Dental Health Month

February is Dental Health Month and the first grade classes were visited by Mrs. Ellison, one of our Parkwood parents. Mrs. Ellison is also a dental hygienist. She talked to the students about the importance of good dental hygiene and tooth care. She also provided toothbrushes, toothpaste, and floss for all of the students. Thanks Mrs. Ellison!

This Week in Room 3....

February 22-26
This week in skills block we will be focusing on the long o spelled -oa and -ow. Our spelling words are: toast, pillow, soak, throw, toad, roast, grow, coach, bowl, and slow. Our guiding question in Readers' Workshop is .."How does looking at problem solving in a story help me to be a better reader?". We will also practice summarizing stories that we read at guided reading, independent reading, partner reading and our read alouds. During worktime the students will be logging on to Destination Success to complete activities that support our phonics, grammar and vocabulary skills. Our high frequency words for this week are: or, hard, finally, gone, again, turn, want and both.
In Writers' Workshop we will continue gathering our information for our animal reports. So far the students have found facts on what their animals eat and where they live. In Math Workshop we will begin our new book called Number Games and Story Problems. The students will continue comparing the sum of two facts using greater than, less than or equal to symbols. Today we began our new Science unit on living and nonliving things. We began an inquiry that will have the students making observations in the classroom to determine what living and nonliving means.

This Week in Room 3....

This week in skills block we will be working with the long a sound spelled -ai and -ay. Our spelling words are: paid, chain, plain, stain, wait, away, clay, spray, stray and tray.
Our high frequency words for the week are: been, far, forest, soon, goes, near, hungry and evening.
In Readers' Workshop we will be focusing on making predictions as we read. When making predictions, the students will use clues in the pictures and words of a story as well as what they already know.

Remember class and individual pictures will be taken on February 24th. Class pictures must be paid for ahead of time!

President's Day

On Friday we read our book of the month, Abe's Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln. The students responded by writing a fact that they learned about President Lincoln. We will use them to make a character web on our book of the month bulletin board. We also read a book called Hurray For President's Day!. We had a class discussion about what they would do if they were president. Enjoy Monday off for President's Day!

Writers' Workshop

Yesterday most of us completed our friend reports. The students interviewed a classmate and then put that information into sentences to form a short report. Today we began our next report by first choosing an animal that we would like to write about. Then the students began a KWL chart listing facts that they knew about the animal.

Maika's report on Makenziee...

Science Explorations

We walked around the school yesterday afternoon while it was raining. In science we have been studying changes in the Earth's surface. We learned that sometimes there are fast changes such as the washing away of soil and puddle formations during a storm. Sometimes these changes occur slowly over many, many years.

This Week in Room 3....

Recording our observations in our science journals.


Erosion Exploration

February 8 - 12
In literacy skills block we will be focusing on the long e sound spelled -ee and -ea. Our spelling words for the week are: see, tree, knee, sheep, keep, beach, teeth, street, speak and dream. Remember, your child can practice these words at Spelling City.
We will also continue working with contractions, ABC order and Naming words for things and places. Our high frequency words for the week are: cow, table, now, there, through, door, horse, wall, should and another. Your child should practice reading their word cards nightly. In Readers' Workshop our guiding question is ..How does noting details in a story help me to become a better reader? Students will be sharing details of their books read at guided reading and independent reading. We also will continue practicing retelling a story using graphic organizers.
In Writers' Workshop the students interviewed a friend in the class and they will write their first report on that friend. Today we talked about the different ways we might begin our friend reports.
In math we will continue addition with 3 addends and during Math Investigations we will continue working on our block towns. By the end of the week, we will be reviewing concepts from the Quilt Squares and Block Towns book in preparation for the end of the unit performance assessment. In science, we will continue discussing weathering and erosion. Today we explored the effects of rainfall on soil and the changes that may occur. Later in the week we will be talking about the importance of water and also water safety.

100 Days Smarter!

Yesterday we celebrated the 100th day of school. We read a poem with 100 words and a book about the different ways you could count to 100. We also made a chain 100 links long. Later, we took off 20 of the links and we will use it in the classroom to count down the 80 days left in school. We tried to be perfectly still and quiet for 100 seconds, but we found that very difficult to do! In the afternoon we enjoyed a sweet treat....the number 100 made out of a Debbie cake and doughnuts! The students also went home with a $100 dollar bill with their picture on it.

Story Maps

This past week in Reader's Workshop we focused on looking at story structure. We used graphic organizers to help us organize the elements in a story such as setting, characters, problem, events and solutions. These story maps aid the students in retelling. Several children worked together to complete the story map after going to the listening center to hear The Sleeping Pig.

Second Step: A Violence Prevention Program

Our school has recently begun teaching social-emotional skills lessons through the Second Step Program. The Second Step program is designed to help children learn to use appropriate ways to think and respond in everyday interactions with peers. This program is designed to promote social competence and reduce children's social-emotional problems. In first grade, we will cover empathy training, impulse control and problem solving, and anger management.

Nonfiction Text Study

Today we began our study of nonfiction text to prepare us for report writing. We will be looking at nonfiction books both during Readers' and Writers' Workshop. The students learned that we don't read these books like our regular fiction books. They do not contain narrative story elements such as characters and problems. We learned that often these nonfiction texts contain a table of contents, photographs, captions, diagrams, headings and an index. We then explored some books with a partner and used sticky notes to mark these features when we found them. The students will also be browsing nonfiction books during the worktime of Readers' Workshop.