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!