First Grade News
In Math we continued to work on addition and subtraction with regrouping. This week, first graders applied their math strategies to real world problems. First grader writers continue to work on their realistic fiction stories. This week we started writing series. By looking at popular series books in our classrooms we noticed that series books all have the same characters, but have different adventures in each book. Many first graders decided to have their series take place in our classroom neighborhood. They made stick puppets of their characters to live in our neighborhood. Our class neighborhood is complete! This week... Read More
First Grade News: Week of March 12th
Thank you to everyone who brought in books for Malawi! This week we learned more about Malawi and saw pictures of the library that our books will be donated to. We wrote a letter to the children who will receive our books. Our classroom neighborhood is almost complete! This week first graders painted their structures, decided where they should go in the neighborhood, and added details such as stop signs and trains. We still need to name our neighborhood and make people to live in it! We read another finalist for the Irma Black Book Awards this week:... Read More
First Grade News: Week of March 5th
First grade mathematicians learned double digit addition with regrouping this week. We started by using base ten blocks to represent making groups of ten, and then we moved into learning the vertical algorithm. We are participating in the Irma Black Book Awards. First and Second graders across the country get to vote for this award. We will read the four finalists and then discuss what makes a great picture book. This week we read “After the Fall: How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again” by Dan Santant. In Writing Workshop we continued our realistic fiction stories. This... Read More
First Grade: Week of February 26th
Happy Purim! We had a fun filled week in first grade. On Monday we celebrated the 100th day of school. The Kindergarten, first, and second grade classes got together to do different activities all about the number 100. They built structures with 100 Legos, played math games, and wrote 100 reasons they love our school. In Writing Workshop, we used our pretending skills to begin writing realistic fiction stories. First graders thought of pretend characters, gave them a name, and imagined adventures for their characters. In Math we learned about larger numbers and reviewed place value. We read “Trombone Shorty”... Read More
First Grade News: Week of February 12
We had a fun filled week in first grade. On Thursday we celebrated Rosh Chodesh Adar by wearing our pajamas to school! First grade writers finished editing their teaching books this week. On Friday we had a classroom publishing party. First graders shared their books with each other and celebrated all of their hard work. We learned about graphing this week. First graders learned how to record information using picture graphs, bar graphs, and tally charts. They worked in pairs to make their own graphs about their classmates. Some graphs include favorite olympic sport, how many siblings we... Read More
First Grade News
We had a blast on our trip to the National Museum of Mathematics this week! Check out our pictures below. This week first grade writers picked a piece to be published next week. They learned how to use pictures to add more information to their teaching books, and started to edit their pieces. We also started to plan for our class publishing party. So far, we are thinking that we will share our stories and have a dance party! As part of our Social Studies unit on mapping, first graders became cartographers and made maps of the first... Read More
First Grade News: Week of January 22nd
We had so much fun on our field trip to the Jewish Children Museum! The first graders learn about historical events throughout biblical times. Enjoy the pictures below! First grade writers have been working hard on their information books and writing even more pages. We started writing chapter books and learned how to add a table of contents. We learned some challenging sight words this week: how, do, she, their, and number. We practiced using these words in sentences. We continued to learn new reading strategies in our reading groups. In Math we finished our unit on addition and... Read More
First Grade News: Week of January 15th
First grade writers have been working hard on their information books. This week they looked closely at their writing to discover how they can make it even better. We looked at a checklist of all the things they’ve learned so far, and first graders identified things they are doing really well and things they can work on. We challenged each first grader to make a goal for their writing. Some goals are to add more details or to make the beginning more exciting. We continued our study of information writing in our reading groups. Some groups read non-fictions books and... Read More
First Grade News: Week of January 8th
First grade writers have been diving into our new unit on nonfiction teaching books. This week we studied the book “Sharks” by Anne Schreiber and noticed how she uses pictures to add more information. She zooms in on important parts, and uses arrows and words to point out details. In math we learned new strategies for addition with double digit numbers. We learned the “make 10” strategy and “doubles plus one.” First grade scientists began a new unit on organisms. The discussed the differences and similarities between plants and animals. Our Martin Luther King Tekes concluding our... Read More
First Grade News: 1/2 – 1/5
We were happy to see everyone back after the break! This week we began learning about Dr. Martin Luther King. First graders shared what they already know about Dr. King and posed the questions they still have. We watched a brainpop video about his life and read “Martin’s Big Words” and “Young Martin’s Promise.” They learned about what segregation is and we discussion how Dr. King fought for what was right in a peaceful way. First graders will share some of the work they’ve done at our Martin Luther King Tekes next Friday, January 12th. This week, we... Read More