September Odds & Ends

This has been an incredibly busy and fun first month of school! 

We have learned about four different types of stories. As your child is reading at home, see if he or she can identify the book as a:

•  Pattern book (You can predict what is coming next because of the pattern.)
• Kinds of... book (Each page or section tells about a new color, animal, truck, etc.)
• Try, Try Again book (The character wants something and tries to get it in several ways.)
• Circle story (The story ends where it began, and could happen all over again.)

Understanding these story structures will help your child's reading comprehension.

 In Writer's Workshop, the First Graders have turned our class into a story factory, writing LOTS of small moments stories. We are looking forward to publishing our first books soon!

Writing...

...and more writing!

Using the word wall to spell words

The students brought home their Spell-a-Thon lists to begin studying for the big test on October 3rd.  We have two first grade lists. The pink list features Trimester 1 words. The blue list was given to students who already know most or all of the Trimester 1 words.

And finally, THANK YOU to the families who came to Downtown Pizza to support Woodview. (And thank you to Mr. Joynt for being a good sport/great tomato!)

Indian Culture

We were lucky to have a guest teach the class about Indian culture today! We heard Indian music, smelled Indian spices, and saw different Indian items. The Indian egg-rolls were a big hit!

Egg-rolls --YUM!

Kick Off Your Shoes!

We kicked off our shoes in math class today, but we weren't relaxing... We were counting by twos!

Clean Hands Experiment

Our class wanted to find out the best way to clean our hands and prevent germs from spreading. Four brave volunteers tried four different ways of "washing" hands. We used a special lotion that glows in a black light to be our fake germs. Check out our results!

We also found out that the spaces in between fingers and the areas around fingernails need extra attention. Even with the best methods of hand-washing, the "germs" tended to linger there!

A Walk in the Woods

We took advantage of the summer-like weather on Friday and went for a walk in the woods! We went to the outdoor classroom and observed what we could see and hear. We will study seasons later in the school year, so I like to take the class in the woods each season to let the students observe the changes first-hand.

We stopped to listen to the wind in the leaves.

We saw the dirt on the ground and lots of green leaves.

The air was warm and the sun was shining.

What a beautiful day!

 

Next Stop: Mexico!

We learned about Mexican culture today! 
A piñata was a fun way to celebrate.

We finished our day with some other Mexican traditions.

The Mexican Hat Dance

Papel Picado -- colorful paper, cut in a fancy way!

The Culture Celebration Continues...

 Today we tried eating with chopsticks, like people do in China and in other parts of Asia!

Celebrating Cultures

In social studies, we are learning that culture includes things that are special to groups of people -- art, music, games, stories, language, clothing, food, and more! We are exploring cultures from all over the world that came here and have helped make America special. 

We read a story from Africa, and played the African game Mancala.

Mancala is a great game for counting and strategy.

Then we explored Chinese culture.

Looking good in Chinese clothing!

Chinese lion dancers

Painting Chinese calligraphy

More celebration of culture to come next week...  If you have something special from your family's culture that you would like to share with the class, please let me know. We would love to learn about your culture!

Math Workshop

We have been learning lots in math class! We start the lesson with the whole group, and then we split up into smaller groups and rotate through math centers. Today our whole group learned about teen numbers being 10 and some more. 

These girls are showing 15!

Then groups got busy working! 

Some worked on iPads, playing Math Fire to practice ways to make 10.

Others used pattern block templates to draw pictures with shapes.

I was able to work with the third group. Then we switched! The workshop format allows me to spend larger amounts of time working with students at their own levels. Everyone is so busy learning, our math time seems to fly by!

Passport Tour

Today we learned how to use the Woodview Way in different areas of the school. In the morning, the 5th graders taught us the Woodview Way. (see photo)

We learned a new cheer:
        Woodview! (clap, clap)
        Wildcats! (clap, clap, clap)
 
In the afternoon, we took a "Passport Tour". Dr. Edens taught us about expectations for the cafeteria, Mr. Joynt and Mr. Darmody taught us about expectations for the playground, and Mrs. Mossman taught us about expectations for the hallway. After completing each station, students received a stamp on their passports. Check out the passports when they come home today!

1st Day

What a busy first day of First Grade! It was such a pleasure to meet my new class. What a great group of kids! We are going to have a wonderful year together! We already practiced some "read-to-self" time.

We practiced making our own names, and friends' names, too!