping she'd still let us hold them but she didn't...).
By Friday, we were much better and because the moths were still cocoons, we were able to pass them around. We could shake them very gently and feel (and hear) the moths inside of their cocoons! We are very excited to see them as moths and can't wait to come to school on Monday! They only live as adults for a few days. Maybe they will still be cocoons?!?

Because Friday was a better day Mrs. D. took us outside to read. We each chose a book from our book box and headed out. Mrs. D. read a great story to us and then we got to read. We didn't have to think too much about all the things we do during workshop (though we are doing them anyway), we were able to just sit back and enjoy a book! It was a beautiful day and we loved being outside. Mrs. D. got a lot of great pictures of all of us reading and put the pictures in the slide show.

Friday was also "Read a Water Bottle" day and so we did just that. As warm as it was, it was nice that we had some water to cool us off! Next Friday is the last Friday of March is Reading Month". We have had some good ideas on how to end our reading month festivities and will discuss it more and vote on it on Monday (stay tuned).

And as always, we ended our week with a Mystery Reader. Izzy's mom came in to read to us and did a great job! Thank you for coming in. We almost have had all the of the students in room 119 have someone special sign up to be a Mystery Reader. If you haven't yet, please let Mrs. D. know.

There will be no homework next week due to the week off, but please remember to continue to read each day. It is very obvious which students do and do not read at home and over a break. We have made so much progress in our reading, help us keep it up!

Don't forget to click on the slide show below for additional pictures from our week!

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Week 25 in Review

Greetings from Room 119 where it is feeling like summer! We have had unseasonably warm weather and the insects in our room seem to be doing well! We of course had a lot of other insects in our room this week as well!
Everyone brought in their Insect Report and model and Mrs. D. was so impressed with the quality. We all got a turn to orally share what we learned about our insect with the class. Oral Language is something we work on in our class and we did a great job sharing some of the facts that we learned. Mrs. D. taped us sharing and put it together on a video but You Tube wouldn't upload it because it was over 15 minutes (slightly). She is going to try to figure out how to post it because we did a really nice job! The Insects weren't the only thing we got excited about this week. We also got to celebrate our final three Stars, Ryan, McKenna and Luke J!



In reading, Mrs. D. has done a bit of informal testing and is impressed with how well we are doing. Many of us are still focusing on comprehension and retells. You will often see sticky notes in our books. We use these as stop and check points where we think about what we have read so far. Some of us are writing summaries in response to our reading so it is helping us write using a beginning, middle and end.

We haven't just been reading books, we've been writing them! We are in the process of illustrating our All About Me books that Mrs. D. typed for us and we are also writing an informational book about Insects. We looked at some texts about insects and are in the process of writing a book about the insect we studied. We are including a Table of Contents and other nonfiction text features that we have been learning about.

Of course the highlight of the week was our Insect Museum. Almost all of the classrooms came to learn about our insects and some of our teachers and staff also came. They were really impressed with how well we did. We had parents and family members also come to see our work. We were ready to celebrate when we were finished! Mrs. D. made a video with some of the pictures she took during the day. You can view it on You Tube by clicking HERE or you can click on it below.

After our museum, we headed to the gym where we had a Chinese Acrobat Assembly! They were really fun to watch. As a school, we were quite loud and a lot of people were sitting on their knees to get a better look. Ms. Qonja is going to meet with our school on Monday to review assembly behavior with us so that our next assembly will go more smoothly.

The end of the week was also Flashlight Friday and we had "Read a Shirt" day! We sometimes forget that words are everywhere and we are getting better each day at reading those words and understanding their meaning. Don't forget next week to remember those flashlights. It is also "Read a Water Bottle Day". If you don't have a water bottle with words, you can always write words on a water bottle. Bailey has written words on her hat and her shirt and it has turned out really cute!

After meeting with our fifth grade buddies (more pictures are in the slide show below) we ended the week with our Mystery Reader! Elliot's Nana came in to read us a wonderful book perfect for St. Patrick's Day! Elliot was sure surprised to see his Nana. She did a wonderful job reading to us. We can only hope that those pesky Leprechauns left our room alone this weekend. We guess we'll find out on Monday...

HAVE A GREAT WEEK!

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Free Apps!

Free Math Apps!

For those of you with an iPad, iPod or iPhone, the publisher of our math program Everyday Mathematics, McGraw-Hill Education, is offering five of its ten EM game Apps for free on Pi Day, March 14, 2012.

The following Apps will be free and available via the iTunes App Store:

Addition Top-It, Monster Squeeze, Equivalent Fractions, Beat the Computer & Divisibility Dash

Learn more about these great game apps at https://www.mheonline.come/apps/

Some Reminders

We have three important reminders for you this week!

1. Please note again that the Insect Museum Time has been changed. Families are invited to come to the Museum this Thursday from 1:30-2:00. Please do not come early as the first graders will be at recess.

2. Bagels this Friday will be GREEN to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. You can still send in your dollar tomorrow. The flavors are plain, salt and cinnamon sugar.

3. We have not yet had anyone from our class enter the poster contest in honor of Earth Day. If you are interested, let Mrs. D. know and she will send you additional information and paper.

Week 24 in Review

Greetings from Room 119, where we need you to MARK YOUR CALENDARS! We had to make a change in the time of our Insect Museum next Thursday. We have a school-wide assembly on Thursday at 2:30 so will need to move our Insect Museum time to 1:30. The first grade teachers apologize for this change and hope that you are still able to make it! If not, you know Mrs. D. will be taking LOTS of pictures and probably make a video! (Stay tuned!)
We continue to do a lot of reading this month to celebrate MARCH IS READING MONTH and we even had a visit from a Michigan Author, Mark Newman, who wrote the book, "Sooper Yooper". We learned a lot about Michigan's Great Lakes and the wonderful resources in them. We also learned about some of the dangers that are facing the Great Lakes. Mrs. D. also read us some books by other Michigan Authors, including the book, "Miss Martin is a Martian" by a teacher from the Livonia school district!

Speaking of writers, we have been working hard on our "All About Me" books and will have them done next week. We are the Stars of our own book! We also had some other Stars we celebrated with this week! Congratulations to Bryan, Izzy, Derek and Taya!




The Stars weren't the only people that we were celebrating in room 119! It was Calynn's birthday and we enjoyed singing to her and sharing a safe snack. She also got a special book for her birthday that she asked Mrs. D. to read to the class. We were shocked to learn that Calynn was the main character in the book and other people from our class (including Mrs. D.) were also in the book!

Good authors need to know how to spell words in order to get their meaning across and Mrs. D. has really gotten to be a stickler about us writing our Word Wall words correctly in our writing. To help us with our spelling (and direction following), she taught us a fun game that only takes a few minutes called "Sparkle". Ask us how to play the game as it can be something that we play with you in the car!

We continue to learn about shapes and all the characteristics of Polygons. Ask us what all Polygons have and see if we can tell you. We are getting very good at sharing what we know verbally and explaining it. This is important because there is a shift in math where it is not always about answering the problems, but we will also have to explain our thinking. Being able to orally describe our thinking and support our ideas will really help us in the upper grades when we are asked to share our thoughts in writing.

In addition to two dimensional shapes, we also took a look at three dimensional shapes! Our kindergarten teachers did an AWESOME job teaching us last year because so many of us already were familiar with the words, cylinder, cone and cube! We also learned the difference between a pyramid and a prism. We went on a hunt for three dimensional shapes around the room and shared their names with the class. Here Bailey has a rectangular prism and Sarah has a cylinder!

A lot has been happening in science as it seems we have new Beetles in our classroom each day and we even had two escapees while we were doing our observations (and one is still on the loose!). Our milkweed bugs are tiny nymphs now and we enjoy checking in on them. We also got crickets and learned some fun facts about them. We have also come in sharing fun facts about the insects we are learning about at home! We can't wait to share at our museum next week. In addition to sharing with our families at 1:30, we will share with other students at our school in the morning.

Fun Fridays return and many of us had our flashlights! Since some people have been forgetting their flashlights, Mrs. D. let us do some buddy reading. We are doing so well in reading! Mrs. D. is sharing some books from one of her favorite authors next week... She can't wait!

And finally, we ended the week the way we love to end it... with a wonderful Mystery Reader! Luke F's mom came and she read us a Curious George story! We loved it and were a very good audience.

If you have not yet signed up to be a Mystery Reader, Mrs. D. will be contacting you soon. She understands that not everyone's schedule may allow them to come in to read to us but she REALLY wants to make sure that each of us wonderful first graders has someone that cares about us read to our school family! It can be a grandparent, auntie or uncle, or even a special friend.

And, as always, Mrs. D. has posted additional pictures from the week in the slideshow below. There is also a video where you can see a Beetle trying to emerge from its Pupa. Mrs. D. doesn't have the best camera, but it is still really neat! Be sure to check it out!

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Week 23 in Review

Greetings from room 119! We had an unexpected short(er) week because on Wednesday our school had no power! Most of us learned right away about the power outages from our bus drivers or from teachers at the school informing parents, but still some students had to wait until they could get a someone to come and get them. Mrs. D. was sure glad we didn't have to stay because she was pretty cold waiting (until 11 or so) and she didn't get a lot of light from her flashlight. Still she was able to do some things in the classroom but missed seeing us. Because of the shorter week we had four stars to celebrate. They had a great time being the STAR!




We also got to celebrate Sarah's birthday! She and Dr. Seuss share the same birthday! We celebrated her birthday with safe cupcakes and she brought in erasers to share with the class. Remember if you have a birthday coming up to let Mrs. D. know of your plans! We have more people to celebrate this month!

In math this week, we took our Unit 6 assessment which almost everyone has completed. We also started to learn about geometry, the study of shapes. We learned what polygons are and their characteristics. We will continue to learn more about shapes in this unit. Our wonderful parent volunteers also came in to work with us by playing a money game and if we had a few extra minutes we got to play the 'Bridge' game that Mrs. D. made up, which this week had us practicing telling time.

In writing this week we added many pieces to our portfolio! We had a lot of donations come in for our classroom (THANK YOU!!!) and some of those included plastic page protectors which we use to house our portfolio pieces. We love looking back at our old writing to see how far we have come as writers. Now that we are more than half way through first grade, Mrs. D. has really gotten on us about spelling words correctly (especially those found in our room and on our word wall). Next week she is going to teach us a fun game to practice our spelling.

In science this week something very exciting happened... LAUREN'S PUPA TURNED INTO A BEETLE! Many of us have pupas and look every day to see if our insect has gone through its metamorphosis. We also learned a little about Milkweed Bugs. We will be setting up a habitat for them next week. Ask us the big difference between Mealworms and Milkweed Bugs (Milkweed bugs grow as nymphs.).

To celebrate reading month, we will have FLASHLIGHT FRIDAY each week where we just stop and read. Mrs. D. did read with some of us, but this is separate from our Reader's Workshop where this week we focused again on comprehension and remembering to use interesting words that we may remember from the books we read in our retellings. Ask us what book we're reading in our groups.

Friday was a day where we got to see some of our school's talent! Our very own Kaylee was in the show as her brother's magician assistant. She did a great job. Mrs. D. was also in the talent show and we got a kick out of watching her dance with Ms. Qonja and some of the other teachers at our school. At night the entire Talent Show was presented at one of our high schools. Mrs. Doran wasn't able to attend because of childcare issues but heard that it was a great success!

And finally we ended the week as we love to... with a Mystery Reader! This time our birthday girl, Sarah's, mom came in to read. She wore her pajamas since that is how they love to read at home~ in their pajamas with all the kids piled in mom's bed! She read "The Lorax" to us which was perfect because it was Dr. Seuss's birthday too and Mrs. Doran had been reading us some of his books throughout the day.

Be sure to check out the slideshow below for additional pictures and to see some of us trying our hand at tongue twisters like Dr. Seuss. Also, don't forget to check out the blog (if you're getting this via email), to check off what kind of insect we are doing for our report. Mrs. D. is already getting excited to see all of our wonderful work. Remember, if you have questions, to let her know.

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