May 14 -18 Happy Mother's Day!

Hope all of the 1P Moms had a great Mother's Day!  The students enjoyed working last week on all of the pieces that we included in your gifts and wrapping them up to bring home!!

Math

We are moving on to talking about counting by 2's, 5's and 10's, as well as working on adding two-digit numbers.  This is helping us to be more efficient in our computation.  We use tens and ones to more easily add 2 digit numbers.  We decide based on the problem if grouping might help us to count by a different number, such as 2's, 5's and 10's.  We are practicing by solving problems with things that naturally come in groups of each number, such as hands, fingers and toes.

Reading

We continued to talk about character development this week.  We also talked about setting - time and place, and how this can change in a story.  Mrs. Berne and Ava taught us a strategy called Story Grammar Marker, which is a way to help keep track of a story and to retell it.  It has braided yarn with different attachments to help remind us of different parts of the story - fuzzy pom-pom with eyes for character; star for setting; sneaker for "kick-off"; a reminder for how the character feels, the problem, beads for events to help us remember first, then, next, after, finally; and then the ending and how everyone felt.

Writing

We continues to work on poetry this week.  We worked more on our poetry using our senses to write about different topics we are interested in.  Some of us experimented with repeated lines in a poem.  Then we worked on acrostic poetry, writing poems for our names and for the Sheehan.  The students help me write an acrostic poem using my name (Mrs. P) coming up with some great descriptic vocabulary that melted my heart. 

Bugworks!!

1P recently had a visit from the Bugworks program -

we learned about a variety of insects - this aligns with the Life Science standards of exploring the traits of animals and how they use them to adapt and to survive.  We had an opportunity to touch or hold many of our little visitors.  We listened and learned quite a bit, and also had an opportunity to answer and ask questions.

 Moth Larvae!

Praying Mantis!

 Can you find him?

Stick Bug!

 Beetles playing dead!

 Millipedes!

 Tarantula - not an insect - an arachnid!

May 7-11 Spring is Finally Here!!!

May 11, 2018

Well, we finally have the spring weather and that lets us know that we are getting close to the end of our year!!  After so much excitement last week with our field trip and Derby Day, we have settled back down to work here in 1P.

Math

In Math this week, we have continued to work on story problems, or word problems as they were traditionally called.  We are working on finding the important information in a story problem and knowing the information that we can disregard.  We have learned how to pull out the important words that let us know what operation we are using (addition or subtraction) and what kind of problem we have to solve (one answer or many answers, missing number, etc).  We continue to practice all that we need when recording an answer to a story problem on paper - 1.) an equation - 5+3=8; 2.)a strategy - 5 -count on 3 - 6,7,8 or I know 4+4=8, so take one from one of the fours and add to the other 4, so 5+3=8; 3.) answer - circle 8 and 4.) label (this one is forgotten the most!!!) - are we talking about buttons, balls or steps - be sure to add the label to your answer!

Reading

1P loves to read - I often hear groans when I ring the bell to end Reader's Workshop - that is such music to my ears!! At this point, we are all motivated to read, read, read which is what helps us to become even better readers.  All of the kids are pretty good at choosing good books that are at their reading level and we continue to practice our reading strategies to help us with unknown words.  A few of us do still need reminders to use strategies and not to guess when we get stuck.  We are all working on reading fluency now - how to read aloud with a voice (sometimes we call it teacher voice - how the teacher reads books aloud) that sounds like it flows and remembering to read the punctuation too (so a questions sounds like a question and we stop at end marks, etc.).  The other concept we are working on is retelling - an important piece for comprehension, which is the area that all of us need work on.  We are working on character information and how we know more about a character than just what is told in the story.  

Writing

In Writer's Workshop, May is the month for Poetry.  We started off our Poetry unit, reading rhyming stories, for example, Dr. Seuss books that read like poetry. We also read examples of rhyming poetry.  We then began to experiment with our own rhyming poems and how to write about our preferred topics and find rhyming words that fit.  Then we read more poetry and talked about how we are able to close our eyes and see a picture in our minds by reading the poem.  We experimented with this using our senses to write the poems.  Choose a topic -what would you see, hear, feel, smell and taste?  We talked about using descriptive words in our poems.  

Science

We have been working on our Physical Science topic Behavior of Light. After conducting experiments to compare things that are - Transparent -let all light pass through, Translucent - let some light pass through, and Opaque - let no light pass through.  Then we used flashlights and Mirrors to experiment with reflection and how light changes direction.

Mrs. P :)