Today was a busy day at Quinnipiac! All the staff and students came in with decorated hats of their favorite book characters. The staff at Quinnipiac all got really into it and fully dressed up as characters from their favorite books. All the hats in our classroom looked excellent! We also congratulated J'Arie on being our Catch of the Month for honesty! Many of the students in the class would agree that he is always very truthful. Great job J'Arie and keep up the good work!
Today was our annual Walk-a-thon! We walked, marched, and danced around the fields a few times and were led by the Betsy Ross Marching Band. They were fantastic! In math, we have been learning all about different strategies for addition. Following the lessons in class we have been going to math centers to help reinforce our learning. Our math centers include, buddy games, using manipulatives with the number bond machines, and working on our fact fluency, just to name a few. We have so much fun applying our learning in different ways! We began learning about subtraction but it's important to continuously be practicing these skills!
This week we paired up to plant our very own cups of seeds! We planted all different types: pumpkin, sunflower, etc. We can't wait to see what happens as they grow. We learned in class that all plants need light, water, soil, and air! We will be sure to keep our eyes on our plants each day to see how they grow. After we picked pumpkins and apples at the orchard we brought them back to the classroom to investigate. We were using adjectives to describe them, measuring them, weighing them, testing to see if they floated or sunk, and counting how many seeds. We couldn't believe that each of them floated and had seeds inside! We realized that since it have seeds in the middle, thats how the last stage of the life cycle connects back to the first (from fruit to seed)! It was hard work getting to the center of our apples because they were so big, but we did it!
The final weeks of our first STEM unit were spent learning about the life cycles of plants, pumpkins, and apples. So we decided to visit a farm to pick pumpkins and apples in order to see how the life cycle ends. We then took our pickings back to the room to investigate them and learn more about how it goes from being a fruit back to a seed. We learned so much and enjoyed the beautiful weather! Today was the first day some of us got a chance to use the iPad in the classroom. There are a bunch of great apps we can use to help us during reading, math, & phonics. Today we used it to practice sight words!
Dr. Cohen came to visit the first grade students at Quinnipiac today. He taught us all about how he takes care of pets. He brought some of the tools he uses, like a stethoscope and otoscope, and even showed us a bunch of x-rays! We were able to see healthy x-rays and an x-ray of a dog that swallowed a ball. We learned a lot about how even though people want a pet that once they have a pet, they need to take it to the veterinarian just like we visit the doctor! Thank you Dr. Cohen for coming to visit and teaching us a lot about your career! Today we learned a new addition strategy. We learned how to use a number line to add numbers. After reading the addition sentence, you start on the first number then jump the number of spaces that the next number tells you. The answer is the number you land on. Other strategies we have learned so far are counting on, using a ten frame, and drawing a picture. We learn the strategy as a whole class but then can choose the strategy that works best for each of us when doing our work independently.
We have been learning about the differences between real reading & fake reading by creating a reading salad. Each time we read the words in our book we would put in a red card (some tomatoes) which represented the text. Each time we did thinking while reading we put in a green card (the lettuce). We found that by the end our salad had more thinking cards than text cards. By thinking while reading it helps to make sure that we are understanding whats going on in the story and really reading. So, we put our thoughts to work and read a story about seahorses making sure to remember to think! We noticed a lot that was going on in the book. We will be sure to continue thinking while reading to help us understand what we read! |
AuthorsThe teachers & students in room 117! Archives
December 2014
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