Lots of things!

Sorry for the blogging hiatus! I wanted to take a minute to update you about things going on in our class! We have been working hard in writing on our non-fiction books! I am so impressed with how many things first graders are experts about.  Many of them also take responsibility for their learning by using books from the library to help them teach their readers and have learned about many non-fiction text features like captions, labels, close ups, headings, and will soon begin talking about putting in a table of contents.  The students are enjoying this writing unit and I am seeing tremendous growth!

In science, we have learned about our earth, the moon, and the sun! Below you will see a picture of the students making a play-doh model of the earth's layers.  Thank you to the parents who sent in play-doh for this project! It was quite a hit! Our new unit is an ocean discovery so get ready to learn facts about sharks, whales, and other ocean life!

We have had a few opportunities to utilize the ipads in our classroom lately.  We have worked on asking questions before, during, and after we read. With ipads and a thinking partner, we illustrated the question we had and the answer we found in the text!

Students on the 100th day of school!

Jump Rope for Heart!

Making the layers of the Earth with play-doh!

Showing our learning and wonderings with an ipad and thinking partner!

Also, we recently showed our new learning from the most recent Fundations (phonics and spelling) unit by taking our assessment on an ipad app called Screen Chomp.  The students were told the words to spell, and then they had to mark their words and explain why they marked them a certain way.  The final products were emailed to me by the students so that I could see how well they understood! 

Here is one student's learning: 

Fundations Screen Chomp

Finally, our spring concert is April 24th at 2:30.  Hope you can make it to hear your sweet children sing!