December Spotlight

The weeks are so busy and packed with great tidbits of learning that it's often hard to pick just a few things to highlight. This post I want to give you a sense of some of the bigger concepts we've been working on throughout the month of December!


Science
We have started a new science unit on solids and liquids. This a very hands on approach to learning about the properties of solids. We began by observing 2 solids; a plastic spoon and a metal ball. Children compared and contrasted the objects in small groups. We then went on to explore a whole bag of solids and sort them by properties including shape, color, and size.

                                   

Writing
We have wrapped up our small unit stories! We celebrated our work and created a special space in our classroom to showcase our pieces. I hope you enjoyed the take home stories that came home last week! Our next unit will be teaching books (informational writing!)

 

Math
We continue to grow our bank of addition and subtraction strategies to help us be more efficient with our processes. The last few weeks the focus has shifted to making 10 strategies, thinking about related facts, and using addition to help solve subtraction problems. We also have a number of tools we use to help show our thinking. Some of these include double tens frames, Part Part Whole mats, and number lines. This week are specifically learning how to use our Part Part Whole mat as a tool for finding the missing part of both subtraction and addition equations.

Reading 
 In the meanwhile we are taking time before break to to do some writing connected to the Gingerbread Stories we have been reading! Writing for reading is a great way to strengthen comprehension skills and share responses to books we've read. We worked as a class to compare the many versions of the Gingerbread stories we've read over the last 2 weeks. We focused on major events, key details, and story structure. The children also worked on a collaborative project to retell the beginning, middle, and end of the story The Gingerbread Bear.

I hope you found this peak into our learning helpful and informative! Have a wonderful holiday and a Happy New Year!

Spotlight on October

And just like that it is Halloween! Another month has practically flown by. We have done so much in these last few weeks. Read on for some highlights!


Writer's Workshop
We are working on strategies to bring our stories to life for our readers! We have learned, practiced, and model unfreezing our characters to make them move and talk. We've learned about quotation marks and how dialogue can help tell a story. We have watched how authors take a small moment and tell it in itsy bitsy steps. We have learned how adding in our feelings and thoughts can add details for our reader. We even used drama to act out our stories with our writing partners!

Acting out our stories.....

                                                 


Collaborating with partners....

   

Close Reading
Close reading refers to the behavior of reading a text thoughtfully, making meaning as you go, stopping to ask questions, understanding explicit features, and inferring along the way. We spend a lot of time modeling close reading so that children can begin to demonstrate this behavior more independently. This week we focused on 2 high interest stories to help us gain experience with close reading. The first was I am Going by Mo Willems. The second book was Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet by Diane deGroat. Children demonstrated their understanding in their reading journals and within small groups.

Drawing pictures of the important parts of the text...




Illustrating key features....

 

               

 






Doubles and Near Doubles

We are continuing to build smart strategies for fluently adding and subtracting. This week we worked on doubles and near doubles. Children used manipulatives to build double facts and then recorded matching equations. We worked in small groups to build doubles again, but this time we added 1 or 2 cubes to show doubles plus 1 and doubles plus 2. We learned that knowing a double fact can help you solve a near double fact.

Building Double Towers.....

Playing games with doubles....

Thanks so much for reading about some of the learning happening in Room 27! Check back again soon! Don't forget we have our Halloween parade on Monday, October 31st at 9:30. Hope to see you there!

September Spotlight

Hello and happy fall! I'm so happy to say that we are settling into some of our long term routines, gaining independence, and growing stronger as a community. The children seem happy, eager to learn, and excited about their successes thus far!

We continue to work hard on establishing expected behavior during our independent working times such as Daily 5 centers, writer's workshop, and math workshop. We have finally learned all 5 of our Daily 5 centers and begun using some of the Daily 5 literacy language to model our math workshop time around. This allows me to take small groups of children and work on specific skills and strategies both in math and reading!

Daily 5
We are starting to put the pieces together and children seem to be building stamina and good work habits daily! The last week we have focused on "Working on Words" and "Listen to Reading" as our final 2 Daily 5 centers. During "Working on Words" children build words that either follow a phonics principle or words on our word wall called "trick words." Children have a lot of choice as to how they want to practice their words including stamping, rainbow writing, wikki sticks, whiteboards, or magnet letters. The choices change often.


Here are some working with words centers in action:

Math Workshop
We are continuing to work on problem solving skills by reading and retelling the problem, sharing strategies as a group, and using numbers, pictures, and words to show our thinking. Many children continue to be at the "concrete" stage of math thinking using manipulatives and pictures to solve problems. We are also solidifying accurate counting strategies such as touch and slide, cross off, and double checking. Most recently children have begun working on "Put together" problems with "both addends unknown."

For example; Grandma has 5 flowers. Some are pink and some are yellow. How many of each could she have? How many pink? How many yellow?"

Here some examples of what this kind of problem solving looks like in their math journals.....

Social Studies
We are also taking time to learn about Johnny Appleseed! We have read several stories and compared the information in each. We've learned that although Johnny Appleseed was a real person some of the stories that we hear about him are exaggerated. We also talked about character traits that would describe Johnny Appleseed and evidence from the stories that we read to support our thinking.

Here are 2 of the books we read:

Hope you found this information helpful!! Check back again soon! Have a wonderful long weekend!

Start of the Year

What a great start to the new year! We have already accomplished so much in a short time! We've learned important arrival and dismissal routines, created a set of class rules, and got to know a bit about our class!

While we begin to establish our classroom community we are also getting a start on some of the important building blocks of our day. We have begun building our independent reading stamina during our "read to self" time. During writer's workshop we have gotten started by planning out our thoughts and thinking about the mechanics of a complete sentence. In math we have played games, shared counting strategies, and explored some of the tools we'll be using throughout the year.

Here is a glimpse of what all of this great learning looks like in the classroom!


Read to Self

We also learned how good reader's choose "good fit" books. Good fit books are the books we fill our book boxes with weekly. Reader's choose books by determining a purpose for reading, choosing topics that interest them, making sure they comprehend what they are reading, and making sure they know how to read most of the words!

Writer's Workshop
As we start writer's workshop the first lessons revolve around how to think of a topic, how to plan first, next, then, and finally how to begin to write independently. The class was so excited to get started with their new writer's folder. This first unit is called small moment (narrative) stories and they were buzzing with topics already!!

Math
To start the year off we have spent a lot of time talking about accurate counting strategies and put them to use during some of our math learning centers. We have also begin to share strategies for solving word problems and begun listing them on an anchor chart. This year children will use their math journal to record their work with problem solving. We also took some time this week to get to use some of the math tools we will work with throughout the year.

I hope enjoyed learning about our first few days of school! I look forward to meeting many of you this Thursday (15th) at PIN!

Welcome Back 2016

Welcome to the start of a wonderful school year! I hope you have had an amazing summer filled with family and fun. I can't wait to hear about some of your adventures! This summer was filled with LOTS of pool days, beach days, and a trip to Nantucket for us!

This year we are going to have so much fun learning and growing together. I'm so excited to have you all in my class. I can already tell it's going to be an awesome year! The first few weeks of school we will spend time getting to know each other and coming together as a classroom community. It is so important that we all feel safe, comfortable, and happy so we can do our best learning! To get us started I wanted to let you know a bit about me. I wonder if we have anything in common....

Family: I am a mom of 2 very active boys! Ryan is 7 and going into 2nd grade and Cam is 3. You will hear a lot about them this year!

Pets: We have 1 chocolate lab named Cooper. He is 9! He loves taking walks and eating (sometimes right off the table!)

Hobbies: I love reading, traveling, cooking, and writing!

Sports: We are a crazy hockey loving family!! Ryan has been playing for a few years and we love       traveling to different rinks cheering him on! Cam will be learning to skate this year! We also enjoy cheering on local sports teams!

At a hockey tournament at UConn 

Meeting the Revs!

I hope you enjoyed learning a little about me. I can't wait to hear if we have anything in common and learn all about you, your family, and your favorite things!

Enjoy the last few days of summer vacation and I can't wait to greet you all on the first day of first grade!

End of the Year Post

It is so hard to believe that we are just 1 week away from the last day of school. It has been an amazing year! These children have grown in countless ways and I feel privileged to have been a part of it. I could not be more proud of a group of First Graders than I am of these children! I see lots of bright things in each of their futures.

The last couple of weeks are always crazed! I wanted to capture some of the moments at our Open House as a way of documenting how hard each child has worked this year and how proud they are of their accomplishments. I tried to get most families, and I apologize if I somehow missed yours. I'll be back at it with my camera at our picnic on Friday :)

Open House Festivities

American Symbols Project
This project was by far one of the highlights of the year! The children researched, collaborated, problem solved, and blew me away with their creativity. It just goes to prove that more of this kind of hands on learning that encourages choice should be an integral part of all classrooms. 

Children began by researching the symbols using books, websites, and a phenomenal online database called Pebblego that was introduced to us by our librarian, Mrs. Groden. They then chose 1 symbol that they wanted to learn more about. After some practice with note taking we came together as a group to decide how we could represent our learning. We came up with what we ended up calling "Studio Centers." Children chose between building, project, art and drama, and technology. Once they had an idea they filled out planning sheets and then the fun really began!

Here's a behind the scenes peak.....

They were BEYOND excited to share their finished projects with you!

Bald Eagle Group

Statue of Liberty Group

The White House Group

American Flag Group

I hope you enjoyed our End of the Year blog post and learned a little bit about how our Symbol projects came together. Thank you for sharing your child with me this year and supporting our classroom in countless ways! This has been an amazing year with an exceptional group of children. I will miss them next year...but I know they are ALL ready for 2nd grade!

Mrs. Elrick's Class 2016

Hope to see many of you at our picnic this Friday, (June, 17th), but in case I don't have a wonderful summer and don't hesitate to visit!!