Last Day of First Grade!

Today was the last day of first grade! We started our day with a band assembly. We heard lots of great songs played by the sixth grade band at Sinking Springs. We learned about the different families of instruments. Mrs. Graves had the third graders play music from recycled instruments they made. We also had our last town meeting at Roundtown for the year. When we came back to our classroom, we had our own morning meeting. We did the snowball greeting, where we each wrote our name, with a good-bye message. We threw the snowballs into the middle of the circle. Then we found a snowball, shared the message, and hugged good-morning to the friend who threw it! After recess, Mrs. Myers helped us made a time capsule. Mrs. Myers is going to keep is for us until just before we graduate in 2020! We had to write down some of our favorite things. We also had to write a letter to ourselves for when we graduate. Then it was lunchtime. After lunch, Mrs. Myers read us the story, The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark. Before we read, we made a book to book connection to the story, The Three Little Pigs. Then, we predicted what would happen to the first, second, and third first, using what we already knew from the pig story. When we read the story, we predicted correctly! YAY! Next was our movie time. We watched an Arthur at Camp and Arthur at the Beach. Finally, it was time for recess again. After last recess, We got our pen pal letters. Our pen pals didn't have a webcam, so we never got to do our video conference. We were sad, but we were happy to read our last letter. Mom and Dad, ask me if I would like to keep writing to my pen pal. Mrs. Myers will send them my address, if you give her permission through an email to jmyers9@cysd.k12.pa.us. You have to tell her before Monday morning! At the very end of the day, we had a classroom award ceremony. We were celebrating all of the proud accomplishments that we had in first grade. Mrs. Myers awarded each of us a special award to show the area we were most celebrate at! Have a great summer! We will all miss each other! YAY! We are second graders now!

Our Last Tuesday and Wednesdays Together

Today will be a combined blog. We have been so busy with special projects that we didn't have time to blog yesterday. Our word of the day yesterday was "every". It was a rule breaker, because the first "e" said it's short sound. This word was an adjective and an adverb. Later in the morning, Mrs. Mumme came and did a lesson to review shapes and logic. It was fun. We had music and then we went to lunch. After recess, we read four beach stories - Lottie's New Beach Towel, Atlantic, My Mermaid Sister, and Curious George Goes to the Beach. We had to decide which book was our favorite and make a book poster. On the back of the poster, we had to write four reasons why we liked this book the best. For the rest of the day, we worked with Mrs. Lauber's class. First we brainstormed a list of the themes, special events, and field trips we had in first grade. Next, we got a partner from Mrs. Lauber's class and we picked one or two ideas to write about, to share in a book for next year's first graders. After that, we conferenced with Mrs. Myers and began to type our ideas in a speech bubble. We illustrated our pictures.

Today our word of the day was "friend". It was rule breaker, because the "i" did not belong. Mrs. Myers told us that to remember the crazy spelling, you need to remember to put yourself (i) in the middle of the word, because it takes you and someone else to have a friend. Later in the morning, we had library. We had a great summer birthday lunch party. Thank you to all the parents who donated items for our party today. Mrs. Myers ordered cheese and sausage pizza from Papa Johns as her part of the birthday treat! I was so much fun! After lunch, we an exclusion brainstorm activity for the nonfiction book, Seashore. Then, we checked the table of contents, index, and the glossary for the words we thought would and would not be in the book. There were lots of words in the book that we thought were silly, made-up words - like dogfish!! Next, we went to Mrs. Weikert's room and listened to the animal reports that her students made on the computer. We will see our buddies one last time on Friday! Next, we came back to our room and brainstormed a list of the skills we learned this year. Then, we wrote about these skills on our portfolios. At the end of the day, we filled our portfolios. Mrs. Myers read to us the goals we set on the first day of school and we all met them!! YAY! We also saw our handwriting samples from the beginning of the year and compared them to the writing sample we wrote today! WOW! It was a fun day looking at all of the learning we accomplished this year in first grade. Remember, tomorrow is Camp School No More. Bring a towel and sunscreen and wear sneakers!

The Last Monday of First Grade

Today was our last Monday together. Our word of the day today was "baby". It was a rule follower, but the "y" had two jobs - it was tricky and magic. The word "baby" is a noun. After recess, we started a big friendship project called a compliment book. We each had to write a compliment quotation for each person in our class. We had to choose a tag word, too. Mrs. Myers typed the compliments over lunch. In the afternoon, we cut and glued the compliments on each person's book page. We had to find them in alphabetical order. Mrs. Myers made copies of our book. Check it out tonight in our mail. We are excited to read our compliments tonight. They will make up feel proud and happy! It felt good to know that our friends will all feel happy and proud, too, just from the things we said! After lunch, we looked at the book, Mermaid Dreams. First, we predicted all we knew about the main character, just be looking at the title and the cover of the book. We shared our ideas with a partner. Then, Mrs. Myers read the book. At the end, we check our predictions and recorded them. We had to prove our true predictions by using the words and pictures in the book. We all thought that Meriam, the main character, was a mermaid, but we didn't find out until the last page of the book. Later in the afternoon, Mrs. Myers read the book, Figgity Fish. Then, we played a game using the words from the story. We had three teams - boat one, boat two, and boat three. Mrs. Myers gave us a word. We she told us the number of letters in the word. Then, we had 30 seconds to write the word secretly. When she sounded the boat horn, we had 10 seconds to share with the other people on our boat. Then, we had to send one person from our boat, up to share the answer. If our team was correct, we got one point. If our team was wrong, we had to throw one person off the boat and into the shark water. Soon, the sharks were a team, too. At the end of the game, we had two bonus rounds where we had to spell the words by ourselves without sharing, and each correct person on the team earn one point. In the end, the shark team won! It was so much fun! We are getting better at spelling and stretching words with more than one syllable. Before recess, we had time to share our publishing center book with one or two friends, now that we are done illustrating. We will be sharing our books with our second grade computer buddies on Wednesday. Then we can take the books home! Hooray! We ended the day at art! We're happy and sad that this was our last Monday together!