Greetings from Room 119! Our first four days were GREAT and Mrs. Doran is really excited for the year. Don't forget that our first homework assignment is due on Monday. You can see more detailed instructions after this post on Mrs. Doran's blog. Also, if you haven't already, please mark your calendars for next Thursday, September 13th. The first grade curriculum night will be from 6-7pm. This is for parents only, so please make other arrangements for us.
This week we began getting to know each other better. We played a game with a beach ball that helped us learn each other's names and also taught us something about each other. Another way we are getting to know each other is through the "Me-Box". The Me-Box is a pencil box that Mrs. D. sends home for us to fill with trinkets and things to help tell the class more about us. After we share our Me-Box, the class makes a book just for us. We are practicing writing each other's names with one capital and also drawing pictures with detail. Everyone will get the Me-Box. We pull sticks to see who will get the Me-Box next.
We also started to learn our morning calendar routine. This is where we read sentences about where we live and go to school and we also practice what today, yesterday and tomorrow are. We do a lot of work with patterns, count the days we are in school (which focuses on place value though we don't know it yet) and work on editing. Each morning, Mrs. D. writes us a letter, but because she does it early in the morning (before her brain wakes up), she always seems to make some mistakes that we have to fix. This week she forgot a lot of capitals. We had to look carefully to see if there were capitals at the beginning of sentences, names and days of the week. This activity is always led by a 'teacher' (one of us). This is on our job board so we all get a turn to be in charge!
Even though it is just the first week of school, we started our Writer's Workshop. This is a time of day that Mrs. Doran will teach us something in writing and we will practice that skill and then at the end of our workshop, we share our writing and what we did well with the class. Mrs. Doran modeled the way we will write. These are the steps we do in Writer's Workshop: 1. THINK about what we want to write about. 2. Draw a line separating our page into a top and bottom. 3. Sketch a quick drawing at the top of our page in pencil only and include details that will help us in our writing. 4. WRITE ON! We use our sounds and words on our word wall to help us write our stories. Often times in first grade a student may say, "I'm done!" but in Room 119 we say, "When you're done, you've just begun!" and we can add detail or color to our picture, more details to our words or start a new story. We will be building our stamina in writing but so far we have been writing for 15 minutes which is a great start!
In math, we will be reviewing a lot of what we did in kindergarten in this first unit. We practiced counting by 5s, and using our math templates which have different shapes on them. We talked about the shapes and their sides. We also learned that instead of calling a diamond a diamond, this year (and our future years in school) we will refer to it as a rhombus. We made pictures using our templates. Some were sent home and some we did with our own white boards and markers.
This year we will really focus on handwriting and forming letters correctly. This month we will be focusing on writing our names with one capital letter and the rest lower-case. The more we practice this, the more automatic it will be.
Did you know that this year we have a "Magic Board" in our classroom? Thanks to our wonderful PTA, we have a SMART board which is an interactive white board! Mrs. D. is still learning all the magic that is contained in this board, but we had fun moving numbers into the right order with just the touch of a finger. Technology is really an amazing thing. We also have iPod Touches that we will learn with (that Mrs. Doran's last class helped purchase) and an iPad from the district.
We were very excited to learn that we will have 5th Grade Buddies this year! Our class will be joining Mrs. Turek's once a week to work together and have fun. This week we got to know each other and even got to play outside. Mrs. D. and Mrs. T. were very excited with how well we played with our buddy!
This year we will be having classroom meetings at least twice a week where we learn and practice "Coping Skills" which will help us be more productive in the classroom and in life. We learned that everyone uses coping skills when they get frustrated (even our teacher and parents). We are practicing making good choices. Here we were acting out the coping skill of "Walk Away" when someone is picking on us or if we are getting frustrated. We did a great job!
On Friday afternoon, we had our first assembly and we were an awesome audience. We had a magician come in and teach us the four STAR steps to help us create a Bully-Free school. We learned that STAR stands for
Stick together,
Tell the bully to stop,
Alert an adult at school and home and
Respect others and treat them the way you want to be treated.
And finally we got to celebrate our friend Skyler who turned 6 this week! She got to spend the day (and night) with Ollie our birthday owl and she unwrapped a special book from her family that Mrs. Doran read to the class. She also got us non-edible birthday treats. It was a special day! If we have a birthday coming up, remember to check out Mrs. D.'s blog to see what we can do for birthdays AND let her know what day you'd like us to celebrate so she can include it in her plans.
Also, please note that Mrs. D talked to the parent of the student with the orange allergy and because it is not an air-born or touch allergy, it is OK if we have them for snack. Please remember to ONLY send in snacks that are on the list because Mrs. D. will NOT let us have them if they are not. Fruits and veggies are a perfect snack because they are easy to monitor and GREAT for our learning and growing bodies and brains!
As you're learning, Mrs. Doran does her best to take lots of pictures of us throughout the week. Each week she puts together a slide show with even more pictures and information. You can check out this week's slideshow by clicking below. Thanks for taking a peek into what's happening in Room 119!
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