All about ART!

This week was full of art, art, art! We got to have art with Todd almost every day this week. Students learned about acclaimed artists, such as Romare Bearden. They also experimented with collage (Bearden's main medium) and pop art. Students chose a picture of a cow (steer) or a chicken to copy. They filled the inside with one pattern, and the outside with another. The results were so much fun to see, and the kids loved it.

Another highlight this week was taking the last week or so before Winter Break to focus on the idea of place value. Students learned about the hundreds, tens, and ones places and their values in the numbers we see in math. They got to experiment and explore place value using base ten blocks, which was helpful for all.

We look forward to a week full of more reading, math, and especially winter art projects in hopes that more snow will soon come our way! See you next time!

Pajama Day (and other things)!

This week, we have started our Writing "How To" unit, where students write and illustrate about different things they know how to do. We will continue this until Winter Break. We got a good start this week! We also finished another math unit on addition, and will begin a week of learning about place value next week. In health, we will concentrate on choosing a healthy diet of fruits, veggies, protein and grains. Students will go "shopping" for just the right foods for their own meal. I can't wait to see what they will come up with.

Next week, we will to focus a lot on the Community aspect of our classroom, and how that is a part of our school's P.E.A.C.E. project. We will also start up our intervention reading groups again, and we will experience Art with Todd from Monday to Friday. Todd is Parkview's incredible art teacher.













In sum, we had a wonderful week, learned new things, and can't wait to start our last full week before winter break. It will be jam-packed with new learning and fun! Until then, here are a few snapshots of our Friday Fun time outside (multi-grade) and pajama day!

Once Upon a Time...

This week was full of magic and fairy tales! We finished up our fairy tales in both the morning reading class, as well as in our writing class in the afternoon. We read aloud our fairy tales and shared them with our 5th grade book buddies on Tuesday.

We also had a blast at our Fairy Tale Ball! The rest of the school lined the hallways as we (all first and second grade classes) paraded through the hallways of Parkview. Both the first and second graders loved it! The rest of the school also enjoyed seeing all our fairy tale costumes, as it brought back memories of their own time experiencing the Fairy Tale Ball. After the parade, the first graders got to listen to fairy tale stories, play games, and decorate crowns. Thank you to all the parents who came in and helped and supported the students--we loved welcoming you to our community and seeing you take part in all the fun! At the end of the morning, we participated in our second PEACE assembly of the year. Our first graders do an incredible job of serving their community by cleaning their room and making things clean and welcoming for all members of our school! Here are some pictures of all the students who made it to the Fairy Tale Ball by Morning Meeting time (2 students not pictured). Enjoy the long weekend!

 And, a silly picture, of course:

Walking in a Fairy Tale Land...

Hear ye, hear ye:

It is to be stated that all maidens and gentlemen from across the kingdom of Parkview First and Second Grades are invited to take part in a Royal Fairy Tale Ball, this coming Wednesday, the 25th of November in the year of 2015. Attendees are asked to wear costumes that represent their favorite fairy tale character or creature. They will parade through the hallways of Parkview whilst the rest of the kingdom looks on. Each maiden and gentleman will have the opportunity to participate in various events of sport (game room), illustrate their artistic finesse (arts and crafts) and listen to a bard tell tales (story room). It promises to be the most auspicious of occasions, marking the end of a wonderful trimester of learning and much knowledge gained across the kingdom.

With great pomp and ceremony,
Master of Ceremonies (Maryn)

Salute to our Veterans

What an incredible week! We welcomed guest teachers for Art Adventure this Monday morning, and will be privileged to work with them for two more sessions this fall--next Monday and the following Monday. Our class made a class honor quilt based on Native American artwork that we saw and learned about. Here are how ours turned out; each one unique and special, just like the students who made them!

Another obvious highlight this week was our class trip to see The Wizard of Oz production at the Children's Theater. Some of our favorite parts were the tornado, the melting of the Wicked witch of the West, and Toto the dog's appearance in the play.

Finally, this week we paid tribute to the men and women who have bravely served our country in the past and present in the United States Armed Forces. The students wrote a short note to our country's heroes, telling them why they are grateful to them. Some reasons were because our heroes are kind, brave, and they fight for our freedoms and keep the bad guys from ruling over us (direct quotes). I hope you enjoy these as much as I enjoyed making the soldiers with the students! They did a phenomenal job! 

Cleaning up....

What a fun, fantastic Friday we had! A great end to the week. We've worked on Fairy Tales, both in the morning reading group class, as well as in our afternoon writing sessions. This week, we brainstormed different characters for our fairy tales, and the setting in which they'll find themselves. We know that fairy tales always have a "good" character, AND an "evil" character. I loved seeing all the creativity in these!

We also learned an important lesson about cleaning, and how it's a positive thing for our community and community workers. Our custodian was thrilled with how well these kids worked--he was surprised and wonderfully pleased with their hard work. We know that it's part of our responsibility to keep our classroom--where we learn and play--clean and sparkling! The most important thing we learned of all, though, was that cleaning and working together towards a common goal sure is a lot of FUN! Looking forward to next week, filled with art adventure, and our field trip to see the Wizard of Oz at the Children's Museum. Until then!

End of Octobrrrrrrr!

Brr! What a cold end to our fun week. It was great to see everyone at conferences! I'm so proud of how the students are working and learning and growing together!

This week, we finished our very first writing pieces, and got to share them with each other and CELEBRATE our amazing work (all to the sound of the classic song, "Celebration")! I included a few examples of the students' work.

We also are really starting to get down the doubles rap--here it is, for your viewing enjoyment! I hope you have a safe and fun weekend, wherever you'll be!

It's a Doubles "Rap"

We're back in the groove after a long weekend! This week, students tackled doubles facts in math, and doubles + 1. They learned a rap to help them cement in their math facts--ask them to rap for you this weekend if you have time! Hopefully, after we really get the moves down, I can get up a video for your viewing enjoyment. Most of the kids really got into it, and it helps with the memorizing. 

In reading, we are plowing ahead with read-to-self time. We have almost reached 10 minutes of totally quiet read-to-self time. The students who have shown me they can keep a self-controlled body and be engaged while reading the entire time will get to choose their spot for read-to-self next week. They are all looking forward to it!

In other news, CLIMB Theater came in and talked about keeping our self-control. They taught the kids a cheer called the "expert cheer", and a special saying to remember our self-control. All the students are now experts in self-control, which they displayed later on Thursday, when the author of the Ivy&Bean series, Annie Barrows, came to visit. We had a lot of fun! 

Here are some highlights of the week; until next time!

Things are FALLing into Place

Happy October!

Autumn is one of my favorite times of the year, and we've been having fun incorporating FALL things into our lessons last week and this week. This week, we learned about warm and cool colors on the color wheel and then spent time tracing leaf outlines and using our fabulous watercoloring skills to fill in the leaf outlines with WARM colors. Here was the outcome:

In math this week, we learned about "put-together" and "take-apart" problems on our "part-part-whole" mats. Students learned a song about how "part" is also known as an "addend", and "whole" is also known as the "sum" in math problems. We started by using our connecting cubes and part-part-whole mats to solve problems, and eventually transitioned to creating math sentences (also known as equations). The students made huge progress this week. If you eat pizza with them at all this weekend, I encourage you to ask them about the pizza problems we did in math this week. They loved it!

Here are a couple of our hard-at-work mathematicians!


MEA and Fall Conferences are approaching. I hope you were able to sign up for conferences and will enjoy the fall break next Thursday and Friday! Until then!

PEACE

We are steadily getting into our routines this week! We began the math curriculum, learned the rest of our Daily 5 (Read to Self, Read to Someone, Work with Words, Listen to Reading and Meet with the Teacher) stations this week. We got to do a really cool science experiment where we felt different "autumn" objects in buckets without looking inside. Then the students talked about what they felt and how good scientists observe with ALL five senses. We wrote three sentences about what we felt in the buckets--some things were slimey, some were rough, some were bumpy, and some were slippery. If you want to hear more, ask your student!

Another big focus this week was on our school-wide theme of P.E.A.C.E. PEACE is an acronym for "P-Peace, E-Equity, A-Action, C-Community, E-Environment". September 21st was International Peace Day, so we talked about what it means to create peace in our environment, our school, and our classroom. The students decorated beautiful pinwheels for peace to help blow our peace around the world! They were very excited about their creations:

We celebrated with a school-wide assembly on Friday, where our Principal Kristen even got pied in the face! The kids loved it, and we learned about our school-wide PEACE theme for this year. Check out the website for more information! See you next week!

Full First Week!

Happy first FULL week of school! This week, we settled more into our school routines. We learned about classroom jobs, and continued to build our community as a safe, caring environment. The first graders came up with a set of classroom rules and consequences so that our classroom is welcoming and safe for all learners. We also highlighted that our differences make us special! We learned this from the book, Elmer, about an elephant who isn't grey like other elephants, but is patchwork instead. The first graders then each made their own elephant that was different. Below are only a few of our talented artists' final results.

In addition, we also started some of our math that we'll be working on this year. The students spent a day exploring different ways to practice writing numbers at various stations. They also worked on patterns using pattern and shape blocks. We're off to a great start, building up to a successful year!

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to Elementary Express—a place where we as a first grade class will be EXPRESSing our learning, our ideas, and our successes! The purpose of this blog is to keep you, the parents and guardians, informed and able to see what goes on in our classroom every week. I plan on intermittently posting pictures and videos of hands-on learning experiences, as well as wonderful examples of your student's work! Feel free to comment and add your input as updates come along. I hope you enjoy! 

EXPRESSions of Learning

As we get started this year, I will soon get to know your students better. So, I thought I'd give you the opportunity to learn more about myself as a person and educator of your student! My name is Maryn Feyereisen, and as a recent graduate from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, I have a fresh memory of the process of learning. My personal view as an educator is that education is about instilling a love of learning in students, and giving students plenty of hands-on opportunities to practice the process of learning. Because that's what learning is--it is not always about the product that we get in the end, but it is more about the process and the journey of reaching the end goal.

Since I value the process of learning and have a passion for learning myself, I hope to discover what your student's passions and talents are. Hopefully, as these gifts surface, we can all celebrate and express our individuality together as a classroom community! I am excited to start this year and to watch how your students grow and develop in first grade to create a solid foundation for learning in the future!