Leverett School Grade 1 Joyful Learning For Young Children 

Here are the new glued sounds we are learning about in Fundations.  The children will be practicing making  new words with these sounds.

 

We have started to learn about Quarters in math.  We learned a new game in math that uses quarters called “Money Magic”.  Ask your child about it.  In this game the children roll dice, collect coins, and trade them in for larger values as they work their way up to getting a $1.00 bill.  A great practice you could do at home is give your child a big pile of coins to count and find the value of.  Practice trading in coins of the same value (5 nickels or 2 nickels & 1 dime for a quarter).  

All children brought in a collection of treasured items from home to launch our new writing unit on Opinion Writing.  The children displayed their collection for a writing partner and talked about which item was their favorite and why.

Then they started to write about their own collections, naming which item was the “Best in Show” and why it was their favorite.  We are learning that when we state our opinion in writing, we need to back it up with solid reasons and in the next few weeks we will be learning strategies to help us do this.

During computer time, Mrs. Gravina came in and read a book to us about building structures.  She gave us a challenge to build something that could take you somewhere.  We broke into groups and chose the building materials we wanted to build with.

After we finished working on our project, we came back to the group and described how the vehicle would work to bring you somewhere, what the challenges were in the design, and how we can change it to make it better.  Next week we will continue working on these items.

This is the most beautiful building I have seen in a while to emerge from our block area during choice time!

Yesterday we wrapped up our bear unit by meeting with the other “experts” in the class to learn from each other and write up a summary of what we learned about our 4 different kinds of bears.  Then we met to discuss what we found out.  How are they similar?  Different?  Why do they have different adaptations even though they are all bears?  It was a lively discussion and the kids loved being the “expert” on the kind of bear they studied.  

 

Today we hit the road and took a trip to the Fine Arts Center.  We saw a presentation of The Ugly Duckling and The Tortoise and The Hare.  The cool thing was, it was all presented without words.  The Lightwire Theater just used illuminated characters lined with lights to tell the tales along with music.  We sat in the (very dark!) theater and were amazed by the characters and all the different kinds of music used.  Before we left for the trip, we sat down to read the book versions of each story.  What a surprise it was to see such a unique presentation of the same stories but in very different ways.  Ask your child about it.  Everyone seemed to really enjoy it.

We had a special day in 1st Grade today!  The kids showed off all their hard work to the visitors who stopped by to hear our presentation on our bear research.  Each group presented their poster and read information they learned about how each bear survives in its habitat.  Then the children found a second grade partner to read their research books to.  The notes each child took will be coming home today, but the books will stay at school until our Author’s Breakfast when we will share all our published work with you from the year.  Mark your calendars for Thursday, June 11th, from 8:45-10:00.  We will have a lot more work to show you then!  Today was great practice for our young writers on how to speak in front of a group and how to share our work with others.  The comments I heard from parents and teachers who came to see were very positive.  We are very proud of them all!

 

In addition to our presentation, it was also our first day of Greenhouse!  Spring really is coming, believe it or not and it is time to begin making our weekly trips out there.  It’s still too cold and yucky in the greenhouse for now, so Dawn came to us and told us all kinds of cool stories about her experiences studying bears out in the wild.

 

We also had a “Thank You Assembly” to sing a song and say thank you to all the local heroes who helped put our school back together after the flooding last month.

 

What a fun day!

 

 

 

 

 

Ah, quiet time!  Even in 1st grade we take 10 minutes after lunch to turn off the lights, turn on the quiet music and have some down time.  The children can rest quietly or look at books.  It’s one of the nicest parts of our day.

Can you believe these 6 & 7 year olds are learning how to write computer code?  Here we are in computer lab this morning, working on our coding skills using Code.org.  Our computer teacher, Mrs. Gravina, is very proud of our work.

Back in the classroom, we worked on painting pictures of bears and writing research facts we learned about how each bear survives in its habitat.  We also finished publishing our bear research books.  Next Tuesday morning from 8:45- 9:15 we will present our work to the second graders.  Parents are welcome to come in and join us for this presentation.  If you can’t make it, you will have another chance to see your child’s published work at our Author’s Breakfast in June.  It is tentatively scheduled for Thursday morning, June 11th.  Please save the date!

I often forget to highlight specials.  We are very lucky here at LES to have very talented specialists who work with our kids.  Each week, the students spend time in gym, art, music, computers and library.  With all the water damage, Mrs. Wells, our school librarian, was displaced from her space.  So she came to our classroom for library class and I was lucky enough to sit in on it.  She worked with the kids on finding a book’s theme, feeling and plot.  She told them about a conference she’d been to where she met Mo Willems!  Then she read us some of his books and we learned how to illustrate just like him!

  

 

Today we welcomed more visitors into our room.  2nd Graders came in to read their most recently published book reviews to us.  We had extra time at the end, so we even got to read some of OUR published books to them!

In Second Step this week the kids learned how to interrupt politely when you need to speak to someone who is busy talking to someone else.  We learned how to wait for a pause in the conversation, say “Excuse me…” and then make your request.  We practiced this and did lots of role modeling.

We also had our end of unit math test, which are coming home in the home folders today.  Then we started Unit 6, which is a lot about learning our math facts.  Children should memorize by the end of first grade all of their “10 combinations” (6+4, 7+3, etc…), doubles facts (4+4, 6+6, etc..) and any number +0 or +1.  Try to work on the same for subtraction (-0, -1).  We are making lots of progress!

In writing, you may hear your child talking about publishing books.  We have reached the end of our teaching book unit and are now working on editing the teaching books we have made, especially the research book on bears.  When all are done, we’ll invite you in to come take a look!

Remember, our field trip to UMASS Fine Arts Center to see a play is on Thursday, March 19th.  If you haven’t already, please send in permission forms.  Thanks again to all who worked on Harvest Fest back in the Fall.  Thanks to you, this field trip is FREE!