Zoo America

Today our class went to Zoo America in Hershey, PA. It was fun learning about animals and their habitats. We had tour guide take us around the zoo to each habitat. Her name was Christy. The first habitat we looked at was in a building. It was the swamp. We looked at a pink bird called a Spoonbill. We saw turtle swimming. He had a funny nose. We saw an armadillo. We saw two alligators and one crocodile. We didn't know if they were real at first, because they didn't move much. We learned that the difference between an alligator and a crocodile was the face. The next habitat we visited was the desert. In the desert, we saw rattlesnakes, spotted skunks, tarantula, tortoises, desert fox and vampire bats. We also saw the bats getting fed their blood. After the desert, we left for the Eastern Woodlands. We saw bobcats, river otters, barn owls, and bears. We went to the Rocky Mountain Grasslands. We didn't see the prairie dogs, because they were underground. We were disappointed. We did see bison, mountain lions, elk, vultures, wolves, falcons, deer, turkey, and an eagle. At the last habitat, the North Woods, we saw the porcupine, the lynx, and swans. We learned so many facts and had a lot of time to ask questions. Our naturalist woke many of the animals up and talked about how they communicate differently than humans. We were so hungry at the end of the tour, so we headed straight for the lunch tables to eat. After lunch, we went to Chocolate World to take the chocolate tour. We ended the day with a chocolate treat! Back at school, we were so tired. We ended the day with our movie time. We watched a movie about zoo animals. What a great day! A special thanks to Mrs. Buzynski for helping Mrs. Myers all day long. She was a great volunteer.

Animals at the Zoo

Our word of the day today was "or". It was a rule follower, but it was the new bossy r rule. It was a very popular word family, but most of the words were spelled different. After calendar, we had a lesson on the habitats of North America. We learned that North America is made of the United States, Mexico, and Canada. We sorted the animals into five habitats that we will see tomorrow. (Sonoran Desert, The Swamp, North Woods, Eastern Woodlands, Rocky Mountain Grasslands ) Tomorrow, we will look at those animals at the trip to Zoo America. In math today, we used the hundred's chart to look for patterns in numbers. We highlighted our chart to show the ways to count by 2's, 5's, and 10's. We played a game around the classroom to practice counting. Dawson and Elle were the winners of a bean. I need to practice counting by 2's and 5's each night before bed, until I can do it perfectly. After lunch and recess, we listened to a story called, Never EVER Shout in the Zoo. It was so funny! We listened for the main idea of the story. We learned that an author writes details to support the main idea. We made a chart that looks like a table to show the main idea and supporting details. Check it out in my mail today! Then, we had guided reading and reading workshop and centertime. After that, it was time to take the district writing assessment. We worked so hard to write our best stories. We thought about the story's focus, content, organization, and proofreading. Our practice stories from yesterday are in our mail. Enjoy them tonight! At the end of writing time, we were exhausted. Luckily, we only had phys. ed. left to end the day! YEAH! Just a reminder, we need to pack our lunch in a disposable bag tomorrow, if we did not order it from the cafeteria. We should wear our zoo t-shirts tomorrow with layers. We are so excited!

Zoo Week

Our theme this week is zoo. We are excited to visit Zoo America on Thursday. To begin our day, we handprinted our t-shirts to look like an alligator, a lion, and a snake. We are going to wear our zoo shirts on Thursday for the field trip. We really want to thank Mrs. Bashada, Mrs. Donnor, Mrs. Guadagnino, Mrs. Kurland for helping us paint our shirts. They will come home tomorrow when they are dry! Our word of the day today was "from". It was rule breaker, because the "o" said the sound of "short u". It had a popular word family -um, but it didn't look like the word "from". We had library and lunch and recess. Then, we had a mixed up afternoon. Mrs. Myers was observed by new first grade teachers and reading specialist in the district, so we changed our afternoon routine. We started with writing workshop. Today we practiced for the district writing assessment. We wrote a story about a time with our friends. Mrs. Myers is going to score the story in the areas of focus, content, organization, and proofreading. You can score up to four points for each area. On Wednesday, we will have the real district writing assessment. Then, we heard our afternoon story. We read the story My School's a Zoo. It was funny! We compared the school in the story to our own school on a venn diagram. A venn diagram is two circles that connect in the center. The center shows things that are the same. The outside of the circles show things that are different. Then, it was time for reading workshop and guided reading. This is were we had all of our visitors observing. It was crazy with all those people watching. At the end of the day we went to centers. We have zoo centers this week. At the games centers, we are matching circus cars to animals using the mixed up word of the day words. At the magnetic letters, we are practicing the -ay, -ar, and -ig word families on trains. Then we are using the words in three sentences. In the writing center, we pick a story pop for each area - characters, setting, and problem. Then we write a story. In the sentence strips center, we are putting animals in alphabetical order. It was a busy, but fun day! Tomorrow we will learn about the animals we will see at the zoo.

Apple Party Day

Sorry for the late blog. We were having technical difficulties. We had a end to our apple theme today. Our word of the day was "this". It was a rule follower. We are really practicing using our reading strategies each morning to guess the word of the day. Ask me to tell you the strategies in order. We DON'T start with sound it out when we get stuck on a word. We'll show you what we do instead. Today was Johnny Appleseed's birthday. We celebrated by making a class book of facts about John Chapman's life. We read the story Johnny Appleseed and each share a fact for the book. After recess, we had a math lesson about addition. We learned the symbols of the plus sign and the equals sign. We learned the answer to an adding problem in called the sum. We each had an apple addition mat. We used cubes on the mat to add sums to ten. Then we did an adding paper. After lunch, Mrs. Lauber read the story, Apple Pie 4th of July. We practiced retelling it on a GO map. Then, we retold it in a group. When we were finished, we had reading workshop time. This is one of our favorite parts of the day. Then it was time for the APPLE TASTING PARTY! Mrs. Welty helped Mrs. Myers set up while we had centertime. We had an apple juice/apple cider tasting station. We had a red, yellow, and green apple tasting station. We visited Mrs. Welty to get the rest of our apple food. We had apple pie, apple crisp, apples with caramel dip, crackers with apple butter, apple muffins, apple bread, and candy apples. WOW! It was all so yummy. We tried a sample of each food. We tallied our favorite kind of apple and graphed it on a pictograph. We also tallied the apple drink we liked best. Apple cider won by a landslide. Last, we made a classbook about each of our favorite apple foods. We had so many different things that we liked best, but we all liked at least on thing from the party! YEAH! Thank you to all the parents who donated items for our party. Without you, this great experience wouldn't have been possible! At the end of the day, we went to art class. We ended the day with a story from Elle. Have a great weekend! I will be out of the classroom with a personal day on Monday, so there will be no blog. Check bag on Tuesday!

Apple Facts

Our word of the day today was "be". It was a rule breaker, because the "e" is saying the his name without another vowel's help. We found out that this is a very popular word family, but it looks different (e, ee, ea, ey). After our morning routine, we read the story Apples, by Gail Gibbins, It was nonfiction. We learned the parts of the apple and some true facts about apples. We labeled the parts of the apple before recess. After recess, we had a math lesson on odd and even numbers. We made a chart of the odd and even numbers. We learned to always look at the ones column of a number to see if it's odd or even. We used cubes and ice cube trays with a partner to check odd and even numbers. We did a paper with big number! After lunch, we had another nonfiction lesson. Before the story, we did "concept circle". This is when you look at groups of four words and picked the word that didn't belong. They all were related to apples in some way. Then, we read the story An Apple a Day. It was nonfiction. It had a table of contents and an index. After the story, Mrs. Myers gave us a card to read with a partner. We had to put the card under the correct heading to show its apple relationship. (apple uses, parts of an apple, apples in the spring, apples in the summer, apples in the fall) After our lesson, we had reading workshop and guided reading. We are doing very well at both of these. Mrs. Myers is very proud of us! Before music, we played a game called Apple-O. It was apple BINGO with word wall words and number words. Abby, Dawson, and Annabelle all won a game. At the end of the day we had our fourth center. Tomorrow is make-up day and FUN FRIDAY! What a busy day! We also learned letters Dd and Ww for handwriting practice tomorrow morning. Don't forget your apple foods for tomorrow's apple tasting party.

Apple Adventures

Our word of the day today was "at". It was rule follower. This word makes a very popular word family. We read the words from the word family on the "cat of -at". At math today, we worked with Mrs. Lauber's classroom on repeating patterns. Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Lauber divided us into groups of 5 kids. We had a bag of four different colors of apples. Our job was to make as many different repeating patterns as possible and record their name on our wipe-off board. At the end of the lesson, we all came back together and shared the patterns. Each group make between 7 and 11 different patterns and the list was so long when we shared that we couldn't write them all down. We all really liked exploring patterns today. After lunch, we read the story, Pepo and Lolo. We retold the story on a GO map. We practiced using the words when, who, where, first, next, then, next, then, and last to retelling the beginning, middle, and end of the story. We even retold with a partner. Please ask me about the story. It is one of Mrs. Myers' favorites! Then, it was time for reading workshop. We finished some new activities. Mrs. Myers started our guided reading groups today. Some of us are switching to Mrs. Lauber's class for reading. Each week will be different. After we read a story with Mrs. Myers, we will get to take it home and share it with you. Please check my orange folder to see if I have a book to share tonight. We had centertime. It was our third day of centers. At the art center, we glued the mosiac pieces to our apple project. Before recess, we had writing workshop time. We learned how authors add adjectives to their stories to make it more stylish. An adjective is a describing word. It describes a person, place, or thing. We were writing with adjectives in the writing center this week, and we didn't even know it. We read a poem abouit apples and found the adjectives in it. We will try to write using adjectives tomorrow in our writing journal. We ended the day with a movie about Johnny Appleseed. We will learn more about him on Friday, when we celebrate his birthday.

A Busy Day

We started the day with a substitute. Her name was Mrs. Bell. Mrs. Myers was working with the other first grade teachers on reading with students from all the classrooms. Our word of the day today was "I". It was a rule breaker, because it was all alone. You must always write the "I" as a capital letter, when he must be a tall, capital letter. The word I is a pronoun. It takes the place of ourselves in a sentence. In math today, we practiced repeating patterns. We used cubes to make patterns with a partner. Then, we made patterns by ourselves and recorded them on our worksheet. After lunch and recess, we read the story, The Apple Pie Tree. It was actually a nonfiction story. We learned how apples grow by season. After the story, we retold the story using the words first, next, then, and last. We had another day of reading workshop. Then, it was time for centers. In the art center this week, we are making an apple project. Today, we traced the apple shape, cut it out, and put our name on the back. Finally it was time workshop. We heard the rest of the story, Down the Road. We listened for onomatopoeia in the story. An onomatopoeia was a word that sounds like a sound. We had a special signal to show Mrs. Myers we heard an onomatopoeia. Ask me to see the signal tonight. After writing, we had recess and phys. ed. It was a great day. We almost earned bonus blocks. Maybe tomorrow!