First Grade News: Famous Americans Arrived!

We have had a busy 4 day week continuing our "Hooray for the USA" unit. It is amazing to us how much information our first graders are learning and retaining about America. They surprise us every day with their incredible knowledge and background information they come to class eager to share! Thank you for your continued support.

SPELLING WORDS
world
cat
take
dad
hide
almost
dog
anything
home
down
Challenge words
penny
quarter
nickel
dime

We started a new system of Literacy Learning this week. Instead of rotating to 4 different centers each day, students now go to one center a day (ie, word work, reading, technology, etc.) and have the opportunity to choose from 6 different activities at that center on a teacher-created tic-tac-toe board. This gives students more independence and several more opportunities to focus on one subject for the entire Literacy Center. The picture above shows the "required" activity at the word work center which was putting the states in ABC order. Once students finish an activity they sign their name on that square of their own tic tac toe board and then chose which activity to go to next. Everyone did an amazing job transitioning into this new system!

Edward is in the word work center and he chose to play a word building game. He's using his word book to help him. Nice job using your resources Edward!!

Anna and Elise have chosen to do activities in their USA book. They had 7 different USA activities to chose from.

One of the other centers this week was technology. Students had the choice of going on 2 different websites practicing spelling words on the ipad. The required activity was listening to a story at the listening station and filing out a response form. The ipads were a big hit because the students were able to record themselves saying each spelling word and then adding a sentence which they then got to use when they gave themselves their own spelling test!

We have learned about the importance of the bald eagle to our nation and in TNT we made 3D versions and then imagined what they would look like soaring through the sky.

In math we have continued focusing on money. We identified coins and their values and then made addition and subtraction equations on white boards. We also sat together as a class and one at a time, took a coin out of a bag and made a continuous addition problem to see how much money we could collect. They did an amazing job showing off their mental math skills!

Ellie is showing the class her coin she pulled from the bag and adding it to the class total: $1.55!

We also practiced regrouping playing a game with coins using a coin mat. Students rolled a die to find out how many coins to use, once they had 5 pennies, they had to regroup to the nickels place, once they rolled enough to have 5 nickels, they had to regroup again to the quarters place and finally, once they had 4 quarters they were able to earn a dollar. This was great practice for them with regrouping and the values of coins.

We have almost completed our research project on famous Americans. Will is sharing a picture of his famous American: Frank Llyod Wright. The students will get to share their research and their wonderful paper dolls starting next week. Thank you for all your help at home with the dolls. We hope this was a fun project to share with your child. If you are here at school, please take time to come look at the dolls on display outside our classroom. They are all outstanding!!

We are also continuing to share the citizen reports. Each child who has shared has taken great pride in sharing what his/her parents/grandparents have done as children to show good citizenship. They are becoming quite the public speakers as they stand in front of their peers and share their reports!

Molly Grace as Louisa May Alcott

The Famous Americans have arrived in first grade! They are exquisite, handsome, charming, and all very real looking! I quickly took pictures of some that are on the bulletin board and some that will be pinned up over the weekend. We are going to tape the students talking about their famous American and you can come and scan the QR code next to the doll and listen to each first grader talk about the person they researched. We will send out more on that at a later date.

Neil Armstrong

Martin Luther King Jr, Sacagawea and George Washington

Davy Crockett, Dorothea Lange & Babe Ruth

Harriet Tubman, Amelia Earhart & Abe Lincoln

Thomas Jefferson & Margaret Brown

Louisa May Alcott, Henry Ford & Georgia O'Keefe

Betsy Ross & Frank Lloyd Wright

Louis Armstrong

Jim Henson


Charles Lindberg & Martha Washington

In computer lab this week we used the ipads again and worked on site word building with an app called Cimo. Students had the chance to build words at 6 different levels. Then we moved onto an app called Scan and worked on addition and subtraction facts by scanning the secret code which revealed the equation students then recorded on their sheets. They blew us away at their abilities to scan. If you've never used this app on your phone and always wondered how it works, just ask your first grader!!

In Hands on Science we looked at footprints of animals from this area. We listened to a story , Tracks in the Snow by Wong Herbert Yee first. We then saw pictures of feet, paws etc.. of bobcats, squirrels, deer, skunks, racoons, opossums and humans--these were shown on the projector. A Scavenger Hunt was next....We had to identify which prints belonged to what animals. It was a great investigative morning. When the snow comes to KC we will be looking for tracks in the snow!