Week of December 6 – 10, 2010

We had a fun and busy week! Due to the cold weather, we had several indoor recesses but used our time to continue to explore the geoblocks that are “very cool” to build with and play with. Check out some of the week’s highlights below:

Where in the World?

Our “Exploring the World” social studies unit is well under way. This week we worked with a partner to make a map of the classroom. We added symbols to our maps for things that are in our classroom as well as used a compass rose to orient ourselves. We are learning the cardinal directions as well as how to read map legends.

Math in 3-D

We finished up our geometry study with 3-dimensional shapes. We learned their names, explored the faces on the shapes, built with them and made them with paper. We also focused on the differences between triangles and quadrilaterals. Another fun activity was copying each other's “cube thing.” We took turns making an object using ten cubes and our partner copied what we made. It sounds a lot easier that it actually is!

We Love to Sing!

We love to sing! Singing has so many benefits. Besides being fun and keeping us moving, the songs in the classroom are also teaching tools. Research shows that learning things like the continents, or the capitals of states is easiest if it is in rhyme or song form. Singing while reading also builds sight word recognition and fluency skills. Each week or so we add a song we have been singing to “Poetry and Song” folder. We re-read the folder with a buddy or by ourselves, highlight sight words and find rhyming words. As a bonus, we will have a collection of all the poems and songs that we learned in First Grade at the end of the year!

Week of November 29 - Dcember 3, 2010

It was great to see everyone again after Thanksgiving Break! In Reading Workshop we used the read aloud “My Father’s Dragon” to talk about story structure, especially the setting and characters, in our reading groups. We used a rubric to help make our writing more readable for our “Writing for Readers” unit. In math we continued our study of geometry and we started our new social studies unit, “Explore the World.”

Explore the World

In our “Explore the World” social studies unit, we compared and contrasted maps and globes. We also talked about the compass rose on a map and map legends. Looking at compasses was a great hit and we figured out which direction each of the walls of the classroom face.

Geometry is Fun!

We continued our exploration of geometric shapes this week using Power Polygons and Geoboards. We played the game “What’s my rule?” to focus on characteristics of the shapes. Then we concentrated on triangles and what makes a triangle. The biggest hit was making triangles on geoboards! The students worked together to make as many triangles as possible by connecting their geoboards. They go up to twenty-nine boards and then we ran out of rubber bands. They also discovered that it takes the same amount of time to make shapes on a geoboard as it does to take them off.

Mystery Reader

Quint’s dad, Tom Cunningham, was our Mystery Reader this week. He read some of his and Quint’s favorite stories. It’s always so exciting to see who the Mystery Reader is each week! Wonder who it will be this week . . . ?