Reading: We read a lot of fall books this week but our main focus was on the story A Party For Bob. It's part of the HM reading series and was our main selection this week. We also have been reading Junie B. Jones Toothless Wonder and it is perfect right now because I have 4 students who are all missing their two front teeth. One just could not leave his tooth alone all afternoon...gross blood was all in his mouth and dripped on his desk! I had to tell me cutie to clean it up and either yank the tooth out or stop playing with it. He yanked it out and I think the whole class was relieved. We read a pome Leaves, Leaves that goes to the tune of Row Your Boat and my kids loved it so much they couldn't stop singing it. It has been in our heads all week! I even woke up singing it this morning! It does get you in the fall mood though!
Centers: We had some super fun centers this week. I'll just tell you about the Word Work ones since it is the only center that changes.
Monday: The students stamped their spelling words. This never gets old to them and I'm happy about that.
Tuesday: The students focused on their Fry sight words and played the game Bang!
Wednesday: The students had to sort short /o/ words into the correct spiders webs. Check this out on The First Grade Parade.
Thursday: The students had to unscramble sentences and then write the sentences. This takes my students forever....which would be great if we had all the time in the world but we don't. Anyone using this that knows how to make this a little faster? I think the more they do it the faster they will get. I love this activity from Made for 1st Grade's Resource Pack- go check it out!
Friday: An array of games we have already played in Word Work. Students got to choose their favorite game and play.
Listening is always a favorite center! I just introduced responding to our listening this week. This little friend listened to The Big Ripe Strawberry and The Big Hungry Bear one of my favorite books and writing about her favorite part and illustrating a picture.
Writing: We started to write about fall using a thinking map. Then we learned about setting, characters, problems and solutions that need to go into a story. We made our own fall story up together as a class. After the students made up their own fall stories and illustrated their pictures. Today we shared our stories in the author's chair. Some of my kids love the author's chair and reading their writing. Others don't want to share which I'm okay with but it was some of my most outgoing kids that got really shy all of sudden in front of our class. I had to reassure them it was a completely safe environment to read your writing. I have my active listeners name one thing they liked about the story, one way to improve the story (put a title, add more detail, make names for your characters...nothing too harsh...my kids were
really good at saying gently how they could improve), and then another thing they liked about the story.
Math: In math we worked on doubles and near doubles. I think that near doubles is a great strategy for students who really understand doubles but some of my wee ones just did not get it. I explained again but let them use their own strategy to add. This week our math game was Spill the Beans and boy was that fun! I used cans, regular counters, and white board markers so they could do it again and again without making million copies. This was such a hit they want to play it again next week...I have other games in mind though. My students do 4 centers each day in math.
Math facts-on the computer
At your seat-seat work from the lesson
Teacher-come to me to do guided math and take a mini quiz
Hands on-games
This has worked out really well this year! I did this last year but this year I got cute math workshop signs from Clutter Free Classroom check them out here.
Science: We explored magnets this week and talked poles and how they attract and repel. I wish I had a picture of the magnetic hands on fun we had but my phone died so I don't have any. We made predictions on which items: paperclips, marble, penny, soda can, foil, and a button would be magentic. Each student got a turn to use a magnetic wand to see if the items were magnetic. The kids had so much fun with this!
Social Stuides: Our character trait of the month is cooperation and we did a fun lesson on Peacemakers and Peacebreakers- another blog idea to check out and our guidance counselor came in to do a fun lesson about cooperation with my class. Today I told my students to make a circle together and they were so cute saying we need to cooperate together to make a circle and they held hands, stretched out, and made a neat little circle of firsties. Only one student tried to not cooperate and said he wanted to be in the middle but as soon as his friends called him out on not using cooperation with our class he was out of the circle in a second. Got to love first grade!
Mystery Reader: Our mystery reader left us 5 clues that were pretty tough.
1. I love to travel with my family.
2. I have 2 sons and a husband who I love.
3. I love watching college football.
4. I have 2 pets a dog and a hamster.
5. I love to read books!
My kids are great at knowing our staff though and figured out on Thursday and Friday who they thought it might be: our librarian! This week I didn't get any crazy guesses like an elf- just regular guess to who it might be which means we are really learning how to make good predictions and infer!
Our librarian read to our class one of my favorite October books. It was so fun! She came in dressed in a hat and "fall" clothes. If you aren't familiar with the story the lady says she isn't afraid of anything and mysterious items such as boots, pants, a shirt, gloves, a hat, and a pumpkin head follow her and in the end she makes a scarecrow out of them. My students loved following along in the story and stomping for the boots, wiggling for the pants, shaking for the shirt, clapping for the gloves, nodding for the hat, and saying Boo! for the pumpkin head. We had a great time participating in the story and even got reading rocks silly bands at the end!
Check back next week- it will be all about Fire Safety! Have a beautiful fall weekend!
