Happy Halloween

 We had a wonderful day celebrating Halloween at school. Our crew loved getting to read lots of Halloween stories and do multiple crafts throughout the day. 

Our crew solved some yummy math problems by trying to find multiple combinations to equal a sum. 

Thank you so much to the families the donated some pumpkins to our crew so we could have lots of pumpkin fun!

Reflecting on our year together

This year has come to an end and I am thankful for your partnership and patience with how our year ended. As I reflect on this year I want to remember how strong, courageous and kind our first graders were not just during remote learning but all year.

I am so proud of each and every child for how they had a growth mindset, challenged themselves academically, showed compassion and grew together as a crew. We have had many wonderful adventures this year from visiting our grandfriends, playing togetherness games, going to the garden and learning on zoom.

"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood. "
-Fred Rogers

Thank you again for a wonderful year with a wonderful group of first graders! I love getting to watch each child grow and partnering with each of you. Have a great summer. 

Supporting Our First Grade Writer's

Writing in First Grade

In first grade we believe that choice is very important in supporting our writer's confidence, interest and motivation. By allowing choice in topic we can still guide our first grader writer's to improve in their use of conventions, word choice and sentence structure. We have learned the importance of using describing words in our writing as well as using a detailed picture to help tell the story.







At this point in the school year our first graders should be independently writing 4-6 sentences using spaces, punctuation and correctly using a starting capital and lowercase letters. After students complete their writing they could go back and reread their writing to check for any mistakes and edit their work.

Types of writing

All About Writing- This is a non-fiction writing where first graders can tell all about something they are an expert in. For example, they could write about an animal or a topic they have a lot of schema about (monkey, football, chess etc. ) Students could also research a topic they are interested in using non-fiction books or the website Kiddle and record what they learned.

Personal Narrative- We became experts at personal narrative writing at the beginning of the school year by telling stories from our lives. When writing a personal narrative first graders are thinking of stories that have already happened and are true. Students could write about a trip they went on, play dates, a memory from school etc.

Opinion- Students can share their opinion on a topic and provide multiple reasons to persuade someone. Your child could write about their favorite toy and why it's the best or what game the family should play that day and provide reasons why.

Poetry- Our students learned about poetry this year and how the format looks different and the importance of word choice to help our readers mental image.  We learned that poems can be about any topic and do not always rhyme. Poets use spacing, repeating words or lines, strong word choice and rhythm.

How to- Students could create a how to book to teach others. For example they could write a book about how to grow a plant, how to cook or how to play soccer.

Letter- Each week at school we would write a friendly letter to the crew member of the week telling them heartprints, or things we liked about them. Your child could write letters to members of your family, stay in touch with friends or even write a letter and mail it to a family member or their grandfriend.

Spelling 

To encourage of first graders to try new words and to build their confidence we allow "first grade" spelling. This means that we want to encourage our writer's to use strategies like eye spelling (looking around to see the word), heart spelling (words we know by heart) and ear spelling (sounding out the sounds we hear).

The World is Our Garden Kickoff

We kicked off our spring expedition, The World is Our Garden. In this expedition students will be exploring non-fiction texts for the text features and applying them in some fiction writing. 

 

 Students explored different components of our expedition during the kickoff. Students were able to explore plant parts, soil and compost. We loved finding earthworms in the soil and compost!

Students were also able to explore different life cycles and organize them to see how animals change over time and look similar and different to their parents. 

We loved getting to spend some time outside exploring the garden looking at compost and the the garden beds.