Podcasts of Biographies: Day 2

Here are 3 more podcasts that were recorded today. Our writers today even wanted to try adding background music! I hope to have all finished/recorded/uploaded by tomorrow!  Enjoy :)

Biography of Colton: By Joe

Biography of Joe: By Colton

Biography of Destiny: By Jasmine

Student Biographies:

First Graders have been working on interviewing, planning, writing, revising and editing biograhpies on a friend in their class. We are working on publishing them via garageband as a 'podcast.' I will post them as they are finished. Our goal, as we get used to using digital tools for publishing, is to work on our fluency and be comfortable reading our work for an audience! Enjoy our first round of first grade podcasts!

All About Sam: By Zack

All About Christian: By MasonAll About Christy: By ReeseAll About Reese: By ChristyAll About Natalie: By HayleeAll About Casey: By Ethan

Safari Room Happenings

Safari Room Sentinel - February 25, 2013

Language Arts: We are continuing to study flippy dolphin and how sounds can change and how important it is to cross-check: seeing if a word sounds right, looks right with the sounds and makes sense. This is incredibly important as your child enjoys longer texts and can easily lose meaning if they aren't monitoring for understanding. A great way to support this practice is by having them tell the "who" and the "what" at the end of a page and/or chapter and retelling with you on their Shape Go! Map.

We will also be starting to learn about how readers Infer when reading. Inferencing is to make an educated guess based on a reader's schema and clues from the text. We will be learning that sometimes the author doesn't give you the "whole story" and we have to use our knowledge and what we learned in the story to come up with a way to "fill in the blanks." Please look for a more detailed explanation about Inferencing in your email and how you can support this strategy with our young readers at home.

Writing: We finished our research projects by self-publishing our books last Friday. Many of our first graders need to work on their neatness and handwriting. I am not concerned about perfection, but I am going to start watching for correct formation, spacing between words, neatness/care for product and process in handwriting as we are approaching the last term of the year and need to solidify letter formation and writing for fluency in writing longer passages for second grade.

We will be ending our informational unit this week by writing biographies about a friend while immersing ourselves in some mentor texts about personal narrative. Personal Narrative are true stories a writer writes about themselves. These stories are "zoomed-in" to focus on one small moment, or even in time that is given a lot of descriptive detail.

Math: We are learning strategies for subtracting, by making a ten as we subtract or by counting up from the partner that we know. There will be 1 ShowMe Homework lesson that will be due by Wednesday. You will receive an email when the ShowMe is uploaded. This is an important unit for your child to slow down, take their time in counting and recognizing partners of 10. If you notice they do not know their partners of 10 fast, fluent and firmly, making flashcards to practice at home, logging on to www.xtramath.org or using a manipulative(such as 10 m and ms, pretzels, carrots, etc. and breaking them into the two partners of ten and having your child practice counting and saying them for automaticity) to group partners of ten are all strategies that will build your child's number sense.


Social Studies: Although we finished our unit on important holidays, president's and economics, we will continue to study these areas as they come up on our calendar.


Science:
We will be taking a pre-assessment on the next unit which is Earth Science - Studying the Weather, before I begin to plan specific lessons based on your students background knowledge of this content area.


Field Trip:
March 8 is our final Field Trip to DeGraaf Nature Center for Seasonal Surprises which ties directly into our Science curriculum. We have 4 parents joining our field trip, which will be fabulous! Parents, you are free to meet us at school and ride the bus with us at 9:00 or meet us at DeGraaf Nature Center in Holland at 9:30. Please let me know by March 1 what your preference is so I can plan accordingly with transportation.

March 4: No School for students. This is a day for parent-teacher conferences on an 'As-Needed' basis. Hopefully, you received a time slot from me on Friday in your child's folder if you or I requested a conference about your child. If you are still interested in having a conference for your child, please let me know and we can set up a time that works for you. Thanks!

Report cards will be coming home at the official end of the second term, so parents that have a conference with me will not be able to take their child's report card home, yet. Thanks for your understanding of this matter!

As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns or ideas, please feel at ease to contact me!
Cheers to some sunshine and a FULL week of learning this week.

Safari Room Sentinel 2-18-13

I hope everyone is enjoying our President's Day Break! See everyone tomorrow!
This week...

Language Arts
This week we will be studying why we celebrate President's and President Lincoln and Washington and comparing what they did for America. We will continue using the comprehension strategy of Questioning as we learn about brave and influential African Americans who helped shape civil rights for America.

Our chunks for the week are: -oat, -ain -ake, and the -y ending making an e sound like in baby. Our words for this week are water, over, very, her, his, him and we will be studying the pronouns her,she, him, his.  We will also review the long e sound in words like sheep and read.

Social Studies
We will continue to identify and explain economics in first grade terms.

Writing
We are finishing up our Animal Research "All About" Books and will try some different presentation tools to share our learning with our learning community.

Math
We took our Unit 4 test and will be finishing learning loops on Tuesday and then moving on to Unit 5 to study different place value situations by representing two-digit numbers using drawings, using strategies to find 10 more and 10 less and model adding and subtracting two-digit numbers using the Make a Ten strategy for addition and subtraction.

*Please make sure you and your child view the first ShowMe lesson for homework by Wednesday, when we start unit 5. There is also a short additional video further explaining Make a Ten if you feel your child may need some extra practice at understanding. If you have trouble viewing these videos and have not already let me know, please do, so I can set up alternate viewing for your child.

Dates to Remember:
March 4 is our requested conference day. Please make sure to return your child's conference slip by February 22 so I can start to create my schedule based on requests or on the "as-needed" basis. Reminder, these are conferences that either you or I request - not for everyone, like in the fall. I hope that clears this up.

March 8 from 9:00 - 11:30 is our last field trip of the year. We will participate in the Seasonal Surprises program at DeGraaf Nature center. I am looking for 3-4 parent volunteers. Please let me know if you are interested!
March 29 - April 5: Spring Break!

Safari Room Happenings

Language Arts: 
We are researching in our inquiry groups about a specific animal and writing a nonfiction descriptive text based on our learning.

We've started the final Daily 5 choice of Buddy Reading. We remember to Check For Understanding when we read at the end of each page by telling who we read about and what we read about (Using a checkmark helps us to remember and in turn, better understand the story).

The FACE of our growing readers...
Fluency:
We are working to apply expression in our reading as well as paying attention to punctuation.

Accuracy:
We are working to apply Flippy Dolphin to flip the vowel sound if the word we read does not look or sound right or make sense.

We are remembering to Cross Check in our reading. Does the word you said look right based on the sounds? Does the word sound right in the sentence? Does it make sense with the story? If not, use Tryin' Lion to try a different word!

Comprehension:
We are learning how to ask questions before, during and after a text to better understand the characters, the problem, the author's message, etc. This is an important part of comprehension.

Expanding Vocabulary:
We are learning how to write down a word we do not know, try using clues from the text to infer what it means or ask an adult to define it.

Math:
We can identify tens and ones in place value.
We can group a new ten when adding a two-digit and a one-digit number together.
We can add ones, tens and tens and ones (mixed) number sentences.
We can count two-digit numbers and switch to one digit numbers.

**Please make sure your child and you have watched the ShowMe Lesson on Lesson 4.18 by Tuesday evening and filled out the Student Activity Sheet that comes home tomorrow (on Monday). This is your child's homework for the first half of the week. The beauty of a ShowMe lesson is you can pause it, rewind it or replay it at any time to help the concepts sink into your child's understanding. If after working through the lesson together you are noticing some areas of concern with your child, please mark it on their activity sheet or contact me in another way and I will be sure to follow up at school immediately and re-teach where necessary. This will be happening anyway! :)

 ShowMe Lessons can be viewed on iPods, iPads, PCs, Laptops, iPhones, or any other device that allows you to play video. Please contact me if you have trouble viewing these lessons. This is my first attempt at "Flipping" my classroom so that the whole-group lesson and guided practice can be watched at home and viewed with a math-partner (parent) and then I can work with small groups and 1 on 1 with students when they start applying their concepts. If you have any questions about Flipped Classrooms or would like to read more information on it, I would be happy to pass on what I am learning. I am sincerely inspired by how transforming a classroom experience helps your child to learn and apply concepts in more meaningful ways!

We will be taking our Unit 4 Assessment on Wednesday and then either working in enrichment groups or re-teaching Learning Loops based on your child's mastery of the major concepts.

Social Studies:
We are slowly working through our Economics Unit. With snow days and other events happening, we are working to catch up in the next few weeks!

Valentine's Day:
Our party is from 1:00 - 2:15 on Thursday, February 14. If supplying valentines for your child is a hardship, please let me know and I will be happy to discreetly pick some up for them to make and pass out to the class.

Spring Conferences:
Conferences in March are done by request only. If there is a need for you and I to meet about your child's growth or areas of concern, I will send you a conference request slip. If you would like to request a conference with me for your child, please let me know soon, so I can be sure a conference request slip goes home to you. As always, I am happy to conference about your child via phone, face-to-face, g-chat or Skype at any time during the year.

Dates to Remember:
Monday February 18: President's Day: No School!

Have a LOVEly week!

2013 Inquiry Groups - Day 1

Here is a short video capturing our first day in our animal inquiry groups. Everyone was very excited to meet their group members and dive into their research resources!

First, I modeled what researchers sound like and look like when they are wondering and learning about a topic. Next, the learners explored different inquiry tubs full of books and printed articles about animals they may be interested in. Each group will also get a chance to research either on the iPad on a safe-website or on the smartboard.

Then, they wrote down their top 3 choices and I organized the groups based on who would work well together, interest, etc.

Finally, they met in their groups for the first time and explored their resources at their fingertips.

We will track our learning and then taking the information and organize it into an informational book. Our final project will be a creation using a digital tool, such as an iMovie, a podcast, an interactive published book, a song, a play, etc....the possibilities are endless and we will be learning different digital tools to use together!