Week 23

It was a short, but busy week...

Wow! The first grade readers and writers have amazed me this week as we begin to merge the two subjects. We have been reading and writing non-fiction, and this week we worked on developing our research skills. We have been using multiple sources (books, online books) to gather information about a topic. The first graders worked with a partner to research and take notes on a topic. Then, from their notes, they wrote an introduction with key details!

This week we had health lessons about feelings and friendship.We talked about hard feelings vs. easy feelings and discussed coping strategies when we have hard feelings. We can't stop hard feelings from happening, but we can control how we handle them. Through this unit we are working to develop coping skills and strong communication. These discussions about feelings lend themselves to discussions about friendship. I like it when my friend... It bothers me when my friend... I let my friend know how I feel by... A good friend.... The students spent time thinking about these sentences and completing them. We talked about how some answers were the same and some were different, which is why it's important to communicate your feelings! The first graders had amazing insights and problem solving strategies. Our mantra has been, to have good friends, you have to be a good friend!  I encourage you to continue these conversations at home with your first grader!

In math we had Data Day! The students went from looking at and organizing data, to actually creating their own survey and question sheet. The first graders got to pick their question, pick their choices and ask the class. From there, they organized their data and created a question sheet based on it. They traded with a partner and were analyzing each other's data and answering questions about it! We got to learn a lot about our classmates :)


Here are some photos from the week...


















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