Terra Nova Standardized Testing

Parents,

This is just a reminder that Terra Nova testing for first and second graders will begin on Monday morning.  First graders will test Monday-Thursday with Friday being a make-up day for those individuals that missed portions of the test.  Second graders will test Monday-Friday.  Please ensure that your child get a good nights rest, eats a healthy breakfast, and gets to school on-time.  The test will begin first thing in the morning.  I have asked for snacks/drink items for an after the test energy booster.  We are currently in need of one more day of snacks/drinks.  If you would be willing to donate a snack item, please bring it in on Monday morning.  There will be NO HOMEWORK during the week of testing. 

Slither, Creep, Crawl....Rain Forest Research

Has your child came home and told you that they are a researcher?  Well...they are!  For the last two weeks the students have been involved in a researchers workshop.  They have been reading nonfiction texts to learn about the rain forest.  We have learned how to tell the difference between important information and interesting details.  In addition, the students learned how to summarize the information they learn.  This week, the students created a poster to share their learning. Next week, the students will be creating a cinquain poem about their rain forest animal.  I'll post pictures of our work next week.   Below is some pictures of the students hard at work on their rain forest posters.

CeLeBRAtiON

CeLEbrATION!!!!  You might ask..."What are you celebrating in your classroom?"  After each of our writing units, we CELEBRATE!!!  Not because we are finished with a unit, but we celebrate the GREAT work each child put forth in writing their pieces.  This unit was particularly fabulous because the students spent time editing their pieces.  YES I SAID EDITING!  First graders can edit and are taught to do so with a writing partner.  With their partner they follow the fix it up strategies on the anchor chart below:

For this particular published piece, the students went through their writing folders and reread their pieces.  They then sorted out their pieces into two piles:  hard to read and easy to read.  They gave me their hardest to read piece and then chose their favorite easy to read piece to publish with their writing partners.  I then created posters for them with their chosen pieces.   We used these posters to have a walking museum.  Students walked through and read each others pieces; both the hard to read and the easy to read pieces.  We then DISCUSSED why each hard to read piece was chosen.  Answers included, the words were squished together, there were no periods, words were misspelled, etc.  We then compared the difference between the two pieces (hard to read and published piece).  Afterwards we had great snacks and drinks.  THANK YOU to those individuals who DONATED our snacks for our celebration.  They were greatly enjoyed by the class.

Chefs for a Day

The students in Mrs. Hogan's class became chefs for a day.  Do you want to know what we baked?  Synonym Rolls!!!!!!  I got this super cute idea from Cara Caroll over at The First Grade Parade.  She has the cutest ideas and I just love integrating these awesome learning activities into my classroom.  This kids love em' too!  To start off our lesson on synonyms I wanted to get an idea of the background knowledge the students had.  I set up chart paper that was divided into four squares.  Each square had a word in it.  The students had to think of another word that had the same meaning as the word in the box.  They recorded their thinking on post-its and placed it on the chart.  We then went over each chart and words and discussed our thinking.  Next, I went to the library to get some books about synonyms.  Our librarian Mrs. Williams is awesome about getting us material that we need.  She had two great books.  The first book I read was "Grasp and Know Pitch and Throw:  What is a Synonym?"  After reading the book, I recorded the synonyms the students heard throughout the story on our synonym anchor chart.  The following day I read another book from the same series called "  Stroll and Walk Babble and Talk More about Synonyms?"  Once again I recorded the synonyms the students heard throughout the reading of the story.  On this day the students also had a recording sheet.  While I was recording our words on our anchor chart the students were recording their words on their synonym recording sheet.  Afterwards, I told our students they were going to become chefs.  They were going to "bake" synonym rolls.  They were to choose a word and then write the synonyms for the word in their cinnamon rolls.  The students wore these cute little chef hats while they were "baking."  It was so much fun!!!! We ended this four day week with some fun Easter activities.  We graphed jellybeans in math and had a fun educational egg hunt.  I'll try to get some pictures of those activities posted soon.  But for now, I have some pictures of our day "baking." 

Cloud 9

Last week the students were on CLOUD 9! We did so many fun cloud activities for our science unit on weather.  We also integrated our cloud theme in writing and spelling.  On Tuesday we practiced writing our spelling words in the clouds (shaving cream).  This activity totally reminded me of my days as a preschool teacher.  The students had so much fun!  One of our read alouds this past week was It Looked Like Spilt Milk.  After reading the book, we completed a writing activity that I got from The First Grade Parade. We made these awesome cloud shapes (probably the coolest thing ever!) and wrote about them.  SUCH FUN!  I love weather and all of these fun activities really get the students excited about their learning too.  Next week, we are going to continue to discuss the four seasons and we will complete a writing activity about Spring.  Below are some of the pictures of the cloud fun we had this past week..

One of the students writing the spelling words in the clouds.

Sometimes it looked like a star......cloud shapes

Sometimes it looked like a snake.....

I hope you all have a fabulous week!  It will be a short one for us.  Only four days of school this week.  After Easter weekend it will be a long haul with no breaks/days off for the remainder of the year.  Can you even believe it is already APRIL????!!!!  Me either!!


Mrs. Hogan