Reading Time

A few pictures of our reading time and some of the students working on iPads.  The students really enjoy our "Reading Rocks" time and being able to have free reading time around the room. 

Parachutes!!!

Thursday we made parachute in class and on Friday we headed out to the playground to see if we could figure out how parachutes work.  The students did a wonderful job following the directions to make the parachutes and we had a great time experimenting to see which parachutes would keep our "guys" (aka paperclips) safe when landing. 

We discovered that air is all around the parachutes, not just under it.  We also learned that air resistance slows the parachute down to keep the "guys" safe when landing. 

Exploring Air

Today we began our Air and Weather Science kit. We had a wonderful time exploring how air moves, having Styrofoam ball races, and a contest to see who could keep a feather in the air the longest. We had a great time learning that air is all around us, it is invisible but we can see what happens when it moves, and it takes up space. 

Our Clip Chart

This is the clip chart that I used last year with my class and I LOVE the way the students responded to it. I will continue to use it this year.  With the clip chart students are rewarded for good behavior and move clip up. When bad choices are made the clip is moved down.  I have made it my rule that once students get to orange or red they are not allowed to move up. This rule came about from my previous experience with giving students a chance to move back to super star if behavior improved but most of my students who moved to red quickly figured out how to play "move my clip up and down the red light" game.  Click this link for an ebook about the clip chart. I have tweaked it to work for my room and am loving the results.  Students who get on OUTSTANDING get a special shiny star to put on their good behavior chart (any student on or above ready to learn gets a sticker but OUTSTANDING get special stickers).  When a student gets 5 star stickers then he/she is able to choose free computer or free iPad time and they also get their picture on the blog.

Pictures from our first week

These are some pictures of my wonderful first graders during math station time.

                                           Power Towers :)

                                                     Hundred Boards
          

                                             Geoblocks          
     

August 15-19

Here is what we are doing this week in our class
Reading: We will finish our review of letter names and learning the routines for stations.  We will also read Famous Seaweed Soup and discuss the characters, setting, and events in this story.
Math: We will begin new games-Collect 20 Together, Staircases, Mystery Boxes, Compare Dots. 
Social Science: We will continue to learn about our school community and about Oxford.

First Week of School

We had a wonderful first week of first grade! We were busy learning routines, procedures, rules and getting to know each other as well as our classroom.  I am amazed by how everyone is already working together and having a great time.  I am looking forward to posting to our new class blog weekly and sharing pictures of what we are doing.