Week of September 25th

Hello Families!

We had another great week in First Grade!

This week in writing we learned how to bring our writing to life by making our people move and talk in our illustrations. Check some of the awesome work. One student wrote a small moment about our Writer’s Workshop lesson about bringing our small moment to life!

In Social Studies we’ve been learning about feelings. We’ve read a lot of great books and had good discussions about what characters are feeling and times that we have felt the same way. We read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. We talked about how Alexander was feeling and what we can do when we are having our own ‘very bad days.” We made doorknob hangers to let others know when we are having a good day and when we have bad days. The class was very creative!

We practiced our compliment circle again this week. We used our compliment starters to help us give genuine compliments. When we do a compliment circle we get to sit in a special way which I call “long legs” or  “daddy long legs.” When we get a compliment then sit criss-cross. This lets the class know that they have received a compliment and to choose someone who is sitting with “long legs.” It’s one of the few times we get to sit this way so it adds some excitement! The kids all go to rug and exclaim “don’t forget to sit with daddy long legs!”

PPS has managed to earn a celebration at our All-School Morning Meeting four weeks in a row! I’ve been told that we made history when we earned three in a row and we did it again this week! We earned a Rock, Paper, Scissors Tournament.

Week of September 18th

Hello all!

Another great week in First Grade! Students have continued to work hard every day! We continue to build our classroom community and to settle into our daily routine. Here's a look at out math rotations. On this day we rotated through using Dreambox, exploring pattern blocks, and a number packet to practice our teens.

On Monday we celebrated Constitution Day. We learned about why the document was written and what it means for our country and how it helps us be good citizens. We brainstormed what it means to be good citizen and the students had amazing responses: help other people, follow the rules and the laws, listen to the police/teachers, help mom do chores, donate to others, among many others! We learned a new song about Constitution Day and it was a big hit!

This week we continue to talk about being a good friend. We have read a lot of books about how to be a friend and how to appreciate our differences! We read Spaghetti on a Hot Dog Bun and did a fun craft about what makes us unique! We also baked our own Friendship Pie after reading Enemy Pie.

My favorite part of our Friendship Unit is the introduction of our compliment circle! This is one of my favorite classroom traditions that I try to do every week! We started this week by talking about what a compliment is and complementing each other’s clothes/appearance just to practice what a compliment looks like. In the future we move past our clothes, but it worked out perfectly for us to compliment our spiffy picture day outfits!

Week of September 11th

Hello again!

We did it! We survived our first FULL week of first grade and it was awesome! We did so much everyday that I may have forgotten to take pictures along the way... but there are a few!

I did manage to get a picture of the rainbows that we made last week! They help to brighten the classroom and look great next to the windows!

Our math routine is off to a great start! We’ve been practicing counting up to 20 and then back down to 0. We've done some dot-to-dots to help us practice. We also learned two new games this week: Top-It and Bunny Hop! Both games have been a lot of fun!

This week we started learning about friendship! We read Big Al by Andrew Clements and talked about what it means to be a good friend and how we can be good a good friend.

There were also two very exciting things that happened this week! We anxiously awaited the arrival of our new rug all week until it finally arrived on Thursday. The kids were so excited for the new rug! We now have more room on the rug and more color in the classroom! I can’t wait to do lots of great learning on our new rug! You can sneak a peek at the rug in a few of the pictures above!

The other exciting thing was that we got to sing a song at our All-School Morning Meeting today (Friday 9/15)! This was pretty last minute, it wouldn’t have happened if Principal Millham hadn’t walked in on us singing one day! It’s the song you can hear us singing in last week's blog post. I’m not sure if anyone was recording us singing but I’ll ask around!

Week of September 5th

What a fun week in first grade! It has been a dreary week so we made rainbows to help brighten up our classroom. Unfortunately, I’m not tall enough to hang them from the ceiling so a picture will be added next week when I have some help! We continue to do get-to-know you activities to help build our classroom community.

We learned a good morning song called “I Say Hello There.” Here is a video of us singing! We will be singing a lot throughout the year! Ask them to sing it for you!

We read the book Molly Lu Melon and talked about the ways that she stood tall. We made our own Molly Lu Melons with all of the ways that we stand tall! We stand tall when we are proud to be ourselves! We stand tall by being: brave, strong, confident, kind, smart, friendly, special, magical, musical. We don’t give up and we keep on getting stronger! We got some of our ideas from this Will.i.am and Sesame Street video. We watched it so many times! We danced along too!

We started our Everyday Math Curriculum this week. I hope the parent letters were informative. We played a few math games such as Penny-dice in which kids practice counting to twenty. We also made counting books to practice subitzing numbers 1-10! We’ve practiced our fluency in counting by fives and by ones.

We continue to practice our handwriting so that when we get to writing stories we can do our very best work!

I hope your child had a great second week in first grade! They are working hard everyday! I already love spending my days with them!

Our First Week

Hello Everyone!

We had a great first week in first grade! We have already done so much! I am so proud of the our class as we adjust back into the swing of school! They have all worked so hard.

We played lots of get to know you games and activities which will continue for the next couple of week! These are important to help us learn more about each other, make connections, and build our classroom community.

In math, we explored manipulatives that we will use throughout the year. A class favorite were geoboards and pattern blocks. Both are great learning tools and the kids had a lot of fun exploring them. We also took a survey on how we got to school on the first day!

In literacy, we practiced our handwriting with both letters and numbers. We also read On Market Street and came up with our own alliterative people! Some examples are: Ashlyn is made of art, Ethan is made of erasers, Aidan is made of acorns, Christopher is made of cars, Lexis is made of Lamps, Mason is made of M&Ms, Madison is made of marbles, and Max is made on Megalodons!

We wrote “I like…” books that helped us get to know what everyone likes. We wrote what we like, drew illustrations, and shared our books with the class. Some of my favorites were: crayons, soldiers, playing outside, flowers, and PPS.

On Friday we had our first All-School Meeting! The students got a reminder of our school expectations and Warm Fuzzies!

Also, bear with me as I figure out the best way to include pictures on Blogger! I want to include a lot of pictures with these posts but I don’t love the way that Blogger formats pictures. I’m playing around with this and will add pictures to this post as soon as possible!

I hope you all are have enjoyed your Labor Day weekend!

All the Best,

Ms. Carilo

Communication update: Blog posts will be posted on Fridays (this weekend was the exception as I had to head out to Connecticut and didn't have Internet!) Newsletters with updates on the upcoming week will be posted on Mondays. I'm going to stick to this schedule as best as I can!

Our Pattern Block creations.
Ask your child what they built!