There is a lot of excitement in first grade as we await the return of Mrs. Johnson!  She will be returning on Wednesday, February 10, 2016.  

Here is what first grade has been working on over the past few weeks:

Reader's Workshop

We have concluded our unit on non-fiction!  The students learned about three main types of non-fiction books: literary non-fiction, biography, and reference.  They are able to to distinguish the differences between them.  Students also learned about the many different text features that are unique to non-fiction books.  The students were exited to see how many they could recall during a game we played.  They all did extremely well!  The first graders also chose non-fiction books to place in their bins to read and then some students were able to share their new found knowledge with their classmates.

This week begins our new unit on poetry.

Writing

The focus of our writing this month was How To.  As a class we created a how to make hot chocolate writing piece.  Several students then went home and used those directions to make hot chocolate at home.  They were very excited to share how good the hot chocolate was.  We also wrote about how to make a snowman.  The students were excited to add some of their own extra steps in order to create some very unique snowmen/snowgirls.  We had princess snowgirls and some karate snowmen too! As a final project, students were asked to choose their own How to topic and create a booklet.  We are in the process of finishing those this week.

This month our writing will focus on social studies and students will be writing about being a good citizen and also about the various US symbols.

Science

We have concluded our science unit on weather.  We were able to perform some interesting experiments with ice.  The students watched several weather videos and used Pebble Go to write about extreme weather conditions during library.  We learned about the differences between dew and frost and also about the three different types of clouds.  If they have not already shared this tidbit with you, ask you child how to make their own cloud.

This month the focus returns to social studies and will be on US citizens, symbols, and a few of the presidents.

Math

The first graders began unit 5 and have been working with base ten blocks to identify the tens and ones place values within numbers.  Students were also introduced to relation symbols.  We compared the weights and lengths of various animals using our animal cards.