Our First Writer's Celebration

It was wonderful...today we had our first author's celebration and I was so proud of all the hard work our young writers have done. We spent the first twenty-seven days of school launching our workshop by having lessons on things like where our writing folders belong, what kind of tools do writers use, and how do writers get ideas. Each child was asked to select two of their favorite pieces from September and share one of them with the class. We spread a colorful table cloth on our carpet and placed a candle, some lemonade, and some of Mr. Dahler's award winning (to me at least) banana bread. After giving the chance for writers to share their work we celebrated with our award winning bread. Our first few celebrations are as a class...but look for a parent invite in the coming months. Tickets go on sale soon...so keep checking out our site for further details.
It's been a busy week and yet I feel energized by all the activity. We appreciate all the work and support you do that makes our classroom such a great place to be.
Be sure to look at our website's link Recent Happenings to see more photos of today's fun and Thursday's visit with Emma's mom!

Rolling for 50

Today during math we played "Rolling for 50." It's a game that helps children learn how to use a number grid. If you would like to give it a try at home you'll need a die and the game sheet which you can find it described on our website under "Math Games" and download the gameboard under our "Handy Handouts" link. Have fun!
This morning we read the book Cat Goes Fiddle-i-fee by Paul Galdone and then acted out the various parts. The book tells the story of a boy who feeds his cat as well as his other animal friends. The part of the hen was played by Max who had everyone laughing by the stories end. We also read yesterday's poem, The Sun's Glow, and created several word families using the endings -and and -ast.
During writing workshop Hannah T. shared with some cat books that her mom (Thank YOU!) had made and we worked on creating some cat stories of our own. We read one of my favorite stories, Charlie Anderson, which tells the story of a cat with two homes. Tomorrow we will have our first monthly writer's celebration and Mr. Dahler is spending some time in the kitchen for this special occasion. Check out tomorrow's post for further details!

From a Teacher's Perspective

Today during math we did some checking of understanding by using our white boards and markers. There's something about a white board that all kids seem to find much more fun to work with rather than the old standard pencil and paper that I grew up with. We continued with number story problems like:
Jim loved to flip pennies. He decided that he won if the penny came
up HEADS. Jim flipped a penny 10 times. It came up HEADS only 4 times.
Out of the 10 flips, did he win more times or lose more times?
How many times did the penny come up tails? Needless to say it's a great way to get kids thinking about the way they use numbers. As we have time, we enjoy sharing our thinking about how we came up with our responses.
Toady we also used a poem during Reading Workshop titled The Sun's Glow by Tim Rasinski. Poems are a great way to examine word structures as well as in helping children become more fluent readers. We looked at the word ending "ow" and talked about how words rhyme and, by how knowing them,it helps us to spell other words. The poem lead into a sorting activity about nutrition where we identified foods items as vegetable or non-vegetable.
Emma's mom also came by this afternoon to teach us about the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah. She read several stories and we wished each other a Happy New Year with delicious apples and honey!

Making Words

This morning during Reading Workshop we played a word game we lovingly call Making Words. We added our own song (it's actually the old Tonight Show theme) by humming and then a very animated emcee (that's me). The animated emcee chooses contestants from our classroom audience to be contestants. Each student has a sheet so that they can participate while "watching" at home. The game consists of vowels and consonants that create words. Today's lesson focused on words with the short "a" sound. If you look under Handy Handouts on our classroom's website(Summitschool.com/insidesummit/classrooms/1st/dahler) you can generate your own copy to play at home. Remember to liven it up a bit with your own sound effects and a good emcee and your kids will love Making Words almost as much as I do!

Number Stories and Mixed Up Friends

Each morning after wake-up work and before reading workshop we sing. This morning we learned a new song called Singing Time...which brought some smiles to our Monday morning faces. Later in math we began talking about number stories. We googled some images from the computer and through the IBEAM used them to illustrate our story problems. Our hands down favorite pic was the donuts...if you can imagine! We used our white boards to record our thinking without using numerals. Later we used pennies from our tool kits to solve various problems like, "If Michael read 10 books last summer and his best friend Hank read 5 books, how many more books did Michael read?" It proved to be a wonderful thinking time...especially on a Monday morning!
Today we also had our Guidance Class with Mrs. Perry. On Mondays we don't get much afternoon recess time due to Science Workshop, so she held class on the playground and titled it Mixed-Up Playground. The challenge was for every child to play with 3 others they don't usually play with and then talk about the experience. What a great way to make new friends!