Starfall

Hey Parents,
I hope you have found time this year for your student to take advantage of the site Starfall. Much of the site offers resources for beginner readers for FREE! This week during computer time many of the students have been reading or listening to these short plays from the site. As a class we read the play "The Lion and The Mouse".  Click the link below, and it will take you to the short plays so if they have not had a chance to listen to them they still have a chance to do so:

  http://www.starfall.com/n/level-c/plays/load.htm?f

 

Mrs. Barnes



Videos for teaching Long "U" sounds

Hey Parents,
We have been learning all about the different letter combinations that make the long "u" sound. Here are some of the videos I have been using, let your students watch them again to reinforce the skill at home. Click the link, and it will take you there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDZIxKI-Gxk&list=PLtPoovv4KdsIk1ypWd9VlKPEawNWOI-PS

 



Videos for Teaching the Long O Sounds

Hey Parents,
We have been learning all about the different letter combinations that make the long "o" sound. Here are some of the videos I have been using, let your students watch them again to reinforce the skill at home. Click the link, and it will take you there:

 

 



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QmDRUPrxWs&list=PLRobggFI-BzRuACiGobLhwodD3qbtUTWH

 

 

Mrs. Barnes



Videos teaching long I

Hey Parents,
We have been learning all about the different letter combinations that teach long I. Here are some of the videos I have been using, let your students watch them again to reinforce the skill at home. Click the link, and it will take you there:

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQwZ81K4FPQ

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7_8yz11Pqc&list=PL483C64CD3022F4E7

 

 

Mrs. Barnes



Becoming Authors

This week we have been busy reading "If Your Give a Pig a Pancake" by. Laura Numeroff. It is a student favorite. We also read "If You Give a Moose a Muffin". We then created our own "If You Give a _____ a _____". We did one as a class, then as a group, finally as an individual. Our group/ class versions were done very simply on big paper folded into eighths.  You can see below the class one then the group ones.  The top was done as a class. On the group one they got to add pictures. Then the last image is some individual ones.

 

If your child would like to try this activity again you can right click on the picture below and print the image! Enjoy!

 

 

Rosa Parks

 

In January and going into the beginning of February we had a big focus on black history.  One of the people we studied was Rosa Parks.

We learned a poem about her, and read a short story. We discussed how she made a difference in so many lives. We also wrote about what she did. We all agreed she was really brave. We finished it off with making a craft of Rosa Parks sitting in her bus seat.  We are so fortunate to have such fabulous people make such a  difference in this country.

Life as a Crab

 

I am behind on posting. We had a story a little bit ago about a Hermit crab finding a new home. We concluded the story with a writing activity of what we though it would be like if we were a crab.

Polar Express

The Polar Express has to be one of my holiday movie favorites. We had such a fun time. We read the book, and watched the movie. We enjoyed the movie with Hot Cocoa and cookies. Huge thanks to Richie's mom and Starbucks for providing our Hot Chocolate needs!

 

 

We finished up the day talking about the story structure of Polar Express (Setting, characters, problem, and solution). We wrote all about it on our sparkly Polar Express Trains!

 



Holiday Craft Day

The Holidays just flew by didn't they??! We had a blast learning about holidays all around the world. We also had a fabulous craft day. I am sure you saw many of the ornaments that came home from that day, but look below to check out a few that we did.



Sight Words- Fry 100

I am always trying to find new ways for them to practice their sight words. Our most recent venture has been a cut and paste "Guess The Fry 100 Word". I love how this also helps them with their coordination with the cutting and fitting of the letters. These are the words that you see come home every week on the top of the homework packet. Tell them to be a cheerleader and cheer the words for you! They will know exactly what to do!

Jellyfish

 

Jellyfish are one of the things I love studying with my students and was part of our ocean unit. We made Paper Mache fact and opinion Jellies (top picture). We had studying about them discussed the difference between facts and opinions and recorded. This is a great stepping stone for us as later this year we will be doing animal research.

 

We also have been working a lot on math story problems over the past 6 weeks. We did many ocean themed math scenes. The above ones were of a subtraction problem where Sea Horses got stung and died by some Jellyfish!

Author's Purpose

Hey All! I am having to play a little catch up here on posts. In November and going into early December we were learning about the ocean. I like to tie what we are learning about in science or social studies into reading, and math. Above you can see our Author's Purpose whales. We learned about how author's have three different reasons for writing; 1. Persuade 2. Inform or 3. Entertain. We read a short selection together as a class about an aquarium. We decided that the reason for the author writing this selection was to inform. We made little Author's Purpose Whales explaining what the author informed us about!

Flower and Plants!!

 

We just recently finished up our plant unit. A little bit ago we did these parts of a flower art project. The flower itself is actually a coffee filter. The students used markers then went over the marker with water and a paint brush to give it the water color look!

I am sure you noticed the plants I sent home. Are they still growing? We sure had fun getting them started in class!

 

 

Did you know you can watch Magic School Bus and Bill Nye The Science Guy for free on YouTube? Follow the links below and they will take you to their videos about plants!

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bvMb-8BTdQ

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQXlX9glBL4

 



Unpack Your Adjectives

 

Over the last few weeks we have been going over the different parts of speech. We started with nouns, next verbs, and now we are onto adjectives. The other day we made self portraits, and wrote down adjectives that describes us! It was so much fun!

 

Also below you can click the links to watch the video clips that helped us learn about adjectives.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkuuZEey_bs

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JZi2oDvPs4

Plants Part 2

 We are diving in deep with this plant unit y'all! What a fun time it has been. I forgot to mention that we started our unit with the 6 kingdoms of living things, with a main focus on Kingdom Plantae.

 

 

We also have gotten to know more about plants and their life cycle.  Check out all about the life cycle in our pictorial below. I think pollination is what was most interesting to the students.

 

 

 

 

Morgan and David have been studying about leaves in our class. They did their own presentation on leaves with a pictorial poster they created. SO much fun! Check it out below they did amazing!!!

Plants, Plants, PLANTS!

 

We have been busy studying all about PLANTS! We are having so much. We started off our unit with an "Inquiry Chart" to see what we knew and what we wanted to know. We now have talked about what plants Have, Can do, are, and need. We also have compared plants and people. There are a lot of differences, but we also found some similarities. Check it all out below on our class anchor charts and student samples!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Be a Perfect Pig!!!

You may have heard your child say. "I made it to perfect pig today!". Well that is a very good thing. That means that they must have been absolute gems all day! Each student has a pin with their number on it. I will move it up or down through out the day depending on how they are doing. When I move a pin up I will generally say something like "Billy is working hard and not talking, I appreciate that! I am going to move his pin up!".  

 

 

The next day we have a person (it changes each week) whose job it is to give the stickers for each child's coupon pad. If the student is on "Right on Rhino" they get 1, if they are on "Happy Hippo" they get two, "Amazing Alligator" 3, "Perfect Pig" 5, and if they surpass Perfect Pig then they will get 6!!!

 Once their coupon book is full then they get to pick a prize from the "Pink Perfect Pig treasure Chest". It is full of all different things. I go out and purchase various items to fill it. If you would like to donate, feel free to! They also get to take their coupon pad home, and I give them a new one.

 

On the off chance that a child is below right on rhino they do not get any stickers. If the student gets all the way to "Sad Skunk" they might get a sticker taken off of their coupon :(, or loose out on a fun activity we are doing that day or week.

 

I have used this system the last few years, and my kiddos have always loved it!

A Bad Case of Stripes- Story Structure

As I discussed before in our "Mac The Cat" post we have been working on story structure. Last week we dug a little deeper with it when we read as a class "A Bad Case of Stripes". This is one of my ABSOLUTE favorite children books. We created story structure houses to help us think about story structure. If a house is missing a foundation, a door, a roof ect. is the house going to work very well? No! Just like a story, if a story is missing characters or a setting then it won't flow or sound right.

 

In first grade we are all working at different levels, and I love that. The growth in first grade is amazing!! Above you can see examples of two different story houses. 1. The student wrote it out 2. The student drew pictures to represent the characters and ect.

A Day at School

 

 

We read the story "A Day at School" this past week. Each student got a chance to be an illustrator, and we recreated the pictures of the story in partners. It was so much fun, and they now know this story inside and out!

A Smiley Sum of Seven

 In our classroom we have been talking all about addition. Especially using number pairs. We focused on number pairs that make 7 the other day! We created some Smiley Sums of Seven to help us remember. We also learned a saying to help remember what a sum is (look at the picture below). We also watched this video to help us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT_wvvEvkw4