Have a Great Summer!

Wow! The end of another school year! These students have grown SO much, and every parent/guardian/caregiver should be extremely proud of your student. Each of them has been a wonderful part of our classroom community this year! We have grown in sharing, caring for one another, and helping each other. This last week, we celebrated our works of writing (typed on the computer!), spent time reading, and drawing shapes outside with sidewalk chalk. These students have learned so much this year, and I'm excited to work with all of them and all of you next year. Have a great summer, everyone!

Beginning to Reflect

It is so hard to believe that we only have ONE more week of school left in the 2015-2016 school year! I have been SO privileged to work with each and every student in this class, both in ups and downs, throughout this year. They are an energetic, caring, cooperative group, and the growth they have shown is amazing. I am infinitely proud of them, and they should be proud of themselves, too! Their desire and excitement to learn and apply our concepts to the real-world is inspiring! Our butterflies were released into the wild last week, but these students keep coming to show me new caterpillars that they find, and compare those caterpillars to the butterflies we hatched. They will say things like, "Look, Maryn! This is in the larvae stage!" Yes, they are (don't worry--we always put the caterpillars back outside into their natural habitat, as much as we may want to keep them and see them hatch :) !

In our reading groups, I see students eager to help one another out. When we get stuck on a particularly difficult word, I will say to a student, "Would you like coaching, or time?" If the student says "time", we give them more time to figure it out on their own. If they say, "coaching", then the other students will offer suggestions of different "Fix-It Felix" reading strategies they know. Seeing the students so willing to help each other out and seeing them growing so much in their independence of learning is such a privilege! On that note, here are some highlights from our week:

Final Graphing activities!

Daily 5; helping each other with a hard word!

Field Day!

It is no contest--the highlight of this week for the students was FIELD DAY! We had such a fun and successful Field Day, thanks especially to all of the parents and family who came to have lunch with their child and to those who helped out with the events. On the academics side, we are doing lots of interactive learning. We started our final reading unit this week, did lots of graphing and data gathering, and got to make shapes in groups and find things of different shapes around the room. We also said good-bye to our butterflies, as the last one emerged from its cocoon today (Thursday). Hoping everyone has a restful and fun four-day weekend! I will let these Field Day pictures speak for themselves:

Bakery Fun!

What a beautiful week! This week was filled with so many wonderful learning experiences! Our caterpillars are ALL in their chrysalises now, and we eagerly await their arrival as butterflies. In our insect unit, students are making connections in nature--we found some caterpillars and inchworms on the playground, and were able to catch a couple of pictures.

Mural we made to celebrate our year with the fifth
grade book buddies!

It was one of our last meetings with our fifth grade book buddies! We created an amazing mural to put by the gym.

We wrapped up our money unit with a fun bakery on Friday afternoon. Each student was given $0.35, and they chose how to spend it on a cookie, frosting, and three different kinds of toppings. The kids had lots of fun, and had the chance for real-world experience in counting out coins and bringing in coins to trade in (i.e. a dime for one nickel and five pennies).

Finally, the students got to make notes for Kristen; since Kristen may not be back to school by the end of this school year, the students decorated their hand outlines as way to "wave" to her. They decorated one side and wrote a note on the other side. We are excited to have her back again soon!

Making our "wave"s for Kristen

Bakery fun!

Metamorphosis in May

Movement in measurement!

What a full, crazy week! In addition to my being out two days due to sickness, the kids had the first of our last few sessions with our fifth grade book buddies this year. Needless to say, they've had practice in flexibility this week! With their book buddies, they each traced their hands and decorated the outline with something unique about themselves. We will finish our project next week; I can't wait to get a picture up so everyone can see how amazing it will turn out!

With book buddies

We also had our music concert this week, and I heard it was fun, successful, and everyone loved it! Congrats to the kids for doing a super job!

In math, we got movement incorporated with measurement. The kids got to do a fun activity where they and a partner used "connector cubes" to measure different objects around the classroom. Next week, we'll zip ahead to time! We will also continue to work on money.

Butterfly "stained glass" art project

Finally, the students are excited by how quickly the caterpillars grew. They are HUGE now, and heading up toward the top of their habitat, which the students know means that they are soon moving to the chrysalis stage in their life. We are excited to see what they'll look like after this weekend, and hopefully there will be pictures to go along. Our mealworms are all either in the pupa stage or have emerged as fully adult darkling beetles. Our milkweed nymphs grow bigger each day. It's been a great week and we can't wait to see what next week will bring!

Making hand designs with 5th grade book buddies!

We like to Move it, Move it!

Another full week in first grade! Students made observations about our milkweed bugs, which have hatched since last week, and have moved into the larvae/nymph stage of their life cycle. It was exciting to see the changes! 

Milkweed bug observations!

 We learned about a lot of different things in writing as well. Students used organizers to help them retell a story using the important parts--Character, setting, events, problem, and solution. They used this knowledge to start book reports, which they will hopefully get to share with the class next week. The kids are so creative with their illustrations and descriptions! I'm excited to see what their reports look like when they're finished. We learned, also, about invitation and card writing (hopefully you all received your hand-delivered formal invitation to the First and Third Grade concert this coming Thursday!).

Retelling stories

We're trying to mix things up and keep things active as the year winds down, and in reading we did this by creating a "word hunt". Students had to find the 12 words around the room that contained the letter "y", since that was one of our phonics focuses for the week. They enjoyed the challenge! Thankfully the weather has been wonderful this week, and we've gotten plenty of time to go outside and enjoy it! Here's to another beautiful weekend, and we'll see you next week!

Creating invitations

Word hunt fun!

....bring May Flowers!

What a week full of scientific observation, using our five senses to write about springtime, and finishing up our Rocket Math for the year! Students are rapidly gaining progress in our math curriculum as well; they seem to have a solid understanding of using different strategies for subtraction as well as addition. I am proud of them all!

Highlights from this week include learning about how to retell the most important parts of a story, and observing the meal worms one more time. Finally, students were able to create habitats for our milkweed bugs, which we received in the egg stage of their life cycle. The students are excited for them to hatch so we can watch them go through the rest of their life cycle. This coming week, we receive our caterpillars! With all the rain we had last week, we are also welcoming sunshine and warm weather with open arms!