February 16, 2018

This was quite a celebratory week - from 100th Day on Monday to Valentine's Day on Thursday to Chinese New Year on Friday!  Amazing all of the learning that took place this week with celebrations for each of these special days mixed right in!!

Math
This week, Math revolved around the number 100.  We worked on place value, understanding the ones, tens and now the hundreds, what they mean and how they can help us with our problem solving.  We used real life problem situations to develop ways to add up to 100.  In small groups, we had to build with 100 cups. 

Once building, we had to use equations to figure out if we had the right number of cups.  Some groups made smaller towers and added the number of cups per tower. 

Other groups made larger towers and added the number of cups per row in a large equation. 

Then we combined numbers into tens to make it easier to figure it out.

When we were all finished with this activity, we combined all the cups as a class to make a large structure and then figure out how many cups in all!!

Other 100 Day Math related activities included -
Putting 100 stickers on a page arranged in combinations to make 100 -

Estimating how many times we could perform certain actions in 100 seconds and then counting how many we actual did do in 100 seconds.

Literacy
For literacy, we wrote lists of 100 words - 10 lists of 10 words each in different categories such as- Girl's Names, Toys, Number words, etc.  We also read poems that had 100 words.  In addition, we continued our study of Presidents, focused especially on George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.  We read several books about these two Presidents and remembered important facts about each.  We made drawings of both of these Presidents, which will be hanging in the hall outside 1P. 

We continue to work on our Non-fiction animal books.  We began to use the information from our readings to create our own non-fiction books about our own animal.  We will be finishing these after vacation before moving into our unit on Opinion Writing.

Enjoy the vacation!  Don't forget to send back the moon journals after vacation.  We will be wrapping up our Moon unit in Science and starting Sound & Light!

Mrs. P

February 9, 2018

What a busy week - we are gearing up and getting ready for the 100th Day of School on Monday!! 

In Math, we worked this week on wrapping up our data unit and sharing what we learned about collecting data and reading charts and graphs to understand the data. We also worked on true/false equation statements.  Some examples are -

2 + 4 = 5 + 1   

12 = 3 + 3 + 2

The students need to see if the equations are the same and answer true or false.  For an added challenge - they can change the false ones to make them true!

Language Arts

We are still working on our Nonfiction unit in Reader's and Writer's Workshops.  This week we began to work on our research for writing our Nonfiction books on an animal.  We chose an animal book from the Sheehan Library and began to read and notice some of the nonfiction text features that are used.  We are using stickies to "stop and jot" interesting and exciting facts about our animals that we would like to use in our books.  We are working on reading and then jotting  the information in our own words on our stickies.  We have also been working on strategies to figure out some of the tough content words that we come across in these books.

In Writer's Workshop, we are learning about adding specific vocabulary to our writing.  We are also noticing how authors use introductions and conclusions in their nonfiction writing.  Next week, we will begin writing our books on our animals.  We will work to include specific vocabulary, as well as interesting openings and endings for our books.

Science

In Science, we are continuing to talk about the moon and the different phases that we have been observing.  PLEASE SEND YOUR CHILD'S MOON JOURNAL IN WITH THEM AFTER VACATION so we can share them and discuss our observations.  

Please make sure to help your child remember to bring in their Valentine's on Tuesday, February 13th!

Thank you!

Mrs. P

February 2, 2018

Math
In Math this week, we continued our work on collecting and recording data, as well as reading data and explaining our learning from data collected.  In pairs, the students had to make a plan for a survey question and how they were going to collect their data.  Then they had to collect the data and draw some conclusions. 

 When they were done, each group created a poster with the data and conclusions on it and shared it in front of the class to show what they had learned about the class from their survey question.

Language Arts
We continue to work on Non-fiction in our Reader's and Writer's Workshops.  During Reader's Workshop, we are working on reading non-fiction books, strategies to solve tricky vocabulary that we encounter in these books and noticing the features of non-fiction books (table of contents, diagram, labeling, fun facts, glossaries, chapter titles, etc).

On Groundhog Day, we read an interesting Nonfiction page about Groundhogs.  We read with partners and used our highlighters.  We looked for interesting information and for the answers to some of our important Science questions.  See below.

We shared as a whole class the answers we found for each question, and the interesting information we found!

 What a fun week!

Mrs. P

Hello 1P Familes!

I can't believe how quickly January is going by!  We are so busy working and learning in 1P!  Here are some highlights of what we have been up to in January and will be starting as February begins!

Science
We will continue our study of the moon and observations of the patterns and phases of the moon.  Hopefully you have been able to get outside in the evenings with your child to observe the moon and for them to draw what they see in their moon journals. 

We will also be starting to talk about sound and how it is made by vibrations.  We had a great introduction to this last week when the Acton Discovery Museum came to visit and had us exploring vibrations in different sound stations.  Check out the pictures below!

**Special Note - Check out the Super Blue Moon Eclipse on January 31st!!

Math
In Math, we are working on data collection and representation.  We are asking survey questions and then figuring out the best way to represent that data to share our results.  At the end of this week, we will be collecting data about groundhog predictions and then comparing it with what happens on Friday with Puxatoney Phil. 

Throughout the year, we will continue to work on subtraction.  We will work on strategies for subtraction, ways to represent our thinking on paper and accurate ways to use our math knowledge for more efficient problem solving.

Literacy
In both Reader's and Writer's Workshop, we are working on non-fiction.  In reading, we are noticing text features, practicing how to reread non-fiction to make our voice smooth, as well as taking notes on important information that we read that we want to remember.  Our Reading is helping us with our writing as we get ideas for our non-fiction All About books that we are writing.  We are learning to use some non-fiction text features, for example - table of contents, diagrams, labels, fun facts, glossaries.  Some of us are adding some of these to our books.  We are also learning how many non-fiction authors do research to learn more about their topics but still write the information in their own words.  We are also learning about openings and conclusions for our writing pieces.  We are all very excited about our non-fiction work.  See below.

We are getting close to the 100th Day of School.  First Grade invloves some fun at school activities but we do not do the 100 collections as were done in Kindergarten. 

Mrs. P