FOOTBALL FRIDAY!!

The high school senior football players have partnered with the 1st grade. Each class has 'adopted' a football player who will come read to our class on game day. On Wednesday our class made a big banner for our player, #4 Christo! Today he came and read Hop on Pop to the class. The kids were so excited and had some very interesting questions for him such as, "Have you played Michigan?" Christo was very polite and entertained all their questions. He gave us a big picture of the entire senior players to hang in our room.

Design Challenge

This summer I was fortunate enough to travel with our principal, Scott Emery, and a few other NA staff members to Detroit Michigan to the Henry Ford Learning Institute. We went through a Design Thinking Workshop and it was incredible! Here is the link if you would like to find out more about design thinking. Henry Ford Design Thinking

 Yesterday we did our first Rapid Cycle, a quick determined cycle through the design process. The kids were given the challenge to redesign the name badges for their users, who were their classmates. They went through the first stage of empathy- listening and interviewing to understand what their users need and like. Then they were given time to define specifically what the user needs. Next they created 5 sketches or ideas how to redesign the name tag to meet the interests and needs of the user; ideate. They received feedback from the user before they built their prototypes. We had a discussion about prototyping and that is not a finished product. This is hard for first graders because they have strong desires to finish what they start! They met again with their user to share their prototype (nametag) and give/get more feedback. Last, they reflected on the entire process. It was quite a journey for them. As we do more rapid cycles, they will better understand the process. It was overall very successful and sparked curiosity in all of the students.

Read to Someone

The next component of Daily 5 has been introduced! Ask your children what EEKK means :) Listening to each other read and reading to others helps us to improve our fluency as well as exposes us to new words, new genres, new books, and it is just FUN!
Ask your child to tell you the expectations of Read to Someone. 

Using the 100's Chart

We have been spending time on the 100's chart this week as well as Making 5.Today our focus was understanding the decades on the chart. The children were given a number and asked to tell the numbers before and after ( -1 and +1) and the numbers above and below (-10 and +10). They were able to make this as challenging as they wanted for themselves. I really enjoyed walking around and observing as they stretched their brains. Some kiddos continued with the (-1 and +1's as well as the +10's and -10's) until they almost recreated the chart. I took down the wall 100's chart too, so this was solely on understanding how the numbers work. I will be using the language 10 more and 10 less more often. Today I began with the numbers above and below. We use the term decades to describe the set of numbers before or after. EX/ Which decades come before the 30's The 20's......
Here are some interesting journals I found today.

Reading Fluency and the Five Finger Test

During our reading block we have had two very important focus lessons. The first being that readers use fluency. We discussed that when we read it should sound as if we are talking with one another in a conservation. Our words connect, there are not many pauses or breaks between words. A fun way to practice this is by choosing a silly voice to read in, maybe a leprechaun voice! The children also have several props they can use to listen to themselves read, a plastic microphone (this is really just for kicks) and little phones made specifically for hearing the echo of your voice come back in
your ear.So when reading at home with your child, remind them to use their fluency!

The next focus lesson was about choosing a "just right" book. We practice done way to determine if our books are too hard, too easy, or just right! Begin with a closed fist for the first page of your book. For each word you do not know or cannot sound out you will hold up a finger. If you have 5 fingers up after the first page or less if there are only 2 or sentences per page, then the book is too hard. If you can speed read through the page it might be too easy. It is okay to read easy and challenging books sometimes? OF COURSE! I love to read my magazines that do not challenge my brain haha. However, in order to grow as  a reader we want to be reading "just right" books the majority of the time.

Mystery Reader

The children experienced their first Mystery Reader today!! Kiera's mother came and read The Cat in the Hat to the class. It was a wonderful surprise.

90 minutes of reading!

Richard Allington presented at the National Reading Association that research shows children should spend a minimum of 90 minutes per day reading, not including reading instruction. Read the text for details.

Tying our shoes

We practiced tying our shoes last week. We asked all the "experts" to partner up with all the "learners" and help out. We will take time periodically throughout the week to practice so that we can all be experts. I encourage you to be practicing at home with your children too!

Math Journals

We start off math each day with a question or problem to solve in our journals. I read the question, send the kids off to work, and walk around observing, trying to stay out of the way! This is the chance for the kids to really explore their thinking about math, reflect upon what they already know, and try to apply it to new problems. The children are asked to write, draw, and share all strategies they used to solve the problem. We meet on the carpet with our journals and a pencil after everyone has worked for a while. I pick 3 children who chose different ways (if applicable) to share their work. The others are then encouraged to add or change to their journals. The children learn so much from watching and listening to how their peers solve their math problems.

Stamina Building!

The children have been practicing their independent reading every single day to become better readers. We have been charting our stamina, how many minutes they read each day. I promised them a pajama party once they hit 20 minutes. It only took them 5 days!!! They had some expectations to follow in order for me to continue the timer.

Check out the stamina chart and congratulate your child! TOMORROW is a pajama day!!! They can bring one small stuffed animal if they wish.

WILD about books!!!

Yesterday was a busy, fast-paced day! We accomplished a lot...for starters...the classroom library!!! Here was the library before we organized the books.

I asked the children how they would like to see their library organized and here are some very interesting thoughts...

After reading Kevin Henkes for 2 weeks, the kiddos thought we could organize all his books together. Then they thought Dr. Seuss and Mo Willems could have their own categories too. So after organizing some books according to popular children's authors, we moved into characters. We founs several Amelia Bedelia, Curious George, and Arthur books. Next, someone suggested we separate all our animal books based on sea creatures, African Animals, zoo animals, and pets. After all that hard work, I asked the students about some of their favorite books they have known since they were little. Books they could tell with their eyes closed, stories they know deep in their hearts. And I got.......blank stares! When I pulled a few books out of the pile I then heard a lot of excitement. FAIRY TALES!!! So it went until we came to this BEAUTIFUL, easy- to-see, library.

I have several reasons why I spend class time arranging the library with the students:

1.  It tells me a lot about what kids know of libraries and books
2. They students take ownership and responsibility over ALL the books in the classroom
3. The students know how to quickly find a book when they need/want a specific subject or author
4. It ignites a passion for reading as the students leaf through each book on the tables as we search for categories
5. The students become familiar with all the books in the classroom

We also checked on our flowers from last Friday. We found that only one flower had turned the color of the water, the shortest flower. So the kids thought we should cut all the flowers to make the stems shorter so the water had less distance to travel. Here is what he have so far!

We also made ENEMY PIE!! Through the book Enemy Pie ,by Derek Munson, we found out to make an enemy go away all you have to do is make a disgusting pie....We listed some of the most yucky ingredients we could think of in our journals. Then we combined ideas for a class list...

and made our own ENEMY PIE!

When we read the end of the book we found out that the best way to get rid of an enemy...was to make him your friend!! So to the dismay of some of the kids, we threw our enemy pie in the trash :(

Here's to making all enemies, our good friends!!

Can we plant a rainbow?

Today started off with a bang! Once all the kiddos were here we went to the gym to meet a LOT of parents who were joining us on our Fun Walk. We went out the back door, through the hot and humid woods, across the street, past the New Albany pool that "everyone went to this summer", into another set of woods that one of our little ones really hoped "didn't have bears", back through our Safety Town, and to the Finish Line. The music was jamming and the after race goodies were flowing. The children were given juice bottles, red plastic water bottles, and Buckeye pins!!! If you have ever run a race before, this was pretty close to the real thing!

We came back in time for a story and then lunch. After lunch we worked very hard on our number formation. As easy as the kids might have thought this was...there is a correct and incorrect way to write. Please remind your child that letters and numbers ALWAYS start from the top. We practiced on white boards with markers before moving to smaller lines and pencils. We will continue this with letters too. Once we write our letters the correct way, writing will be quicker for your child with less hand aches!

We read another Kevin Henkes book today, My Garden. This story is full of imagination and creativity. A little girl imagines what she could plant in her garden if it were her own. Here are some of our ideas:

Next the children wrote in their reading journals and illustrated what they would plant.

We finished off the day with a science experiment. We planted a rainbow garden using carnations, water, vases, and food coloring. The kids were asked to observe the carnations using their senses (minus taste) as real scientists would. They practiced using language to describe their findings. They were then asked to predict what we would be doing and the outcome. A lot of the kids had done this experiment before but were excited to try it again. Each group was given a vase and a flower. One person filled the vase with water and they had to work as a team to decide which color they wanted to use for their garden. They then used food coloring to color their water and we had groups choose mint green, teal, purple, orange, blue, and dusty rose. On Monday we will observe our flowers again to see if we have a rainbow garden!!