Sight Words

We have begun to work on learning to spell some of our sight words correctly. We can read them but now we need to work on writing them correctly. We will be learning 5 words every two weeks (we will take two weeks because we won't be able to fit in our practice time every day due to Library visits and shortened days). We will begin by noticing any unusual things about how each word is spelled and then we will write them using the Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check method. By the end of this week, your child should be able to explain this method to you. We will also create and write sentences using these words. The five words we are currently learning are on our word wall cards that we have on our desks during writing and all students will be expected to learn these words and spell them correctly in their writing. As we get better at learning words, we may pick up our pace and work on more words at a time. So soon you can expect to see words like wuz, hav, lik, wint, litl, uv, git and more disappear from your child's writing.

Our new sight words are: and, like, for, day, her

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 2.6 Telling Time to the Hour

Library
We have library tomorrow. Please help your child remember to bring back his or her books if they haven't already done so earlier in the week. Thanks.

Silent Gallery Walk

Yesterday we had a silent gallery walk. During this walk we looked at artifacts that are related to the new Expedition that we are starting this week. It was hard to walk around silently and not share our ideas yet. After having some time to think about what we might be studying, we shared what some of our ideas were. I did not say which ideas were accurate. At this point we wanted to leave them wondering just a bit. This practice (called Mystery Piece) increases the engagement and the "need to know" about our new Expedition. Today we talked more about any thoughts we had overnight and I did share with them that our Expedition is called "We are Family" and that our first case study would be about our own families.  I am not sharing with them what our second case study will be about yet so please don't share if you already know. We have a Mystery Piece for that case study, too.

So, umm, I forgot to take pictures during the Silent Gallery Walk so you will just have to imagine it. Sorry. Below is a picture of some of the "artifacts" that we looked at during our gallery walk.

Pictures of my family and Ms. Wendy's family

More specific details about our Expedition are below. Some of these learning targets will be meet in other areas of study outside of our Expedition.

Enduring Understanding

• There is diversity and sameness in the world

Essential Question

• How do people learn to get along in the world when there are so many similarities and differences?

Outcomes: Long Term Learning Targets: critical thinking: knowledge, skill, reasoning, character

• I can analyze patterns and chronological order of events of the recent past.
• I can compare and contrast characteristics of multiple sources of cultural differences.
• I can analyze family and cultural traditions in the United States in the past.
• I can analyze geographic tools such as maps and globes.
• I can deconstruct my biases.
• I can analyze how different groups and communities interact with each other and the environment.

Big Ideas

• Compare and contrast using a variety of sources to learn about the past
• Identify and analyze examples of global connections in community, state or region

Guiding Questions

• What can we learn from studying the past?
• What is important to understand about the rest of the world?

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 2.5 Clocks and Watches

Problem Solving

In first grade, our math curriculum is Everyday Mathematics. While we like this curriculum and think it challenges all kids in different ways, we do supplement it occasionally with other math lessons. The post from last week about "subitizing" or seeing the dots on a card in groups to avoid counting one by one is just one way we supplement the curriculum. Another way is by having Math Exchange days where we work on multi-step real-life problems that require some sort of mathematical thinking to solve them. On Friday, we had our first whole group Math Exchange day - sometime these days these problems are solved in a whole group and sometimes they are done in small groups. As we are learning more about how to solve problems, we will work in a large group with the whole crew. Later, we will split off into smaller groups based on concepts that students need to work on or solving problems will be the "just right" challenge for them.

Below are the problems we worked on followed by some examples of student thinking about those problems. We are all working to become mathematicians who are fluent in using many different strategies to solve problems.

Curious Cats

Five curious cats went exploring in a freshly painted room. Four got paint on their front paws and one got paint on its back paws. How many paws didn't have any paint on them?

How Many Animals?

If a new neighbor moves in with pet dogs and birds, how many animals can there be if there are 10 legs altogether? Is there more than one answer? 

One dog and 3 birds have 10 legs altogheter

Two dogs and one bird have 10 legs altogether

Most of us used the strategy of drawing a picture for solving these two problems but some of us experimented with using numbers or tally marks to solve them, too.

Patterns
These two were so proud of the patterns that they created using dominoes. This is why I love teaching first grade.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 2.4 Numbers Before and After

Solitude

One important part of our week is a solo time or solitude. This bit of quiet time gives us all a break from all of the daily stimulation and allows us to have time to think about what we have learned. This reflection helps incorporate new learning into our ways of thinking. Sometimes during solitude or solo time we just sit and reflect quietly and other times we might write or draw about our new learning. Today we just spent the time noticing the colors and the clouds.

IA
Our IA next week is PE.

Homework
No homework for the weekend. Enjoy some good books with your child.

Mathematical Thinking

Mathematical Thinking
We are learning to share our ways of looking at mathematical situations and ways of solving mathematical problems with each other. We are noticing that most of the time there is more than one way to solve a problem or look at a situation. When we listen to each other explain how we figured something out we learn new ways to think about things. This helps us to be mathematically flexible which helps us not "get stuck" when working on math problems. Below are some photos of one way that we look at a mathematical situation - seeing dots on dot cards - in different ways.

We do a short (5 minute) daily activity that involves looking at dot cards. I flash a dot card picture (as seen below) to the crew for a few seconds. After I cover the picture, I ask the crew what they saw. They then tell me how many dots they saw and how they saw it. We have several students share how they saw the dots. Here are a few examples:

One student saw this as the same configuration of dots on a domino. She knew that this was 8 because this is how 8 appears on a domino.

Another student saw this as a row of 3, a row of 2 and another row of 3. He said that 3 + 3 + 2 = 8.

Another student saw the 6 dots on the sides like they are arranged on a 6 domino. She then added the two dots in the middle to get 8.

The next student saw the 3 + 2 + 3 =8 pattern but she saw it in columns instead of rows.

Another student remembered that we had previously seen a 9 dot arrangement on a previous day and noticed that this was the 9 dot pattern with one dot missing in the middle so it had to be 8.

Why do we do this? I explained to the crew that it is similar to reading - we can "sound out" every word we read but that would not be efficient. We need to have a bank of words that we just know so reading can move along quickly. This is true in math, too. We need to have strategies to deal with numbers so we don't have to count every dot to know how many dots there are in a pattern. We become more efficient using numbers.


This activity also helps us be able to break numbers apart into chunks that are easier to work with in our head. This makes us more flexible when adding and subtracting numbers. We will eventually begin to move on from dot cards and to visualizing numbers and basic addition and subtraction facts. Having the dot patterns in our minds can help us make that transition.

One other reason to do this short, daily activity is that it stimulates our creativity. We begin to look at things in more than one way. This helps us be open to finding more than one solution to our problems.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 2.3 Two-Fisted Penny Addition
Return signed permission slip

Reading

 "The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."

  --  Mark Twain

That quote is my reading philosophy in a nutshell. My biggest goal for our crew is that they develop a love for reading and have books and authors that they love. Of course, I want them to be proficient readers, too, but if they are proficient and never actually read then what is the point. If they learn to love reading, then they will put in the time and effort to become good at it. So while I will be teaching reading strategies, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, decoding and phonics, I will also be sharing lots and lots of great books with the crew to get them excited about reading.

How Do I Try to Do This?
1. We read books throughout the day for various subjects and reasons.

2. We have lots of books available in our room all the time.

3. I bring in collections of books from the library to share with the crew. For example, right now I have a large collection of alphabet and counting books. At first, some students feel like they are too old for alphabet and counting books. Once they see some of the books I bring in, they change their mind quickly. The book publishing world is changing so quickly and there are so many fantastic books out there - including alphabet and counting books.

4. I talk about books with excitement and share my love of books with them.

5. I have them share their favorites with each other.

6. We learn that it is good to talk to our friends about books - that is how we learn about great new books to try.

7. We fill any spare moments with books and reading.

8. We start our day with reading. As the students come in they sit on the carpet and browse the bins that have our current collections from the library in them.

9. We post pictures of our favorite book characters on the wall and we have some stuffed animals of some of our favorite book characters.

10. We laugh out loud and join in with the reading of repeated parts of a books. This makes it more fun.

11. We read books and we also enjoy books on the computer or on our iPads. Tumblebooks is a favorite book reading site. It is on the Resources page of our crew blog. We have a subscription to it through the district and public library. You can access it from home, too. You will just need to enter your library card number and pin number (usually the last 4 digits of your phone number unless you have changed it). Another great source of books is our class Storia account through Scholastic books. We do enjoy reading in a variety of forms.

How Can You Help at Home?
1. Read to your child every day. Yes, even after they can read for themselves. Here is a link to a great article about a dad who read to his daughter every day until she went off to college:
Father-Daughter Reading Streak Lasts Nearly 9 Years

2. Share what you are reading with your child - books, magazines, cookbooks, instruction manuals, blogs, websites, street signs, newspapers, news sites online, etc.

3. Use different voices for different characters to make reading aloud more fun.

4. Have your child read to you.

5. Go to the public library - often.

6. Visit bookstores.

7. Have piles of books all around your home.

8. Enjoy the time you spend reading with your child.

9. Check out this link: Guerrilla Tactics to Get Your Child to Love Reading 

10. Check out this link: Read Kiddo Read

11. Check out this link: The Home and School Connection: Eight Ways to Foster Wild (Lifelong) Reading Habits 

12. Looking for some great new books: The 2013 Nerdy Book Award Nominees

In the future I will write posts about fluency, comprehension, decoding, vocabulary and more but, for now, I want to try to make sure that our crew loves books and reading. Then they will be motivated to read those books that they love so much.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 2.2 Counting Up and Back

Library
We have library tomorrow. Please help your child remember to return his or her books. Thanks!

You Can Learn Anything

Another teacher shared this great one and a half minute video with me. I shared it with the crew and wanted you to see it, too. (If you get this post by email, you will need to go directly to our crew blog to view the video - it doesn't come through in the email.)



Click here to view the video on YouTube.

This made me smile on Friday:

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 2.1 Telephone Numbers