Week 5 in Review

 

Greetings from Room 119! We had a great first FULL week of school! It was jam-packed with learning and fun. This week we lifted up a boy named Andy. To see the project we made for him, click HERE.

If you know of someone who could use some encouragement from some fabulous first graders, email Mrs. D. at lauradoran@wlcsd.org

We celebrated TWO birthdays this week and they were on the same day!!! One turning six and one turning seven. Happy Birthday to Finley and the Storm Trooper (aka Sawyer).

Book checkout started this week. We had a fire drill during our media center time so thankfully Ms. Schafer let us come at another time.

We were excited to read our library books as well as some leveled books that Mrs. D. gave us to read.

We are also lucky to have Mrs. Hager pull us out to work with us and push in to work with us! It's awesome to have two teachers!

We did more work on counting and also had our first assessment. It came home on Friday. Grades were also put in Skyward. Please note that a written assessment shows a lot of things including math skills, so is not the sole definer for how we are doing on a given topic. Mrs. D. went slowly and read the entire test to us but we often had questions as learning to take a test is a skill in itself. B stands for beginning, D stands for developing and S stands for secure. It is OK for all skills not to be secure yet. We're still working hard. Next week we start Unit 2. You can always see what we're learning about in our Google Classroom.

In writing we are working on adding movement and dialogue to our stories.

We have a lot of fun outside! Special thanks to a PTA mom (not a current mom in Room 119) who treated us all to popscicles (Because of Andrew). We loved them. We also LOVE finding wildlife and playing outside. Don't worry. Mrs. D. brings the hand sanitizer out with us!

Apple Day was a lot of fun and a huge success. You can see a video with more pictures (and videos) from the day by clicking HERE.

We love ending our week with a Mystery Reader! Angelo's Grandma read us a great book. If you would like to be a Mystery Reader, check out Google Classroom for directions or email Mrs. D.

Have a great week!

Week 4 in Review

Greetings from Room 119! We had our first Guest Teacher this week and we did a wonderful job! So great, in fact, that Mrs. D. told our families they should treat us to ice cream or donuts! We did not have school on Thursday because of the Jewish Holiday so we did our Thoughtful Thursday earlier in the week. You can see our project for Captain Julie by clicking HERE. If you have someone who could benefit from some encouragement from some Fabulous First Graders, email Mrs. D. at lauradoran@wlcsd.org

We LOVE celebrating birthdays in Room 119! It's like heaven to be seven! Happy birthday and Sto Lat!

We have been working on our writing and adding more and more books to our collection. We also learned about Constitution Day on Friday and wrote about that!

We continue to work on our stamina and reading smoothly. Mrs. D. tested all of us on letters and sounds and now is reading with all of us based on a word assessment we did.

Our focus in math continues to be counting and we had a blast counting with tallies! We also learned some fun new games to help us practice counting!

Thank you to all who donated fun things for our classroom. We love to explore inside and outside!

A big thank you to Stella's mom who was our first Mystery Reader! We loved it!! To be a Mystery Reader, head to our Google Classroom. Directions are under "Classwork." Anyone can be a Mystery Reader (just don't tell us so that it will be a mystery!

And thank you to all who participated or donated to the Because Of Andrew 5k.

The Dorans were overwhelmed by your kindness.

Have a great week!

Week 3 in Review

 

Greetings from Room 119! We had a great week together and are really getting into a good routine. We now have a schedule that you can see by clicking HERE. We also did our first Thoughtful Thursday project. You can see it by clicking HERE. If you know someone who could use some encouragement from some fabulous first graders, email Mrs. D. at lauradoran@wlcsd.org

We are really doing well in our writing! We have been writing more and more and doing a great job on our personal narratives. We learned that if you can be a good story teller, you can be a good story writer, so we did a fun matching game to find a friend to share our story with. We practiced asking questions and this really helped us get started on our writing. If you can say it, you can write it!

In math we did more with counting! We have been in school for ten days already! Playing games to help us count (and add) is not only fun but it builds on our number sense.

We played games like Bunny Hop and Top It and we did a great job counting and writing numbers! Ask us what our favorite math game was this week and check out our google classroom in the math bin to see what we've been up to!

Mrs. D. forgot to take any pictures of us reading because she's been busy meeting with all of us one on one! She has done letter assessments, word assessments, and is now reading with all of us individually! We have been talking about reading more smoothly and rereading helps a lot with this!

A heads up that Mrs. Doran will be out next Wednesday. It is the anniversary of her son's death and remains a hard day to get through. Next week Sunday, she is having a fun 5k run/walk that you are FREE to participate in if you would like. All it costs you is an act of kindness so get out there and spread that kindness. You can learn more about how to join from your own neighborhood (or anywhere) by clicking HERE.

Also please note that next Thursday, September 16, we have no school for the Jewish Holiday. To all our Jewish friends we say,

G'mar Hatima Tova!

Have a great week.

Week 2 in Review

 

Well that short week got away from Mrs. Doran and she forgot to take our pictures for Week 2 in Review top picture. Let's hope she remembers in the three day week.

We love celebrating birthdays! Did you know we have learned to sing in English and in Polish? Ask us to sing for you!

We have some amazing authors in Room 119! We are writing more and more. We have been writing three page books on one topic and even tried our hand at a little revising! Mrs. Doran has been meeting with us each day and she's already seeing great improvement!

For those friends who need more help in letter work (Mrs. D. is still in the midst of testing this), click HERE for some great resources where we can practice at home. If you want to help support our writing at home, click HERE to see how Mrs. Doran does it.

We are working on building our reading stamina. We can read pictures, read words, and think about the books that we are reading. During this time, Mrs. Doran has been meeting with us one on one. We can bring in books from home that we love, just make sure they have our names in them.

We did a lot of work with counting this week and learned that we can use different strategies to count fast.

Some of us put our counters in a line and counted one by one and others grouped counters and then counted faster by twos or fives.

After we solved the problem of counting, we listened to how other mathematicians counted and tried a different way! We had a lot of fun!

Please note that the fundraiser pictured above went home on Friday but we had a few that didn't seem to make it all the way into the backpack. To check this fundraiser out online, click HERE. We love our PTA! Don't forget to join if you haven't already (Mrs. Doran needs to do this next week too).

Did you know that one of our favorite things to do at free-choice is to go on Cicada Hunts! We've had so much fun exploring our playground. There's so much to learn through play!

We would love a giant hand sanitizer like THIS if you would like to donate one to Room 119.

In other news, Mrs. Doran is hosting her second annual 5k in memory of her son. If you would like to join it is FREE and you can do it right in your neighborhood! All you have to do is a kind act!

 For details, click HERE.

Have a great week and Happy New Year to our Jewish Friends!