October 10, 2014

Classroom News:

• We won the recess trophy two weeks in a row!  
• Thursday October 16 - spirit day... First grade is wearing blue
• No School on Friday, October 17
• Delayed start on Wednesday, October 22

 Thursday is our first school-wide celebration of the year! It is a spirit day with each grade level wearing a color that they voted on. First grade is wearing blue. Be creative with it and have fun! There is also a competition with this spirit day. Which grade level will show the most spirit? And... the adults in the school will also be showing spirit by wearing stripes! Will the adults win or will it be a grade level? Who has the most spirit?

The students were fantastic when channel three came into the classroom last Tuesday. They were focused, engaged, and showed all expected behaviors. Super job super stars!

Literacy:

This week our focus during read aloud and our mini-lessons was determining the character and the problem in the story. We practiced previewing a book with a book walk, making predictions, and then identified the characters and problems.
 
Books we read this week:
Freckleface Strawberry by Julianne Moore
Hooway for Wodney Wat, by Kevin Henkes
Mr. Putter and Tabby Walk the Dog, by Cynthia Rylant
 
During writing time, our class of authors have been working on writing books all about themselves. This has been successful and everyone wants to keep working when writing time is over. Good work authors!

Math:
We have been learning a new type of math story problem:  combination problems. Earlier, we learned solving for the sum problems (I found 5 red stars. Then I found 4 blue stars. How many stars did I find?) Combination problems are different because we already know the sum but we need to find the addends. Here is an example:

I had 9 stars. Some were red. Some were blue. How many of each could I have?

In this type of problem, the mathematicians need to show several different equations that could solve the problem.
1+8=9
2+7=9
3+6=9

Every time we solve a problem in math, we have been asking ourselves, "Does it make sense?" This is a good way to start checking our work and to reflect on our answer.