100th Day Celebration

We are officially 100 days smarter! Today we celebrated the BIG event with some special math centers! Check out the highlights of our morning...

Race to 100

Children rolled  a pair of dice. They determined the sum and colored that many spaces on their 100s board.

100 Steps

Children predicted how far they'd get with 100 first grade steps, 100 skips, and 100 heel to toe steps. 

100 Things We've Learned

An extensive list of the many things we've learned from day 1. Everything from morning meeting routines to gym games ( and all of the learning in between!)

100 Cup Structure

This center was definitely a favorite! Children worked in teams to create a structure using 100 (or in 1 special case 200) cups. They got super creative with this one!

What a super fun day! Ask your child which center they liked best. And of course a BIG thank you to our parent volunteers who helped run all if our special 100 day centers!! We have 80 more days of fun and learning ahead of us!!

What's in a Place? And Spread the Valentine Cheer

For the past couple of weeks our mathematical focus has been on place value. Understanding place value is HUGE! First graders need to be able to understand that the two digits of a 2-digit number represent tens and ones. They need to be able to compare 2 digit numbers using greater than, less than, and equal symbols. And they need to be able to add within 100, including adding a 2-digit number with a 1 digit number (56+5), and adding a two-digit number and a multiple of 10 (56+10). Like I said....HUGE! 
The great thing about place value though is that it is very hands on. This makes learning tangible and concrete. We use base ten blocks, unifix cubes, and mats to build and represent 2 digit numbers. We model numbers using drawings of our representations. We use multiple "tens frame" mats to show growing numbers. Place Value is also embedded in our daily calendar as we count the days of school. Read on to learn a bit more about how we're learning what's in a place  (of a digit that is)!


Anchors Away!
I like to anchor learning with an anchor chart. We revisit this chart at the start of almost every lesson. By doing this I am reinforcing important vocabulary and linking old and new learning.

GAMES!GAMES!GAMES!
It's no secret that children learn best while having fun. Most of our hands on practice involves games with partners. Here is a place value favorite!

Math partners are playing base ten concentration. They flip over cards to find a match.
They are matching a 2 digit number with it's model (see model form in the anchor chart)

Here's our newest bulletin board. Children used cut out tens and ones to
build the first letter of their name. Then they added they're ones and tens.

Add caption

Calendar Link

Each day we count the days of school. Here a first grader is adding "1." Then he'll
write the total in expanded form (90+5=95)

Valentine's Celebration!
Thank you (once again!) to our room parents for a great Valentine party. The kids had a blast!

Have a wonderful vacation!!!

What We Learned About Dr. KIng

Despite our short(er) week we packed in a lot of learning about Dr. Martin Luther King. We started last week by reading a few of my favorite picture books about MLK. Each author wrote about MLK in a unique way and we learned important information about Martin's childhood and his teachings. One of our favorite books was written by Doreen Rappaport and is called Martin's Big Words. In this book we learned all about Martin's big dreams of peace, equal rights, and love.

A second favorite book of ours was written by Martin's big sister, Christine King and is called My Brother Martin. Christine shared lots of experiences from their childhood and we learned that Martin loved school, liked playing with his friends, and like pulling pranks!

Here are a few of the ways we demonstrated our learning:

Once we read all of our books and had some great class discussions we made a web to demonstrate some of the big ideas we wanted to hold onto.

At the art center we made mini Martin Luther Kings. Then during writing time we talked about Martin's big dreams and then shared some of our own dreams in writing.

We were inspired by Martin's words. I love that this is the first thing you see when you walk into our classroom!

The Tale Of The Gingerbread Twins

I'm so excited to share this blog post with all of you! Over the last few weeks we have been spending time reading various versions of the gingerbread story. The characters we read about ranged from a gingerbread baby to a gingerbread cowboy and the settings spanned a forest in winter, the wild wild west, a busy city and many more.
We were so inspired by these stories that we joined a Gingerbread Family Collaborative with the help of our librarian, Mrs. Groden. We created our own version of the gingerbread story using an IPAD app called Little Bird Tales to share via Skype! Our original plan was to connect with another classroom in Pennsylvania. However since that did not pan out Dr. Quigley came to the rescue! We were able to Skype with him and share our story!

Getting ready for the Skype session...children sat with their partners
 and read over their pages

Connecting with Dr. Quigley! Each pair stood in front of the IPAD
and read aloud their page.

Listening while each pair reads to Dr. Quigley. Our Skype session took
place in the library.

The proud authors!

Now you can see the story we created by clicking on the "Little Bird Tale" below. We hope you enjoy it!!

• Click to view my tale.
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