First Grade Highlights
October is a very exciting month for First Grade! We are practicing fire safety (including our address & phone number) and will hike to the firehouse soon with fourth grade for a complete tour. We also will travel to Indiana to visit a working orchard and pick our own pumpkins!
Here are some other highlights of our activities and accomplishments so far.
Reading-
We are practicing the skills of making predictions using illustrations, visualizing, using context clues, summarizing and sequencing. We compared and contrasted two different books about Johnny Appleseed. We are using graphic organizers to identify story elements of character, setting and plot. We retell a story using puppets and work on summarizing.
We read together in small guided reading groups, read leveled readers with partners and practice our reading skills individually and on the computer. During these ‘Centers’, we are also able to explore subject areas that we are learning about in science or social studies, practice our phonics, and enjoy math games with dice or graphing. Our parents are helping us practice our High Frequency words at home. At school we practice by reading them on our word wall. Each week we add four new words to our flip books with the word, a picture and a sentence to understand its meaning. We also write sentences using these words in our High Frequency Word folders and practice them together throughout the week at the board and with the overhead projector.
Writing- The first graders practice using our punctuation friends and writing with capital letter beginnings. They are practicing writing with descriptive adjectives and are writing creatively to describe their topic and feelings. They write in their Writing Journals, as well as on specific writing topics. They have written descriptively about their own ship and their favorite season.
Phonics- We practice phonics together using the chalkboard, the overhead projector, our own whiteboards and markers, foldable papers, a large phonics letter board, bags of letter cubes and worksheets. We practice our vowel rules, began with the short vowel sounds and then learned about digraphs (two letters that make one sound, ck, th, sh, ch). For these sounds we make a scissors motion to symbolize one letter sound being cut out. Next we learned about double consonant and consonant blend words. We segment sounds into boxes, replace first and last letter sounds in a word, and blend and practice reading and writing with these words.
Math- Each day at our Math Meeting we practice our skills of counting, practice the calendar facts, graph the weather, listen to clues about the Mystery Bag and draw a picture and write a math sentence to solve the riddle, count the number of days in school using a number line, straws (trading up for a larger straw every ten small straws), and linking cubes, and identify and count coins. We divided apples in half, counted the seeds in one half, compared them to the number in our partner’s half, and wrote a number sentence depicting the total number of seeds in the entire apple. We practice adding and subtracting using our number cards, coins, linking cubes and work mats. We count, sort, graph, order, write numbers, represent ‘some, some more’ and ‘some, some went away’ stories with a picture and a number sentence. We practice our math facts using our own small fact cards which we made, wrap-ups, timed tests, and our math ‘Doubles Rap’. Parents: thank you for practicing with the flash cards at home!
Religion- Early in the year, the students created lovely mobiles reminding us that Jesus is always with us. We learned about the Holy Family, Jesus’ teachings and his followers. We sing beautiful songs such as ‘Praise Him In the Morning’. This month, we are learning about the rosary and Saint Therese and Saint Francis.
Science- We studied living and non-living creatures, then created our own non-living pets- painted pet rocks. We studied various habitats, and created our own garden habitats with sand, milk cartons and colored depictions of animals and their source of food and water. We will be making predictions about a class experiment, noting our observations and creating a class hypothesis soon! We read wonderful stories such as Apples! and Why Do the Colors Change?
Social Studies- First graders love the story of Flat Stanley who was flattened, but able to travel in an envelope. Throughout the year, we periodically open one of the letters from our friends and relatives across the country. To help us learn about geography, they have drawn clothing to fit the weather and activities and written about the special features of their particular state. So far, we have heard about Wisconsin and Florida. After listening, we brainstorm and write a page for our own ‘Flat Stanley Travels’ books, locate the state on our class USA map and our own that we made using our map skills.
For Fire Safety Week, we created a book with this, along with our name and address, and even practiced calling 911 with a partner and calmly talking to a phone dispatcher. We will visit the local fire station for an extremely thorough tour, featuring a firefighter in complete gear with mask on his knees acting as if he was trying to find us in smoke. We are learning about the explorations of Columbus, mapping his travels and creating beautiful ships.
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