As we continue to learn about fact families, number bonds, balancing equations, and addition and subtraction word problems we've been up and moving, getting some good hands-on experience in Math. At the beginning of the year I had a lot of students tell me that Math was their least favorite subject, but I think I am slowly but surely changing their minds!
As we continue to learn about communities, we have begun to discuss government, voting, and community leaders. This week, we held our own classroom presidential elections. Each child wrote a story about what they would do if they were our class president. We first held a primary election where each table group selected one representative. Once our five table representatives had been selected we voted again to choose our top two candidates. Madison and Davis spent the next few days preparing their campaign speeches and posters. Thursday was voting day! Each candidate delivered very convincing speeches and addressed some important classroom needs (like free ice cream at lunch.) After making sure each student had registered to vote, students entered the voting booth to cast their ballot. It was a close race, but Davis took the lead by one point, becoming our 2014-2015 First Grade Class President. Together we elected Adison as our class Vice President and together they will work with the other students to help meet our classroom needs. (We're still waiting to hear the final word about that free ice cream.)
On Friday, students (and teachers) enjoyed a Silly Sock Spirit Day! Our class had earned our first class compliment party of the year and students voted to not only spend the day in Silly Socks, but to kick our shoes off at the classroom door and enjoy our silly sock feet! It was a fun way to celebrate the great behavior and cooperation we have in our classroom.We also took some time to practice using adjectives to describe nouns in preparation for this spirit day. We learned that silly socks is an adjective/noun alliteration - they both start with the same sound. We came up with our own alliteration sentence to describe our silly socks!
"Slippery, silly socks sometimes spook some students at school." We've been writing a lot in our room lately and it is so much fun! Our new favorite thing to do is partner up and buddy write. We spent the last week writing expository pieces (writing that teaches something) and opinion pieces. We've learned the importance of backing up our expository writing with facts, and our opinion writing with at least 3 supporting reasons why.
After we brainstorm with our partners, we write independently, and then buddy back up to edit our writing. We're all working on writing in full, complete sentences that make sense, use proper punctuation, and capitalization. Helping each other is not only fun, but a great learning experience for us all. October is proving to be a busy month! It's Fire Safety week and we've been learning all about our firefighters help keep our communities safe. We've also been talking about ways to practice fire safety in our own homes. Ask your child to share their safety plan they created last week in class!
As part of Fire Safety week, the Cove City Fire Department came out with their Smoke House to share some important fire safety tips. We also got to meet Smokey the Bear after reading a non-fiction story about him. We continued to study the physics of balancing in Mrs. B's Science Lab. We also practiced pushing paint with air, experimenting with how far the paint could move by changing the force of the air. We created quite the masterpiece when we were finished. We love the hands on experiences we get in our Science Lab with Mrs. B!
In Social Studies, we've been learning about communities and citizenship. We've learned that part of being a good citizen is helping others in need. To show our good citizenship, First Grade classes conducted a canned food drive earlier this month. We donated all the food collected to the Salvation Army food bank. We were even able to tour the Salvation Army food truck and traveling pantry when they came to pick up the food. We collected so much food, and were so happy to be able to help our community.
Friday, First Grade classes went on a field trip to the Masonic Theater in downtown New Bern to see the Rivertown Players' production of Peter Pan Jr. Students also enjoyed a picnic lunch before heading back to school.
Students continue to sharpen their addition skills. This week we're learning all about fact families. Did you know that you can flip-flop the two parts of an addition sentence and the sum stays the same? We've had a lot of fun using number bonds to represent fact families and then create different number sentences to match. Balancing equations is an important skill in Math. Numbers aren't the only things we've been balancing these past few weeks. As part of our Forces and Motion Unit, we're learning all about how objects can be balanced by adjusting their position just right.
Work Stations are up and running! Now that Beginning of the Year Reading Assessments are over, we are finally settling into our normal classroom routine. I've started pulling Guided Reading groups and the rest of the students are doing a wonderful job at their Independent Work Stations!
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Class BlogCheck here to see what we've been up to in class! History
April 2015
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