Johnny Appleseed

If you have ever visited my room, you know that I am "The Apple Teacher".  September 26th is Johnny Appleseed's birthday, so we had a week of celebration!  So many of our activities fit right in with our units of study in each subject area.  Following is just some of what we did.  I forgot my phone at home one day and didn't get pictures that day.

We had real apples to cut into and explore the parts of the apple.  Great new vocabulary was introduced to the students, like flesh and core.



 We are going to watch decomposition of an apple.  Here is what the apple looked like one day after we explored the parts of the apple.

 In science, we used a balance and cubes to measure how much mass an apple has.

 



 Our writing for this week was about apples.  Before we do writing, we make a circle map (not shown here), a tree map (the picture below), then I demonstrate (picture above) exactly how to use those two resources to write a story.

 Each week, we read a big book together as a group each day to help students learn how to read.   Of course, our story had to be about apples!

 If you notice in my newsletter, a poem is read every day.  You can see the work we did on rhyming words, spelling words, and beginning and ending blends.

 For an added bonus for science, we predicted if an apple would sink or float in water.  Then, we conducted our experiment.  The apple floated!  Remember apple bobbing games?

 

 

We used a string and cubes to see how many cubes around the apple measured.  We stacked cubes to see how tall the apple was.  Lots of science and math mixed together in these activities.  The picture above is a recording of information (data) from their findings.



Live Love Laugh

This was made for a very special friend.  Here's cheers to you.

David Goes to School

My students are wild about David Books.  For the beginning of school, David Goes to School,  is a favorite.   The book is also a good way to reinforce school rules.  The picture shows what our bulletin board looks like.

numbers 1-30

We have really been busy in first grade for the first two weeks of school.  Lots of learning and practicing have been taking place.  In math, we are learning numbers 1-30 and are learning what numbers are greater than>  less than< or equal to=.  Each student cut out his/her own set of numbers and we are practicing putting them in order every day.  Try practicing with your child by picking out 2 random numbers between 1 and 30 and discussing which one is greater and which one is less.  We are also learning the symbols > (greater than)  and < (less than) and  = (equal to).
26 > 14
7 < 19
20 = 20

Social Contract

I hope you can read this chart of what your children came up with for our Social Contract.  They are amazing!  We ask four questions and this is how students respond.
How do you think I want to be treated?
How do you want to be treated by teachers?
How do you want to be treated by friends?
How do we handle problems?
We all agree and sign our contract.

Daily Five

Here is a picture of how we are rotating our Daily Five during guided reading time.  There are five activities that students are responsible for while I am working with small groups of children during guided reading.  The five activities are:  read to self, read with a friend, writing, word work, and listening to a story.

In science, we are studying weather.  Four things that we observe each day are:  (1) cloud cover,     (2) temperature, (3) wind, and (4) precipitation.  We have a science journal that we will keep all year long for most of our science observations.  The pictures show 2 of those pages for weather.

Interactive writing

To practice spelling words, and to get better at composing and writing sentences, the students and I make up and work together on writing sentences using spelling words.  While one student writes the sentence on the chart, the other students are writing the sentence down on white boards using dry erase markers.

Word Families

You will notice in the newsletter and on the spelling test that there are word families we are working on.  For the first part of first grade we work on word families like:   at, an, ap, ack, etc.  Next week we will do word families that begin with "i".  When we work on them in school, I have magnetic letters placed on the white board and we make words first with the magnetic letters.  Then students record them onto a sheet so that we can review them for the upcoming weeks.  The picture shows the sheet of recorded "ap" words.

painted vase

I was walking through Hobby Lobby and saw a vase for sale.  I remembered I had paint about the same color.  My once clear vase is a now a fabulous burnished copper (paint by Jo Sanja).