Week 23

With the 100th day of school, the Lunar New Year and the Auction, there was a lot to celebrate this week!

Wednesday (2/18) was the 100th day of school...wow does time fly! We celebrated with a 100 hershey kiss scavenger hunt (we finally found the last two!) and 100 year old portraits. The portraits are hanging in the hall and by the looks of it, the first graders will age well :)

As the first graders are getting more comfortable with their opinion writing and we continue our authors study writing unit, we are going to delve deeper into what tools great authors use (variety of punctuation, interesting words, text features, etc.) and how we can apply those tools to our own writing!

We will be changing up the book clubs and we will continue to focus on building fluency and comprehension strategies. There are some pretty adorable pictures of some super hero readers below!

Principal Truong visited Room 112 to pass out lucky Lunar New Year envelopes and explain some of the holiday traditions. We also ended our week with a Lunar New Year celebration! A HUGE thank you to the Bamontes for coming in and teaching us more about the Lunar New Year. The students got to make their very own red lanterns to signify luck and wishes for a bright future. Happy new year!

Thank you to all of the parent super heroes who helped make the Stephenson Auction such a success! I can't explain how much I appreciate your constant support and the Auction was a true reminder of the amazing community we have at Stephenson. What a fun night!

Here are some pictures from the week...

Week 22

Another exciting week in Room 112...

In math we started our penguin unit and we are beginning to transform room 112 into our Antarctic penguin study lab! The students have been getting their math passports ready for our trip and we will be studying penguins while also learning about measurement. It is going to be a great journey!

In honor of Presidents day and Abe Lincoln's birthday last week, we added our 16th president to our biography journals. The first graders are continuing to make great connections with all of the important people we have learned about!

A huge thank you to Cari Waters (Megan's mom) for planning the fantastic Friendship party and for all of the parents who helped out! It was a day filled with lots of love and sweets :)

Reminders:

2/18 -- Late arrival @ 10am
2/20 -- Spirit day - Dress up as a Super Hero
2/21 -- Stephenson Foundation Auction @ 5:30

Some photos from the week...

Week 21

Some highlights from the week in Room 112...

In math this week we really reinforced our understanding of fact families with making our fact family triangles and playing a game called "missing addends." This is a game you can play at home! There there are 2 "card keepers" who each have a card with a number on it (1-10), but they do not see their own number card. It is the audience's job to figure out the sum of the 2 cards and tell the card keepers. Once they know the sum, the card keepers try to figure out what number is on their card based on the number on the other card. The first graders were really excited about figuring out the missing addends!

This week I introduced a writing process poster to help students understand and work through the writing process (graphic organizer, journal, checklist, adult check). Students will move their name on the poster as they move through each step in the writing process. I am excited to see the first graders taking pride in their writing!

We learned about Cesar Chavez and Rosa Parks this week and added them to our biography journals!

Book clubs are back! We had to take a break while I completed the individual reading assessments with each student and I am really excited about all of the progress the first graders have made. As we continue to build reading fluency, our flexible book clubs will be changing. 

Reminders:

2/13 -- Spirit Day: Dress up as a fictional hero

2/13 -- Friendship Party @ 10 - 11

Here are some photos from the week...