We are busy at work writing our Realistic Fictions books. We are developing our characters, thinking of a realistic setting, and a problem that could happen in real life. We are EVEN practicing incorporating dialogue into our books. I am impressed with all the stories...We have character that are going to the gym to get big muscles and the character is so strong that when he slam dunks the ball he cracks the backboard.....to......a character that finds a baby bird and has to put it back in it's nest.....to.....a character that is learning how to swim. I am so impressed with the students creativity.
We gave our Alfalfa and Rye "lawns" a good mowing before we left for Spring Break because BOY did they grow tall while we were on vacation. We were all surprised to see them this morning. We measured the length today and some of our lawns were over 12 inches in length. Needless to say we had to "mow" them again today! What an amazing day to kick off the start of Spring Break. I am posting this after the fact (so I can't believe we are back with only a 7 more weeks of school). This post is already making me a bit tearey eyed thinking that my sweet Firsties will be all grown up and heading the 2nd. They change so much throughout the year. Let me get back to this Fun Run stuff. Wow, was I proud of our kiddos!!!! Mrs.Burt's class raised over $400 dollars which means that I will join many of the other teachers who are sleeping on the roof as a goal. I think I am going to need to bring my snake,bug, and night critter repellent. In addition to the money we raised our class ran LOTS of laps ( many of them ran/walked over 3 miles). We kicked off the Fun Run with a pep rally and the National Anthem along side the ENTIRE school. We danced on our way out to the run.... They were SO excited!!! The fun run was decorated SUPER cool!!!! I love Jaaron's body language in this picture.... You can see how excited he is! We are working on double digit addition strategies and integrating technology at the same time. The kiddos loved checking their work using QR codes. We have been constantly working in building reading stamina in First Grade. Each day there are a few mystery readers picked. They get to showcase their trophy on their desk for the day before a new mystery reward is rewarded the next day. We have had quite some growth with our Brassica seeds. We also planted some Rye. Students will see that our grass keeps growing after a lawn mowing. We are hoping to "mow the lawn" before we leave for spring break. When we get back from spring break we will have do a serious lawn mowing session. We have begun our plants unit. We are learning about the parts of the plants ( roots, stem, leaves, flower, seeds) We are conducting several inquiries. We wanted to see how the stem carries food to various parts of the plants. We used white carnations AND LOOK what happened to the flowers. We also used celery but it died before Mrs. Burt could snap a picture. We talked about why we think the flowers of the carnation and leaves of the celery changed colors. We determined that the stem is like a drinking straw and sucks up the water and carries it to the flower and leaves. We planted Brassica seeds. We have used our scientist eyes and drawn in our plant journals two times. On the first observation we just observed soil and "some" seeds. On our next observation we started to see a sprout. We are beginning to understand the life cycle of plants. We are also learning that our plants need fertilizer "plant food" and water, space, sunlight to grow into adult plants. We read the book "SEEDS" and were really interested in the avacado seed at the end of the book. Luckily Mrs. Burt eats a lot of avacados and brought one in. We have put this under our grow light to see what happens. There has also been talk about sampling a real avacado to graph if we "like" or " dislike" the taste. We were all amazed at the parts of the plants we eat.... Carrots are roots, and spinach is a leaf, cinnamon is a stem, a coconut is a seed, and a strawberry is a fruit. We have been using our scientist eyes to take a closer look at what parts of a plant we are actually eating. We even saved some orange seeds from lunch and have put them in some soil under our grow light. First grade went on a field trip. This field trip actually came to us. We went into a pull trailer that was set up for gem mining. The students were SO SO SO excited with all of their finds. I love the photos that captured their amazement as they found their treasures. They were even able to TAKE the GEMS HOME!! When we went back to the classroom with our rocks and minerals we used what we learned about the properties to sort our rocks by COLOR By SIZE ( small, medium, large) By texture ROUGH And SMOOTH Next we tested their hardness We just finished our unit on oinion writing. We wrote reviews on books, restaraunts, toys, movies, songs, zoos, atheletes, sports teams, vacation spots, etc...... you name... We were experts! We were so happy to share our reviews with 5th graders for our writing celebration.. This time we shared with Mrs. Wertz class. |
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