Factful Friday

We started our day with a Roundtown Town Meeting. We heard poetry by second and third graders! Back in our classroom, the word of the day was "very". It was a rule breaker, because the "e" said the name of long a. We looked at other words in this family and they all looked different - erry, ary, airy. The word "very" has a homonyn with "vary". We didn't know that word! Before lunch, we heard a penguin book called, "How Much is a Million". We also looked at a nonfiction penguin story called Face to Face Penguins. We examined the table of contents and the index to learn how to use a nonfiction text. After lunch and recess, Mrs. Lauber's class came over. We did a vocabulary sort penguin words. We sorted them groups around the room for how penguins move, how penguins eat, penguin's habitats, kinds of penguins, and penguin's body parts. There were a few words we were sure of including - Adelie, colony, rookery, colony, and Peru. Mrs. Lauber read two nonfiction stories about penguins. We learned all sorts of facts. We also listened for those tricky vocabulary words. We found where they belong in the sort. Then, we made penguin brochures to show all the facts we learned about penguins this week! They looked great! Be sure to check mine out tonight! After this, we had centers. We worked hard to finish our giant penguins in the art center. At the end of the day, we watched a movie called Polar Prowl, by National Geographic. It is a great documentary for kids about living in a polar habitat, with a special section on penguins. We had our Friday sharing to end the day! What a fun week of facts and nonfiction! We are very excited for our pizza theme next week! Remember to send in the donation and volunteer form for our pizza party next Friday!

Lots of Centers

Our word of the day today was "most". It was a rule breaker, because the "o" said the long sound without another vowel helping him. Later in the morning, we had reading workshop and guided reading. After lunch, we read the story, Tacky in Trouble and made personal connections to Tacky's feelings as he got himself into "trouble". Next, we had center time and visited our fourth center. At writing workshop time, we finished our penguin adventures. Mrs. Myers conferenced with some of us and we practiced our proofreading skills. Mrs. Myers shared three great stories from Nick, Abby, and Ian. We are improving at using our fiction writing plan. We worked on our journals while we were waiting for our conferences. Before recess, we finished our math centers. They will be coming home tomorrow. At the end of the day, Mrs. Myers changed our library center. We can't wait to use it tomorrow!

More Penguins

Our word of the day today was "back". It was a rule follower. The -ack family is sometimes confused with the -ake family. The word family was very popular, so we made a list of the words on the "sack of -ack". Later in the day, we heard the story, Penguin Quartet. It was a fiction story. We practiced cause and effect for events in the story. Then, we had reading workshop and guided reading. Then, we had our regular center time. We visited our second center of the week. Mrs. Myers opened the art center. We are making a giant penguin. Then it was time for math centers. We used penguins to practiced double digit subtraction, stamps for double digit addition, made a human clock to tell time to the hour and half hour, and met with Mrs. Myers to tell time and show elapsed time. We had a bonus pattern center with polar animals. At the end of the day, we had a guidance lesson with Miss Anderson. We learned about being a good friends. We also finished the day, by conferencing with our writing partner about our Penguin Adventures. More to come tomorrow!

Penguin Week

Our theme this week is penguins. The word of the day today was "me". It was mostly a rule follower, but the "e" was saying his name without any help! We saw that some of the words that rhyme with "me". They had "ea", "ee", and "ey" endings, too. This word was a pronoun. Later in the morning, we had reading workshop and guided reading. Mrs. Myers put us into different groups today to work on something that is difficult for us. We will continue to work in these groups for the rest of the week. We are working on different phonics games. After lunch and recess, we had a new activity. Mrs. Myers put a list of new vocabulary on the overhead. We had to make a "vocabulary chain" which is a true story using each word in order. We worked in groups to write and share the stories. We highlighted the new vocabulary words. Then, Mrs. Myers read the story, The Emperor's Penguin. We listened for the words to see if we used them correctly in our own stories. Then, it was time for writing workshop. We started a new story plan called, A Penguin Adventure. We used our organizer. Today, Mrs. Myers gave us each a story problem for the "action" part of our story. We also met with our "problem buddy" to brainstorm on our action plan. We conferenced with Mrs. Myers. We will continue writing our stories later this week. It was time for new centers. In the games center, we are"fishing" for fish for the adjective penguin, noun penguin, and verb penguin. In the sentence strips center, we are sorting penguins to the consonant digraph iceberg, consonant blend digraph iceberg, and the neither iceberg. In the writing center, we are adding clothespin quotation marks and commas to penguin sentences. We are adding tags to the sentences. In the listening center, we are listening to Cinderella Penguin. We are comparing the story to the regular Cinderella story on a venn diagram. Tomorrow, the art center will open. At the end of the afternoon, we had a new activity called "concept circles". We had a list of four words, and we had to find the word that didn't belong. Then, we had to name the rest of the group. We learned facts about penguin's bodies, the mother penguin's job, the father penguin's job, and the polar habitat. We will share these with you tonight. Also, if you are interested in a "GO GREEN at CENTRAL YORK" shirt, please let Mrs. Myers know this week for an order form. All money benefits the Heffier Foundation.

A Week of Presidents

Our word of the day today was "live" and "live". It was a crazy word, because it is pronounced two ways and means two different things. When the "i" says his name, it is a rule follower, because it is a CVCe word. When the "i" is saying his short sound, it is a rule breaker. The CVCe way was much more popular as a word family. At 9:45AM, Mrs. Miller, a dental hygenist came to Roundtown to teach us all about taking care of our teeth. We learned about the bad stuff called plaque. It really likes sugar and uses it to make acid that eats holes in our teeth. We learned how to brush and floss our teeth using a giant toothbrush. We also learned healthy foods to eat to help keep our teeth clean! When we got back to our classroom, Mrs. Myers read us two tooth books, Wiggly Wobbly Tooth and Moose's Loose Tooth. After lunch and recess, we read the story, Arthur Meets the President. We listened for common and proper nouns in the story. Then, Mrs. Myers gave us a card with a noun. The first letter was missing. We had to decided if it was a common or proper noun. Then, we had to write the first sound using a lowercase or capital letter and put it in the correct hula hoop for common or proper nouns. Then, it was reading workshop time. We had a quick one today! After that, we had writing workshop. We practiced using our plan to write our president story. We also read with a partner and worked on writing a focused ending. Then it was time for music. At the end of the day, we practiced telling time the digital and analog way on our clocks. Then, we learned a new part of telling time called elapsed time. It is showing how much time passes on the clock between two events. We talked about all the times we use elapsed time in our day at home and at school. We used two giant clocks to make elapsed time for one and two hours. We even tried elapsed time up to six hours. We will be looking for elapsed time at our own house this weekend. Have a good one!

George Washington Day

Our theme this week is Presidents. Today we learned all about George Washington. Our word of the day today was "know". It was a rule breaker, because the "k" was silent. The "ow" was a diphthong, like on the snow of -ow. This word is a homonym with the word "no". We call this the "know with your brain". We had library this morning, too. After lunch and recess, Mrs. Myers read the story, Grace For President. We listened for the author's purpose for writing the story. We found four different purposes. Then, we sorted story events that support each purpose. This is something you can ask us after we read at night. Then, it was time for president learning. We used the BookFlix program to hear the story, So You Want to be the President. We worked in groups to remember facts about being the president. Ask me a few. Then, Mrs. Myers showed us a tour of the White House on the internet. It has many special things. Next, Mrs. Myers read us the story, George Washington. We listened for facts to fill in an information sheet. Then, we went to Mrs. Lauber's class and taught them the new facts about George Washington. Tomorrow, Mrs. Lauber's class will teach us facts about Abraham Lincoln. At the end of the day, we had math. We practiced telling time to the hour and half hour. We will be making a human clock, soon. We played a game for the "half hour" times. We had to yell out the hour that we were in! Tomorrow, we will play time BINGO! Mrs. Myers will not be here tomorrow, because she has a doctor's appointment. NO BLOG!

A Great Day!

Today we had a new fresh start. Mrs. Myers even moved our desks! We had a great day with our learning and our behavior. Our word of the day today was "little". It was a rule breaker and a rule follower, depending on how you say the word. The word "little" has a lot of extra letters. It is an adjective. It does not have very many words in it's "family." Later in the morning, we had guided reading and reading workshop. At 11:00, we played our Blend BINGO. Tomorrow is the last day for our Blend BINGO. Then it was time for lunch and recess. After recess, Mrs. Myers read a silly story called, Falling For Rapunzel. It was full of quotation sentences, but the author forgot to add tags on many of them. We brainstormed a list of tag words and added them to each quotation in the story. At the end of the story, we finished a paper by adding the speaker to the correct quotation and adding quotation marks. Our quotation marks hug the part of the sentence that does NOT have the tag. Then it was writing workshop time. We reviewed Letter Ed for the parts of the letter. We wrote our first letter to our pen pal. We will be writing the final copy tomorrow to send in the mail. We also learned how an envelop is addressed. At center time, we visited our fourth center and added the decorations to our mail truck. Then it was math time. Mrs. Myers read a story called It's About Time. It was a nonfiction book filled with facts about time and clocks. We learned a lot. Then, we used the giant clock to tell time to the half hour. We learned that the minute hand points to the 6 for a half hour. That is thirty minutes around the clock. The hour hand is not pointing right at one number. It is between two numbers. The number that is smaller is our half hour. We will play with clock s tomorrow at morning meeting! We ended the day with art!

More Valentines

Our word of the day today was "only". It was a rule breaker, because the "o" said his name without help from another vowel. The "y" was tricky, because he said the "e" sound, but he does that sometimes. This word was an adverb. Later in the morning, we had a fire drill. It was during guided reading and reading workshop. Then it was time for lunch and recess. After recess, we went with Mrs. Myers to Mrs. Lauber's room. We heard a story called, Will You Be My Valenswine? It had quotation sentences in it. After the story, we divided into groups. We organized a quotation sentence in order and added the commas, ending punctuation, and quotation marks. Then, each person in the group held a part of the sentence and we share it with the others. We learned that tag go on either side of the quotation sentence. It changes the punctuation! After the lesson, we came back to our classroom and we had a math lesson about telling time. We learned a song about the hands on the clock. We also used a giant clock to make times to match the clock in the story, What Time is it, Mr. Crocodile. We practiced telling time to the hour. We learned that when the minute hand is on the twelve, it makes an "o'clock". The hour hand is the hand on the clock that uses the big numbers we see! We also learned that clocks can use roman numerals to show numbers. Then, we had making words. We used the letters a,e,h,r,s,t to make three and four letters words. The super-jumbo bonus words was "hearts". We also practiced the bossy r sounds - er, ar, ur, and ir. We practiced vowel pairs - ea, ee, oa, ie, ai. In each vowel pair the first letters says his name!!! Mrs. Myers had us sounding like farmers in the song! At the end of the day, we visited our third center of the week. We also added some more details to our mail trucks at the art center. Today we had a little trouble following directions. We are really going to work on this tomorrow.

Valentine Time

We started our day with a special spelling test that looks at how we are stretching our words. Mrs. Myers is going to look at each of our test and use this to make game groups during reading workshop time. Then it was time for word of the day. Our word of the day today was "take". It was a rule follower, because it followed the CVCe rule. It was already on the "cake of -ake" so we practiced reading the words. The word "take" is a verb. It can be confused with the word "tack" if you don't look for the "magic e". Later in the morning, we had guided reading and reading workshop. During our games time, Mrs. Myers taught us a new game. We are playing it in groups of 4 or 5 friends. It is called Blend BINGO. We are practicing writing consonant blends. After lunch and recess, Mrs. Myers read us a Valentine story called, Roses are Pink and Your Feet Stink. It was funny. We listened for verbs in the story that had the -ed or -ing ending. Then, we sorted the verbs into the groups we learned last week - CVC words make a twin, CVCe words share an "e" (or an "i" replaces it and shares the job). We had a third group for "regular" root words and endings. At the end of the lesson, we wrote the answers on our own worksheets. Next was writing workshop time. We brainstorm a list of Valentine nouns on the easel. Then, we picked three and described them as similes. Mrs. Myers was going to pick the top five Valentine similes, but there were so many, she picked seven!!! We will hear the winners tomorrow! At centertime today, we visited our second center. We also began our art center project. We are making a Valentine mailbag that looks like a postal truck!!! We did the first steps today. At math time, we learned some new telling time vocabulary - analog, digital, minute hand, hour hand, and face. We read the story, Hickory, Dickory Dock. It was a silly book about each hour on the clock. We talked all about the different hand on the clock, even the second hand. We learned the number's job on the clock and those little lines, too. Tomorrow, we will tell time to the hour! At the end of the day, we watched Franklin's Valentine movie. It was a very busy day!

Valentine Week

Our theme this week is love and friendship. We are excited for Valentine's Day on Saturday! Our word of the day today was "sound". It was a rule follower, with a vowel diphthong - ou and a consonant blend - nd. The -ound family was a little popular. Later in the morning, we had guided reading and game time. After lunch and recess, we heard a new book called Love, Splat. It was so cute. We listened for the character traits of three characters - Splat, Kitten, and Spike. We sorted character trait cards and told if the card told a "look", "act", or "feel" character trait. We are finally getting better at character traits. Next in our schedule was writing workshop. We wrote a new kind of poem called a cinquain. The focus of our poem was something to match the holiday, Valentine's Day. We wrote nouns, verbs, and adjectives. We even learned the word, synonym, means the same. After writing, we had math. Today's math lesson was about units of time. We learned how long a second, minute, and hour can be. Mrs. Myers took us into the big first grade area with Mrs. Lauber's class. We predicted and practiced how many things we could do in one minute. We could do 75 jumps, sing the ABC's 2 and a half times, count by 10's to 100 seven times, and do lots of partner hand slaps. A minute seems long sometimes and short sometimes. At the end of the lesson, we decided which things you can do in minutes or hours. Tomorrow, we will begin telling time! At the end of the day, we had phys. ed. It is going to be a great week!

Good Bye Laura Numeroff

Today was the last day of our Laura Numeroff theme. Our word of the day today was "new". It was a homonyn to the word "knew". It was also a rule follower, but it followed a new rule - "ew" is a diphthong. It was actually a very popular word family. We recorded the words on the "screw of -ew". We had library in the morning, so the rest of our day was after lunch. We started by listening to the story, Chicken Sisters. We listened in the story for verbs with -ed and -ing endings. Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Lauber showed us that verbs with endings can be sorted into groups. Some CVC root words need a "twin" consonant at the ending, so the vowel in the ending does not change it's sound. Some CVCe root words "share" an "e", because it does two jobs in the word. We called it "buy one e, get two jobs for free". At the end of the lesson, we worked in partners sorting verbs with endings into three categories. After language arts, we had center time. We finished the last center in our packet. A few of us even got to play "Fun Friday" learning games. Then, it was time for writing workshop. Mrs. Myers showed us three stories written by students in our classroom. They were good stories, but they did not have FOCUSED, WOW endings. We worked in groups to think of new endings for the stories that matched the focus. We were really tired. At the end of the day, we practiced double digit addition and subtraction by adding and subtracting along with a DVD. It was fun and we got a little break! It sure was a long week! Next week, our theme is love and friendship! We will be getting ready for Valentine's Day! Have a great weekend!

Pen Pals and More

Today's word of the day was "over". It was an adverb. It was a rule follower, too. It had a bossy r sound and a "magic e". It was not a popular word family. We had music in the morning today. After lunch and recess, we read the story, The Jellybeans and the Big Dance. We met four characters in this story. There was even an Anna. After the story, we got into small groups. Each group got a character from the story and wrote two character traits for the categories look, act, and feel. At the end, we shared our list and saw how the characters were different. After that, we had center time. We visited our third center of the week. Then, we had reading workshop and guided reading time. Then, it was time for writing. Today in writing, we met Mrs. Myers' friend, Letter Ed. He is a funny letter reminder person. We learned that letters have five parts - heading, greeting, body, closing, signature. We found out that we are going to be pen pals with another first grade class in Lancaster. It is Mrs. Myers' sister's class. We wrote a giant class letter to them. Our next letter will be to our own pen pal. At the end of the day, we had math. We reviewed double digit addition and then we learned double digit subtraction. It's almost the same. We ALWAYS start with our ones column. We also have to put the big number first. We will practice this more tomorrow. DOn't forget to wear red tomorrow for the American Heart Association celebration of our hearts!

More Laura Numeroff

Our word of the day today was "part". It was a rule follower, because the "ar" was a bossy r sound. The -art family is a little bit popular. In the morning, Mrs. Myers met with two guided reading groups. We had reading workshop and played the dice roll word game during game time. After lunch and recess, Mrs. Myers read a story called, If You Give a Cat a Cupcake. It is the newest Laura Numberoff book. It was donated to our classroom library by Madison. The story was great. After the story, we told our favorite part and why we liked that part. After that, it was center time. We visited our second center of the week. We had a schedule change for art, so we went at 1:05PM. After art, we finished our 100 years old stories. Mrs. Vaughn was here, because Mrs. Myers was in a meeting. We will work on story endings later this week. Today we ended our day with math. We practiced double digit addition . We learned to start by adding the ones column first. We practiced drawing to check our answers, too. We liked having math at the end of the day.

100th DAY

Today was the 100th Day of School! Our word of the day today was "may". It was a rule follower, because it was on the "hay of -ay". The word had a homonyn - May. This word is a month, so it is a proper noun. Later in the morning, we shared all about our shirts. Mrs. Myers took pictures of us in our shirts. They were all so unique! We wrote stories about them and we will make it into a class book for our library. After lunch, we read the story, The Wolf's Chicken Stew. In the story, the wolf makes the chicken 100 donuts, 100 cookies, a 100 pound cake. Then, we went into the hallway with Mrs. Lauber's class. We played the "100 Dot" game. Mrs. Myers hid 100 colored dots around the first grade "big area" and we had to find them and record the number and color on a hundred's chart. After that, we had 100 Day math centers. We rotated stations - building with 100 pattern blocks to show symmetry, coin or dice toss to show probability, and tallying to 100 on a 100 headband. Then we had music and recess. At the end of the day, we pretended that we were 100 years old. We drew a picture of ourselves at 100 and brainstormed adjectives, similes, and phrases to describe how we would look, act, and feel. Then, we started our 100 year old stories. We will finish these stories tomorrow. We also had our 100 Day snack, where we counted 10 sets of 10 different kinds of food. Thank you to all of the parents who donated snack today. Also, a big thank you to all the parents who helped the boys and girls with their t-shirt creations!!! They were amazing!!!