Busy, busy, busy

Please excuse our absence from blogger we have been SO busy in our classroom lately! Here are a few things we have been doing over the past month in our classroom:

1) pumpkin unit- we were studying pumpkins throughout the month of October in reading, writing, math, & science. Ask your student what interesting things they learned about pumpkins!

2) Iroquois tribe- this month we are leaning all about the Iroquois tribe, comparing them to ourselves, learning about the Hopi, Lenape, Sioux, Inuit, Nootka, Seminole, & Nez Perce tribes and comparing them to the Iroquois tribe, & getting ready to learn about their fables and responding to them.

Kids say the darndest things...

Today is our first field trip. Here are some sweet quotes overheard on the bus ride.

"It's downtown Jacksonville! We're going to see the Jaguars!" -said while driving over the Dames Pointe

"That smoke stack is where the fish are! My dad told me!"

"I've seen on before in my life...it splattered a little in my face." -in reference to a little volcano (the power plant on the northside)

"Look! A space ship!" -said while pointing to a tall cylinder shaped auto parts sign

"Hey look! A school bus!"

"Ooo...I want that one!" -while pointing to a passing convertible

"I saw a horse!"

And lots and lots of laughter!

4th Grade Buddies!

Today we were SO excited to meet our new 4th grade buddies from Mrs. Phillips and Mrs. Nash's class. Each 4th grader has 2-3 new kindergarten friends that they will meet with each week. We will spend time reading, doing math and science, and playing together!

Scrumptious Science

We have been going over the Practice of Science in our science workshop- asking questions, sharing ideas, using tools and using them appropriately, and sharing our work in our science journals- and have begun thinking about how we observe and what we use to observe. Lots of friends understand that seeing and hearing help us daily in making observations. Check out our exploration on our sense of sight with hand lenses!

A Recipe for Retelling

Ok this post was supposed to be published on Friday, but I guess we forgot to hit publish--sorry!!!

In Reader's Workshop, we have been very busy finding all the right ingredients to make a recipe for the perfect retelling. We have been reading books, which we call Star Books, over and over so that the students become very familiar with the text and the features in the text. We have been enjoying CAPS FOR SALE, THE THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF, & WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE. Since our students had a whole week to practice retelling, today we retold THE THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF using our flannel board. You'll notice on our chart that we represent the beginning, middle, & end with shapes...ask your student what they mean and see if they've remembered all the ingredients for a perfect retelling!

Survey Says???

A routine we like to establish in our class is doing a question of the day. We may not get to it every single day, but we feel that our class can get a lot of information from answering the question, discussing & explaining it, then representing it. Here's our question for tomorrow! We'll let you know what the survey says. :)

Cooking Up Wonderful Things!

We've been very busy little chefs establishing the rituals and routines of our classroom! From establishing what our idea of a scientist is, to representing how many we counted, to how to partner read, we are cooking up great things already!

Welcome to Kindergarten!

Calling all Kindergarten Chefs!

We will start cooking in our Pom-Bito Pizzeria in just a few days! You are invited to come and meet your very excited teachers on August 17th at 8am.

We can't wait to meet you!

Math Fluency

Most of our students are developing great number sense! We are working very hard to understand numbers, place value, skip counting, and becoming fluency in basic facts. A few years ago, the focus of math instruction shifted from the long-standing focus of reciting math facts to a more conceptual understanding of number relationships. Now, we seem to be moving to more of a middle ground. We want students to have a solid foundation in number sense, but we also know that it is important for them to know some facts quickly without having to think too long. We call this fluency.

Over the Winter Break, we sent home copies of Math Flash cards. We asked that students begin to practice these facts daily to help with their math fluency. If you are in need of an additional copy of these cards, please login to our Shutterfly page.

Happy New Year!

We have returned back to school for the New Year and we are ready to continue our journey through 1st grade! This week we discussed New Year's Resolutions with our students. We explained that the beginning of year is a great time to reflect on their lives and think about something that they can work on improving. After a quick discussion on what makes for a good resolution (e.i.- it has to be something that you actually need to work on and it has to be about your actions), we asked the kids to write a resolution for themselves as students.

Here are some examples of our resolutions:
"My reolut is to ... tesupate at Kalender math."
"My resloosen is to not talk at worck time."
"My resolution is lising to the techer. i promis."
"My resolution is to try my best on tests."

And our resolution... blogging! We have made a resolution to try to blog more often! So, please check back with us often... Happy New Year!