What is a Community?

In Social Studies we began a new unit, 'Citizens Form a Community at School'.  To create an interest in this unit, I decided to have the students use Today's Meet to define as well as describe attributes of a community. While I was able to quickly assess their background knowledge about communities, students enjoyed reading each others posts as well as seeing their own post enlarged on the whiteboard!

Guided Math Rotations

 

During Guided Math rotations students practice a variety of math concepts.  This week they used the app 'Number Pieces' for Place Value, '10 Frame Fill' for Number Combinations to 10,  ABCYa for counting 0-50 and Xtra Math for fact fluency.

Double Bubble Map

After reading The Little Red Hen and The Little Green Witch students created a Double Bubble map.  Using this type of Thinking Map students were able to show their thinking as they compared and contrasted the 2 stories.

Skyping again!

This afternoon we had the opportunity to Skype with a first grade class in Oregon!  Before we made the  connection, we located Oregon on our map and quickly learned they were in a different time zone (2 hours later).  Once connected students from both classes shared  information about their state and then read character riddles they had written about the book, Marty McGuire. The students had a great time meeting and answering riddles.  Hopefully we will be able to Skype with this class again.

Wild Thing

After listening to the story Wild Thing by Maurice Sendak we discussed the books story elements (setting, characters, problem, solution) and shared our connections.  Once everyone had a turn to share then it was time for a little creativity...design a 'Wild Thing'!

Recently in mathematics and science we have been learning about non-standard units of measurement as well as properties of matter.  So I decided to let students create their own 'Wild Thing' however it had to meet certain criteria....body parts had to be specific lengths and it had to have different properties (3 different colors, shapes and textures).  The students had so much fun creating their 'Wild Thing' but they aren't finished...tomorrow they get to write about it.  What a great learning time!

Counting Smarties

Practicing place value and graphing is always more fun when using Smarties!!
For this activity students made groups of tens and ones, took a picture and recorded it in the app Skitch.  Next, they were to create either a picture or bar graph to represent the colors of their Smarties. Once completed they had to write at least 2 things they learned from their graph.

Fire Safety Program

Tuesday morning the Grapevine Firefighters came to present their fire safety program to our student.
Be sure to ask your child about E.D.I.T.H. (Exit Drill In The Home).