Farewell to Ms. Yang and Gingerbread FUN!

We were so lucky to have had such a wonderful University of Iowa practicum student, Ms. Yang, be placed with us this semester! She did a great job and we wish her luck next semester during her student teaching journey. She will certainly be missed in first grade! Our class put together a little "survival kit" for Ms. Yang as she begins student teaching in Texas next month! :)

Good-bye and good luck, Ms. Yang! :)

As I mentioned in the last post, the first graders have been very busy comparing and contrasting fictional stories. This week we read four different versions of the gingerbread man. After each book, we recorded the characters, setting, ending, and refrain on the big gingerbread house (pictured below) so that it was easy to refer back to when we were comparing elements from each story. This unit on gingerbread stories was a HUGE hit! :)

In addition to keeping busy during our comprehension time, students have also gotten the chance to engage in partner activities during math. Below are some pictures of students working together to play winter-themed math games! They did a great job!

Counting by 10s to 120!

Counting by 5s to 120!

Addition problems

Addition matching

Subtraction game

Filling in the missing number

True/false equations

Finally, Elfie has been awfully sneaky these past few days! I'm sure he has several more tricks to play before the week is over! :)

This is the letter we wrote to Elfie telling him "how to build a snowman"....Elfie wrote us back and even tried it out!

Each day students journal about the silly things Elfie did! :)

Whew...long post but so much happening in the wonderful world of first grade!

Elfie is Back!

Last year, Elfie the Elf made an appearance in our first grade classroom. He returned again this year in a green package straight from the North Pole! Elfie's job is to watch over students and make sure they are doing good deeds and showing great behavior. However, he is also a sneaky little elf and tends to do tricky things in our classroom. Each day, students will journal about the silly adventures of Elfie! Today, Elfie surprised us by creating his own little house out of our recess blocks! :) We can't wait to write about his shenanigans the next week and a half before winter break!

Author Study: Jan Brett

Before diving into updates on our classroom happenings in December, I would love to give a quick update on a personal life event! A group of friends along with my husband and I decided to make the trip to Indianapolis to cheer on our very own Hawkeyes in the Big 10 Championship Game verses Michigan State. While the outcome wasn't what us Iowa fans would have liked to have happen, it was an awesome experience and I have never been more proud to sport the black and gold! And in the end, a bid to the Rose Bowl wasn't too bad of a consolation prize either... :)

Isabelle says Go Hawks!

Game Day in Indianapolis!

Go Hawks!

Now.,..for our classroom happenings!

The past few weeks the first graders have been introduced to the wonderful author, Jan Brett! We have read several of her stories, including classics, The Mitten and The Hat. Students are working on the Common Core standard of comparing and contrasting the adventures and experiences of characters. Jan Brett does a wonderful job of making her characters come to life in addition to providing every story with wonderful illustrations that have hidden clues on each page. Students also helped create large anchor charts that showed story elements from each book. After reading The Mitten, students got the chance to retell the story to a friend by pulling the animals through their very own paper mittens!

We also compared the classic fairy tale, Golilocks and the Three Bears to Jan Brett's story, The Three Snow Bears. Students had a blast reading both of these tales and once again did a wonderful job comparing and contrasting them to one another!

This week we will continue to work on comparing and contrasting stories, but with a focus on gingerbread stories, including two of Jan Brett's originals, Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends. More on this later! :)

On a fun note, we often take brain breaks in our classroom and utilize the website: gonoodle.com. Students get to dance and exercise to fun songs! Below students are pictured rocking out to Jingle Bell Rock!

Reading and Writing Updates

The past month our first graders have really started to pick up the pace with reading and writing. They are learning to write using more detail and transition words. Each student got to write a descriptive paper on an animal and then create a sticker story to go with it. I was SO impressed with the finished products. Students did a great job using adjectives and creating a jungle-scene for their animal picture.

During small reading groups, students participate in a variety of centers that reinforce the phonics skill and weekly sight words they are working on. We utilize the famous blogger, Reagan Tunstall's, word work activities. The kids have really enjoyed doing these centers and it makes their daily routine easy to remember. We have completed short vowels and after Thanksgiving break we will be focusing on blends (examples: FLip, SWim, TRap).

Hope everyone is staying warm during this first snow of the season! Got to love living in Iowa! And as always, Go Hawks...beat Purdue! :)

Turkey Facts!

To kick-off our week we read an informational text on turkeys and then students recalled facts that they learned! It was fun to see how interested and engaged they were to learn about these fun-feathered birds! Students were shocked to learn facts such as: only male turkeys make the "gobbling" sound and turkeys can fly up to 55 mph! My teammate found this fun turkey activity (pictured below) where students recorded on the feathers the most interesting facts they learned! Their fact turkeys turned out pretty cool! The remainder of the week we are going to read a series of fictional books on turkeys and students will get the opportunity to practice their retelling skills!

After reading about turkeys, students helped recall facts to record on our big turkey chart!

Each student wrote four facts they learned about turkeys.

Gobble...gobble! :)

Thanksgiving Activities Continued

This past week our first graders learned about the role that the Native Americans played in the first Thanksgiving. We read a book about Squanto and completed a Venn Diagram comparing the Native Americans to the Pilgrims. In addition, we read the story Turkey Trouble by Wendi Silvano. Students then wrote their own stories about a turkey in disguise and made these adorable turkeys (idea from The First Grade Parade)...they turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself! :)

Kimberly's turkey tricked the people by dressing up as a mom! :)

Marquise's turkey tricked the people by dressing up as a human and instead of getting eaten, the turkey was invited to Thanksgiving dinner! :)

Coming up next week: Reading both fiction and non-fiction stories about turkeys! Can't wait!

The Mayflower and Pilgrims

Last week the first graders started learning about how to ask questions before and during a story to help them gain deeper meaning. We talked about "question words" and learned a song to help us remember them! We also discussed the difference between a question that can be answered "in the book" verses "in our head". If an answer can be found in the book it is considered a "right there" answer. If an inference needs to be made or a question asks for an opinion, we learned that we have to answer the question in our head with our own ideas. Being able to distinguish between the two types of questions will help students when they start to take standardized tests in later grades.

We used these questioning skills to launch our unit on The Mayflower and Pilgrims. We read a few different books this week and answered questions about this topic. Students were SO INTERESTED in the voyage that was taken to the New World back in the year 1620. We did several activities to deepen students' understanding of this major historical event. Next week students will dive into Native Americans and how they played a major role in the success that the Pilgrims had in building a community of their own.

This poster has questions students were able to answer after reading about The Mayflower.

Students unscrambled sentences about the Pilgrims' story and made their own Mayflowers!

Students were SHOCKED at how little the Pilgrims got to take along on their journey due to how packed the Mayflower was with people! They got the opportunity to discuss things they would bring along and then each decided on their top four items! Definitely have some 21st Century answers here...very difficult for the firsties to fathom that back in the 1600s iPads and other electronics were not around! :)

 My favorite thing about these sweet kids though is that all of them put they would bring their family...<3 

Finally, we wrapped up the week with a "Then vs. Now" sort where students compared things from long ago and modern day. I love how cross-curricular this unit is...we are able to mix many language arts activities with social studies standards as well! Win-win! 

Note: Many activities from this unit were found from the wonderful Deanna Jump.