Johnny Appleseed Day!

We had a super fun day today celebrating Johnny Appleseed's birthday! To start our morning, a fourth grader who has a sibling in our class came to read a Johnny Appleseed book to us! 

 

We tasted apples and graphed our favorites! Yellow was the most popular! 

We also made a craft that showed the changes an apple tree goes through during the year. 

Finally, we showed what we had learned through some informational writing about Johnny. 

Fundations

We have begun our second unit in Fundations (Kaneland's adopted phonics program).  We are working on tapping out the sounds in words, sight/trick words, and forming sentences with capitals at the beginning and punctuation at the end.  Here are some students demonstrating the things we are focusing on!

The students know all of the letters, sounds, and a picture to match each letter.  Lilly chose a letter and the other students said the letter, picture, sound. 

We are also working on building words.  Anthony needed to build our word of the day, fix.  We discussed what this word means and practiced putting it orally in a sentence.  He came up to build the word, and as you can hear in the background, students were trying to give him hints to help him out!

Here, Riley is working hard to be sure he puts all the sounds he hears in his words, putting a capital letter at the beginning of his dictated sentence, and using finger spaces between each word!

On another note, tonight your child should have brought home his or her rocket math! They need to practice the fact sheet that is in their folder.  The rocket math folder has to come back to school every day!

Halloween Parade and Party

Here is the information for our Halloween Parade and Party!

This year we will have the parade first and then the students will return to their classroom for their parties. We are hoping this helps with a better dismissal at the end of the day. Everybody is welcome to watch the parade at 2:00 pm. Only room volunteers will be invited in the school after the parade to help with parties. 

What: Annual Halloween parties and costume parade on Thursday, October 31st 

Where: Kaneland McDole Elementary School 

When: School-Wide Parade will be held at 2:00 pm 

All classroom parties will begin at 2:30 pm 

Students are welcome to wear school appropriate cos-tumes to school. Please refrain from sending in masks, weapon-like accessories or anything with an indication of violence. 

We will parade out the gym door and take the sidewalk just north of the playground around to the sidewalk that parallels Simpson Parkway to the side of the building and enter through doors 3 and 4 near the bus lane. Parents are welcome to watch the parade from the grass along the parade route. Classes will parade in order by grade starting with 5th grade and ending with kindergarten. 

In the event of inclement weather the parade will be cancelled. 

Thank you for your cooperation! 

Writer's Workshop

During read aloud and writer's workshop, we have been focusing on making text to self connections and turning those connections into small moment stories! When we hear things in books we read that remind us of things we have done, we have a new idea of what to write about. We usually have share time at the end of writer's workshop, but everyone who wants to doesn't always have time to share! Today we solved that problem by reading our two favorite books we have written to a small group of friends. 

Sight words

You should have found a yellow packet of sight words in your child's take home folder! This packet has 11 lists of words that should be memorized. Your child will start practicing list one until each word is completely automatic! Once it is automatic, please send me a note letting me know he or she is ready to be tested!The  students will earn stickers for each list that is passed. Good luck!! 

First Grade Geologists!

We had a super fun Friday this past week! The students have been learning about properties of rocks, such as color, size, texture, and luster.  We read a book with Miss G's class in the Reading Lounge called Everybody Needs a Rock.  This book talks about all the things you should consider when choosing a rock for your very own.  We then discussed the properties of rocks again!

After finishing the book, we went outside to find our very own rock!  

(Boys searching for their very own rock!)

Christian and his rock!

Kaitlyn and her rock!

After everyone found their rock, we went back to the classroom to document our findings like scientists! The students used our recording sheet to explain the different properties they observed about their own rock.  Here are a few examples! 

"Dull, it is golden inside, bumpy"

"Gray, and it has spots"

"This rock looks like the earth"

"Texture: bumpy, kind of flat, and a lot of colors"

"blue, red, sparkly, cool, smooth, crackly"

Screen Chomp!

In guided reading today, three students were able to demonstrate their understanding of the main idea of the chapter they read! They did this through the Ipad app called Screen Chomp! This app allows students to illustrate an image and then record their voice to explain.  The students then have to email the image to me! We will be using the rubric that Mrs. Bright's class has created for Screen Chomp to be sure that we are doing our best work!  Here are three students' explanations of the main idea of Flat Stanley, Chapter One.


Nate's Screen Chomp

Talon's Screen Chomp

Grace's Screen Chomp

Please continue to practice, practice, practice the guided reading books that come home! It is very important that the students reread these books many times to build up their fluency :)  Also, help your child get the book back in their book baggies for class the next day.  We reread them in small group as well!

Rocks!

We began our rocks unit today in science. We had a lot of fun being geologists! We looked at a collection of rocks with our bare eyes and with a hand lens. We also discovered how they felt, their size, and colors. The students decided how to sort their rocks based on an attribute of their choice. 

Scratching the rocks together.

Another student scratching two rocks together.

Sorted by color.

Using a hand lens! 

Also sorting by color and using a hand lens to explore! 

This student sorted by "softness" stating that the white were soft, or could make powder when scratched, and the others didn't make dust. 

Tallies and the Number Line

Today in math we did a lot of practice with using a number line.  We learned that the further a number is away from zero, the bigger the number is and the closer it is to zero, the smaller it is.  We talked about how to explain which number is bigger using the number line.  After that, we played a new game called "Number Squeeze."  Two students started on either end of the number line and I chose a number that the rest of the class had to figure out using greater than and less than questions.  For example, a student may ask me if my number is greater than five.  If I say yes, then the student on the left side of the number line would move his hand over to cover the five thus closing off/covering the numbers that are less than five.  We also practiced counting by ones and integrated counting by 5's.  The students have learned that when writing tallies, the fifth one is always slanted, so as we practiced counting, every fifth number was said with our bodies slanted to the side.  Encourage your child to practice counting by fives at home!!

We also practiced alphabetical order in Fundations this afternoon.  The students practiced placing the letters in alphabetical order.  Here is a small group deciding which letter should go in which spot.  

Math at McDole

Here is your guide to everything math at McDole.  The first grade team is excited to share this with you!! :) Click HERE to check it out! Also, be sure to check out this blog often as it will be updated as we continue our learning journey in math.

Fun Friday!

Our library day is always on C days. Monday will be a C day so send your student with his or her library books! 

We worked hard today and were able to earn extra recess this afternoon! A new word work game was introduced and will become a choice during the Word Work daily. The students write the word, use letter stamps to stamp the word, and then decorate the word! 

This student said he wanted to "find a diamond" so he drew a diamond next to his word! 

During Read to Someone, we were able to use our whisper voices with our team mate and practice reading for 12 minutes!  We keep showing improvement so this is great! 

In math today we did some domino addition. The students had to add all of the dots together and write the number sentence that matched the sum on their "domino parking lot." 

Read to Someone

We began a new daily today for our literacy block called Read to Someone! The students learned that they read with their partner as a team, using whisper voices, stay on one spot, and sit elbow to elbow and knee to knee. We were able to start our stamina graph at 3 minutes today! Hopefully we can add more minutes tomorrow! 

Today was another great day of learning! We read for 25 minutes during Read to Self time! Please encourage your students to be sure that they work on building their reading stamina during that whole time! Many children should now be coming home with guided reading group books.  Practice, Practice, Practice these books with your child! These will help to build their reading fluency. This book needs to come back the very next day so we can reread it together in our reading group.

Ask your first grader about Linus the Minus and Gus the Plus.  Hopefully he or she can tell you a thing or two about what they do. We will be working on adding and subtracting the rest of the week, and Gus and Linus will be helping us out!

We had a great Writer's Workshop this afternoon, with many students going back into their writing and adding MORE!! Some students got to share their writing at the end, and other students gave them feedback about how to make their writing even better.  Here is a short clip of one of our writers sharing her work.