Raccoon Sighting!

It was an exciting afternoon in first grade today! It’s hard to get a math lesson in when a tree is being chopped down and chipped outside the window with a raccoon in it! After running around the limbs for a while, the raccoon finally decided it was time to leave! We were glued to the window for at least 15 minutes with the reminder that it’s only on special occasions that we’re allowed to sit up on the heater and stand on chairs! It was a moment too exciting to miss!

ECO

Our ECO lesson this week had the children moving with an insect relay game, looking closely for insects, and recording what we discovered. Embedded in the lesson were expectations and routines for traveling in the community, and outdoor learning. We had a fun time despite the mosquito bites!

A Peek Into First Grade

What we are learning in...

Reading

The children are building stamina for sitting and reading for a period of 20 minutes. Every day we work towards this goal by reading for about one minute longer. We made it to 16 minutes today! We are also learning strategies for reading such as to take a sneak peek at the book you plan to read by reading the cover and back, and flipping through the pages. This preview prompts for meaning and word solving when actually reading the book. We are also working on reviewing the vowel letters and on the look out for blends and diagraphs in words.

Writing 

We started the year writing “Small Moments”, or true stories about something that has happened to us, or something we enjoy doing. Today we worked on adding details to our writing by thinking about “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”, and “why”.  Tomorrow we will practice saying words slowly and writing down a letter for every sound we hear.

Math

Our math focus has been building fluency with counting, and using different math tools to find all the ways you can make a number to ten. This week we begin recording our thinking in a math journal and continued using games to build number sense. We have also worked heavily on correct number formation and will continue this work through the year!

Science and Social Studies

Science and social studies is weaved throughout our day with read alouds, discovery, and direct instruction. Building our classroom community and establishing rules and expectations are the building blocks of our year long focus on community. Our science focus to start the year looks at patterns in nature and has the children using observations and questioning to understand how insects and tulips have different parts and how these parts help them to survive.