Friday, September 16, 2016

Our Week of Learning

Students practiced Words Their Way routines this week.  Words Their Way is a developmental spelling, phonics, and vocabulary program. Word study is an alternative to traditional spelling instruction. It provides students with opportunities to investigate and understand the patterns in words.  They also get to learn through playing fun games like "fast finger" and "trick your partner". 



Students discuss how words are sorted.
 
The InFocus interactive display is perfect for a word sort.  
 





Students are becoming addition experts as they learn about and try various strategies.  Dominoes, counters, and dice were favorites this week.   





We also had a visit from a special guest, Deputy Slaughter.  He visited with students at lunch and came by our classroom in the afternoon. Students were attentive as Deputy Slaughter talked with them about the many duties of our county officers including responding to emergency situations and protecting the community.  


Ahoy! The Bookaneer Book Fair was an awesome adventure Friday morning.  Captain Lovitt instructed the students on proper book fair browsing and purchasing etiquette.  




Students will have an additional time to visit the book fair Monday during school.  If you would like to visit as a family, the book fair will be open Monday and Tuesday after school from 2:40pm until 7:00pm.
Seventh graders came by to share a few favorite books.  They did an excellent job modeling fluent reading.
A guest reader shares a book fair book.

It was a great week to be a first grader!






Friday, September 9, 2016

Creativity is Intelligence Having Fun ~Albert Einstein

Our week was filled with lots of hands on fun!
During math, students did an activity called "Spill the Beans" to grow number sense of larger numbers.  In my family, we EAT beans, so we used manipulatives instead.  Students spilled the manipulatives, used tens frames to represent how many groups of tens were present, and recorded the number.  






Stations were a hit as students reinforced concepts of print, sight words, and sequencing skills.
  

Expressing knowledge of national symbols, students created models out of Play-doh and Model Magic.  
The American Flag



The Bald Eagle


The Statue of Liberty






The Washington Monument


The Liberty Bell





 Our Friday was made complete by a couple of guest readers after lunch.


What a super week!