Donor's Choose Matching Funds!

ATTENTION SUPPORTERS OF ROOM 119!
MRS. D. GOT SOME GREAT BREAKING NEWS!!!


This week, a new match code was announced on national television! Check out the news that broke on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Monday. (Watch the video.)
Starbucks, MSNBC, and Morning Joe are offering up to $500,000 in matching funds. To be matched dollar-for-dollar, donors must enter the match code MORNINGJOE at checkout.


Spread the word! The match code will double donations through May 8, or until $500,000 is exhausted. Each donor can be matched up to $2,500 for project donations and gift card purchases.


WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
You can to go to Mrs. D's Donor's Choose Page at http://www.donorschoose.org/mrsdoran and enter your chosen donation.  Then when checking out, type in MORNINGJOE and your donation will double!  Please share this information as time is limited.
Thanks again for your consideration to support us!
(and it's tax deductible!)

Week 30 in Review

Greetings from room 119! As you know, Mrs. D. had some technical difficulties (or rather the copy machine did) and the feed that she uses to make our take-home books was out of order.  By the time it did get fixed, she didn't have the time to make the copies for all of us, so please disregard the reading homework.  Hopefully (even during the busy season of spring) we are all getting into good habits of making reading part of our daily life with our without Mrs. D's assignments.  We had a lot to celebrate this week including two birthdays and one "un"birthday.  If you have a birthday you would like to celebrate, please remember to let Mrs. D. know so she can plan.

Happy 7th Birthday Luke!

Happy 7th Birthday McKenna!

Happy "Un-Birthday" Kaylee (Kaylee will be turning 7 over the summer).

On Monday, Mrs. Doran took us to the Media Center where Mr. Stearns had set up the Scholastic Book Fair.  We were able to look around and make "wish lists" of books we liked.  Many of us shopped later in the week on Wednesday either before school, at the VIP breakfast or during our scheduled media center time.  Mrs. D. will be sending in the final book order of the year in the next week or two in case you would like to stock up on some summer reading selections.

It was the straw at the top that made this tower the winner!

On Tuesday we explored more about solids and their different properties.  Mrs. D. gave us the task of building towers.  We were able to work with friends or alone.  We learned that it was much easier to build with things that were 'rigid' than things that were 'flexible'.  We have been building our vocabulary and using our new science words throughout our activities.

In reading we continue to read and have fun with poetry.  Most of the poems Mrs. D. has been reading us make us laugh.  She read us rhyming poems and some shape poems and we learned that many poems have a song-like quality to them (which may be one reason why they are so fun to read).  We have noticed poetry elements like sound words (onomatopoeias) and similes and have had fun sharing them with the group.

And we have LOVED writing poems.  Mrs. D. hasn't had to lecture us about periods or capitals and we had a lot of fun writing our own shape poems.  We published one in the shape of a heart where we wrote about something we love.  Because we had so much fun, many of us wrote our own shape poems in our notebooks!

In math this week we reviewed money and Mrs. D. stressed to us that you can not use a dollar sign and a cent sign at the same time.  The dollar and the cent sign do NOT get along so you should NEVER put them together.  The dollar sign did get a friend called a decimal so those two can share the same space, but the cent sign likes to be alone.  This story seemed to help a lot of us when writing dollar and cents notation and many of us wanted to know what happened that the dollar and cent sign are no longer friends... Mrs. D. said she'd have to find out and get back to us...

Later in the week we went from studying solid matter to studying liquid matter.  Mrs. D. gave each table seven bottles with different liquids in them and we explored and again learned about the different properties.  We learned what the word "viscous" means and noticed that some properties we used in solids (like colors  and transparency) could also be used when describing liquids.  We had fun exploring.

On Friday we welcomed some new friends visiting from Guest Elementary.  With schools closing in our district, more students will be coming to our school next fall.  Mrs. D. got to see what it will be like to have 27 first graders and she is wondering where she will fit that extra table... We had fun meeting our new friends.  After they left, we watched the movie James & the Giant Peach and throughout the movie Mrs. D. could hear us comparing and contrasting the two (which is exactly what we're going to be doing on Monday. Special thanks to Jack's mom who brought in popcorn, candy and juice for us to enjoy!

We ended the day with a very special visitor!  Bailey's older sister, Jade came to read to us.  Jade is a familiar face in our classroom because she often volunteers to come during her lunch and recess times to help Mrs. D.  She was in Mrs. Doran's 3rd grade class and Mrs. D. doesn't like to let her great students go.  Jade did a wonderful job reading to us and the tongue twisting book she read was perfect for what we've been studying!

As always, Mrs. D. snapped way more pictures that you can view in the slide show below.  Check back in during the week to see May's Upcoming Events on the side of Mrs. D.'s blog.

Also don't forget that Monday begins "No Screens" week.  See if you can take the challenge and turn off those TVs and computers, read some great books, talk and get outside and PLAY!

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Week 29 in Review

Greetings from room 119.  As you have probably seen from Mrs. Doran's last post, Blogger has made some changes and she is doing her best to learn the new ropes.  This of course is happening at the busiest of times so she thanks you for your patience.

We were very excited to learn this week that we are starting science again! We will be learning all about solids and liquids.  Solids and liquids are types of matter.  Mrs. D. showed us three Ziploc bags.  One contained a stick, one contained water and the last contained air.  All take up space so all are called matter.  We learned the stick was a solid because it kept its same shape whether it was in the bag or not.  The water was a liquid because it took the shape of the bag and stayed in the bag whether it was opened or closed but would spread out if we poured it into a different container.  The air was a gas because it filled up the closed container and the moment Mrs. D. opened the bag it left the bag.  This week we focused on solids.  We experimented with different kinds of solids and learned and talked about their different properties.

In math we continued to work with fractions.  To help us understand equivalent fractions (Mrs. D. told us she learned about these WAY later than first grade), we used strips of paper (representing a whole) that we cut into various sizes (or fractions).  We did really well with fractions and some of us were catching on to patterns we noticed and were able to apply those patterns and solve problems without using the manipulatives! 

Much of what we do now we do with groups and Mrs. D. has been encouraging us to talk about our thinking and explain it.  We really liked this week when in math she wrote up problems and WE had to be the teacher and explain it to our groups.  We had a similar experience in science where we grouped solids with like properties and encouraged others to try to discover our thinking.

Mrs. D. finished reading us the novel James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl this week and has been reading us different poems including some from one of her favorite poets, Shel Silverstein.  We focused a lot on word choices of authors and have been finding a lot of similes in the books we are reading.  We didn't just read about poetry we wrote it.  This week we learned about acrostic poems and published acrostic poems about ourselves.  We wrote even more in our writer's notebooks.  Ask us what an acrostic poem is!

We did things a little different this week when it came to our Mystery Reader.  Our Mystery Reader was unable to make our regular Friday slot, so he came in on Thursday.  Jack's cousin who is a star football player for WLN came in to read to us and he did a really great job!  We were a wonderful audience and Jack was REALLY surprised when Mrs. D. revealed the final clue and he realized the Mystery Reader was his cousin!

We also had an impromptu reader this week.  Ryan's big sister wrote her very own story special for our classroom.  Mrs. D. was so excited about this that she asked her to read her book to our class.  Ryan's sister told us how she came up with the idea for her book and how she went about publishing it for us.  We all loved the book and Mrs. D. put it on our classroom bookshelf where it has become a class favorite!

And finally as you know Friday was an exciting day for students in room 119!  We spent the morning picking up litter from our playground with our fifth grade buddies.  In the afternoon we turned room 119 into a "Creation Station" where we took all of your trash and turned it into treasure (thank you for sending it in!).  Mrs. D. had planned an hour for us to work, but we worked the entire afternoon!  We were so focused on our projects that our noise level stayed fairly low.  We were great problem solvers and we all agreed that this was one of our favorite days in first grade.  We love the planet and sure learned a lot about taking care of it.  And if you didn't see the video from Mrs. D's last post with the Earth Day festivities, she is posting it again below.  She is also including a slide show of extra pictures (non-Earth Day related) below.

 

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Week 29... almost...

Much to the dismay of Mrs. Doran, Blogger (the site Mrs. D. blogs through) has changed its format.  She spent a few hours at it but (after pulling out quite a few hairs) was unable to upload it the way she wanted to so she's keeping it in draft form for the moment.  She hopes to have it up some time Monday evening.  Until then, please enjoy the video she put together below showcasing some of our Earth Day Festivities.  

(Mrs. D. apologizes for the delay...)

Week 28 in Review

Greetings from room 119! Report Cards were available on Friday at 4:00 so hopefully by now you were able to see how we did in the third marking period of first grade. As always, if you have any questions (or were unable to access the report cards), please don't hesitate to contact Mrs. Doran. It is hard to believe that we are in our last card marking in first grade!
When we came to school on Monday we were shocked to see that we had a Luna Moth emerge from her Chrysalis. She was fluttering and seemed very uncomfortable in her habitat (and really disrupting our learning environment) so Mrs. D. let her out. She flew around for a while and then found a hiding place. We haven't seen her since but know she is somewhere in room 119. We still wait for our other Luna Moth to emerge. Hopefully he won't be as scared.

Insects weren't the only excitement we had on Monday. We had a surprise Mystery Reader! Sarah's Nana was in town from Florida so she came in to read to our class before returning to warmer weather. Sarah was very surprised and her Nana did a great job reading to us! Remember if you can't make the regularly scheduled Mystery Reader slot but would like someone special to read to us, contact Mrs. D. and she will try to work something out.

We all came back with a lot of stories from our break and so we chose one highlight and wrote Mrs. D. a letter about what we did. Not only was it fun to share our letters with each other, but it was a great review on how to write letters and all those days of writing to our "stars" really paid off. We all did a great job and remembered the five things every letter needs. We also started to learn about "similies". Ask us what a smilie is. We will be using them more next week when we begin to learn more about poetry!

Luke J. had a birthday this week and we had a great time celebrating with him! Remember if we have a birthday coming up and you are planning to send something in, please contact Mrs. Doran first. She likes to have a head's up on these things (Thanks in advance).

Mrs. D. spent much of this week again with last minute testing to see where we are and to make new goals for us in the last marking period. We love to read, so did a great job reading independently while she met with students. We also turned in our Olympic Reading sheets and had four students earn medals! Congratulations to Jack, Luke F., Vasu and Matthew for completing the challenge! (Matthew and Vasu are not pictured because they weren't in school).

In math we did some work with story problems and also some work with fractions. We used shapes to help us understand fractions. Though it can be a difficult subject, we've done really well. We've also done really well with using a hundreds chart to help us add and subtract.

On Friday, Mrs. D. share a very cool video that she found about "Caine's Arcade". If you haven't seen it before, you can click here. We absolutely loved it and it made us want to create! Mrs. D. thought with Earth Day coming up soon it would be fun to reuse materials we have around the house to create something new. If you have anything (boxes, egg cartons, string, bottles... etc) that you would like to donate to our classroom, please send them in. On Friday we will be having a "Creation Station" day where we create something special and then share and write about it. Mrs. D. will be sending another note home on Monday about it so stay tuned!
On Friday we ended the week the way we love to... with a Mystery Reader! Ryan was very excited when he learned that the Mystery Reader was HIS mom! She read a great story all about books and how cool they really can be! It was a wonderful book with a great message! Thanks for sharing with us!
As always, please click on the slideshow below to see extra pictures from our week.

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Week 27 in Review

Greetings from room 119! Mrs. D. had hoped to get this blog done prior to leaving on vacation but getting four kids packed for vacation was more work than she thought... and then there were report cards to work on... She has finally gotten around to uploading pictures and apologizes for the delay.
If you haven't yet heard, we are trying to get iPod Touches for our classroom through the charity Donors Choose. Donors Choose allows teachers to apply for something they would like for the students in their classroom, and others (you?) may choose to make a (tax deductible) donation We have already had a (very generous) donor and are well on our way. Please feel free to share Mrs. Doran's page with others. The donations will add up and hopefully we'll be able to use iPod Touches soon! Her page is: http://www.donorschoose.org/mrsdoran.

We also had some Birthdays in week 27! We enjoyed celebrating Taya's and Matthew's birthdays with them!


Now that everyone in our class has had the opportunity to be the Star Student, we have again focused more of our time on handwriting. We were very excited when Mrs. D. let us practice forming our letters on our tables with shaving cream! We also practiced writing word families like, "at, bat, sat, brat..."

With report cards coming out next week, Mrs. D. wanted to get in a lot of last minute testing (she likes to give us as much practice as she can). We took a math benchmark assessment and she also tested some of us on our reading and therefore did not meet with our reading groups.

The end of the marking period also meant that our insects had to go back. Unlike previous years, our insects have done really well (perhaps because of the warm weather). Because of this, we sent back live insects. Before dismantling the habitats, Mrs. D. noticed that we actually had a Wax Moth!! We were very excited about this and enjoyed passing around the habitat to look at it. Our Luna Moths have not yet emerged from their cocoons and we're hoping that they are still in them when we return to school tomorrow. We were able to keep our milkweed bugs because their habitat was basically a vial and ziplock bag.

We did do some work with fractions and used manipulatives to help us answer questions in our math journals. Some of the work we are doing in our journals is not expected to be mastered at this time in first grade. Mrs. D. guides us through some of the problems and helps guide our thinking. We also work together to share our ideas on how to solve problems.

And finally we ended the week with our Mystery Reader. We were very excited to have Kaylee's mom come and read to us. We had a great day Friday reading with our buddies and it was perfect that we ended Reading Month with another great book by Dr. Seuss. Kaylee's mom read, "Fox in Sox" which is a fun tongue twister book. We laughed and enjoyed every silly word!
Mrs. D. will send out a reminder when our report cards are posted to Skyward. If you have difficulty viewing our report cards, don't forget to let her know so she can help you.

Don't forget to check out some of the extra pictures from our week in the slide show below!

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