Cars and Ramps

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on February 29, 2016

Grade 1 Cars and Ramps from Karin Gravina on Vimeo.

Bear Museum

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on February 26, 2016

Next week we are having a Bear Museum!  We finished our research and we are ready to share it with others.  We each made a poster and our groups worked together to paint a picture and write a book about how bears survive in their habitat.  We’ve invited kindergarten in to be our audience and we will be the “experts” teaching them all we’ve learned about bears.  Parents are welcome to come in, too.  It will be on Wednesday, March 2, from 9:00-9:30.  Since I know it is a work day for many, I will post pictures for all those who cannot attend.

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Remember those cars we built last week?  This week we made ramps and set our cars down them.  Then we measured how far our cars went on each ramp, trying to decide which ramp was the best and why.  It led to an interesting discussion afterwards about height, steepness, surface, and interference at the bottom.  Some cars fell apart, which also became a learning opportunity.

 

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Some more great creations from our building time this week.

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Upcoming Events:

I do not have the dates for these yet, but please know we have two special events we do at the end of the year in first grade.

The whole class will take a field trip to Northfield Mountain for a picnic, class hike and to participate in their Pond Probe program sometime in late May or early June.

Then right before school ends in June, we will invite all families into our classroom for an Author’s Breakfast.  This is when each child reads one of their favorite books they’ve written over the year to all our guests.  We have a small breakfast celebration together and it’s a really important day for the kids, so hopefully you will be able to attend.  I will let you know the date as it gets closer.

Have a great weekend!

 

 

100th Day!

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on February 11, 2016

Today was our 100th Day of School!  We have accomplished a lot this week.  Lots of pictures to tell you the story.

We made cool glasses and worked on a math problem.  How many ways can you break up 100?  Can you make two groups?  More than two?  Record what you find.

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We shared our excellent, creative 100 Days of School projects.  What I love the most about this project is how it helps the students get to know each other more.  The child who loves cars gets to bring in 100 pictures of cars he loves and all of a sudden he is now the “car expert” in our class!  What a great way to celebrate the many interests and talents that make us who we are.

 

 

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IMG_4287 IMG_4285 IMG_4281 IMG_4274 We are also working on a class project to find 100 acts of kindness in our classroom.  Every day people are doing small things to show kindness to each other.  Now we are writing them down and celebrating them, counting them as we group them by tens and ones and hang them on our bulletin board.  IMG_4271

 

We painted beautiful Valentine hearts today.  IMG_4347 IMG_4346 IMG_4345

In writing, we finished our first teaching books.  Partners helped us edit our stories and then we shared them and read them to each other.  Children learn so much by having the courage to read their ideas to others and they also learn a lot about how to be a good listener by listening to others ideas.  This is something we practice a lot at school.  IMG_4343 IMG_4341 IMG_4340 IMG_4339 IMG_4338

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Mrs. Gravina gave us a challenge this week.  Can you work together as a team to build a car?  Here is what we came up with!  Next week, we will build ramps to race them and see which designs work best.IMG_4318 IMG_4317 IMG_4316 IMG_4315 IMG_4314 IMG_4312 IMG_4311 IMG_4308

 

Hope you enjoy your winter break!

Number Grids

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Posted by Alissa | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on February 3, 2016

The exciting news this week is that we started making number grids in math.  We talked about all the different ways you can fill in the grid:

looking for patterns

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starting at 100 and writing numbers in decreasing order

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counting by 10’s IMG_4260

counting by 1’s

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Every time a child reaches 100 another page is attached and they can continue counting into the hundreds.  IMG_4262

 

You know it is a hit when kids pull out their number grids to work on them at choice time!IMG_4263

 

Here are more beautiful designs from this week.

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Today at school we were illustrators.  We looked at non-fiction books and discussed how the illustrator used pictures and diagrams to teach us about the topic.  Then we set off to work illustrating our own non-fiction teaching books, adding labels and fun facts to our pictures.

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Next week, we will expand this skill and use what we learned to make teaching posters about the bears we are learning about.  Should be fun!

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