Who Will Carve the Turkey?

Our class read the story, Who Will Carve the Turkey on Thanksgiving by Jerry Pollatta this week and then wrote our own ideas. We then used the app, Explain Everything, where each student took a picture of their page and recorded their story. We hope you enjoy our rendition of this very silly story.

Odds n' ends from 1st grade

Exciting news regarding SeeSaw and your child's learning! Our Spanish teachers are excited to share that they are beginning to use the SeeSaw app as well. Your child will be bringing home the information tonight in their DOG binders. The wonderful thing is that your child's Spanish folder will integrate right into their current classroom folder so it will still just be one stop for you to see your child's work. All you need to do is follow the directions on the note being sent home and the 2 accounts will join together. You'll continue to get notifications just as you have in the past when new submissions are made. If you have any issues, please don't hesitate to contact myself or Senora Tewes.

I sent an email regarding the distict policy on cough drops as well as over the ocutner medications earlier today. I am adding a direct link to this form in the "Links for Parents" area on the blog so you will have easy access if you are ever in need of this.

op, ot, og, Popplet!

We're learning how to use the app, Popplet! Popplet is a free app that helps students to organize or web their ideas. We are currently using this app to help us with our weekly word study/word sort. Each week we are learning a new word family or chunk that will help us with both our reading and writing. Last week we worked on the op, ot, and og chunks.  This week we are working on the short e chunks of et, eg, and en. 

To the Transmogrifier!

Today we sent our Go Noodle champ, Flo Yo, to the Transmogrifier.

She went from this-

 to...drum roll please...

... this!

There were lots of ooohs and ahhhs as the transmogrifier door opened! We're excited to see what the next level will do to her (we are predicting Flo Yo is a her)

Kids Teaching Teachers

This week started out a little different than any other. 

We participated in a Google Hangout with Mrs. White in Indiana again, but this time we didn't chat with her students, we chatted with about 20 of her colleagues from various grade levels. Mrs. White had asked if our class would be willing to join their professional development day and talk with them about the Hangouts that we have done. We thought it was pretty special that we as kids could teach teachers about using Google Hangouts! 

We have started a new ongoing project using an app called, BookCreator. Using BookCreator, kiddos can create and publish their very own books. We are currently learning how to use the app as we create a book about our GoogleHangouts. Each time we do a Hangout, students insert a picture of a map of the United States and the find and locate Wisconsin as well as the other class' state as well. We then write a sentence or two about something we learned or found interesting as well. This will be a great way for us to practice our map skills in an authentic way in addition to creating an information text that others can read. 

We learned how to insert a picture, add text, change the text size and font and even change the background color of the page. Each time we add a page to our book, we'll learn another feature of BookCreator until we will be able to independently create our own books. BookCreator is a paid app, but definitely worth the money. If you're looking for a great way for your children to practice their writing skills while also being able to be creative, I highly recommend this app. This is also an app that students will use throughout their years at Glenbrook as well as at the middle school.

Characters

Right now in reading we are learning about characters. We have discussed the difference between main characters and supporting characters. Ask your child to tell you the difference between them and how they know.

Main characters: appear in a majority of action or pictures in the book and often are on the cover or in the title of the book

Supporting characters: usually have some sort of relationship to the main character and do not appear in as many scenes or pictures. 

Today we watched a Brain Pop video about characters. You can access it by clicking on the picture below. I will send the login/password info to you since it is a subscription site I can't put the information on the blog.

Sight Words

Looking for a different way to practice sight words with your child? Here is a YouTube video which I put through Safeshare.tv (there will be no ads or other videos showing on the side) 

Just click on the picture and away you go. 

Ticket buying

On Fridays that we do not have guidance, I open up our PBIS ticket store. Kiddos are able to earn tickets throughout the week in class as well as in the hallways and from their specials teachers by being respectful, responsible and safe. Tickets can then be redeemed for rewards such as sitting at the teacher's desk for the day, lunch in the classroom, choosing something from the prize box, and oh so much more.

When we count our tickets, we put them into piles of 10s and 1s to reinforce the place value concepts we are continually working on in math. After putting them in piles, I've been having the kiddos take a picture of their piles in SeeSaw and then write on their picture to show how many tickets they have. They also record themselves counting their tickets.

This week as a class we redeemed over 400 tickets! Holy cow!!!! 

This is what over 400 tickets looks like!

Math fun

Our birthday girl putting chickens in the pen on the Smartboard

We are starting module 4 in math this week. A good part of this module will introduce us to subtraction and subtraction language. As we started out today, we spent some time acting out "take away" stories. We made a chicken coop on the floor out of chalk and then had several students act like chickens. We then had a student act like a fox and chase some of the chickens out. We did a lot of talking about what it meant when some of the chickens "flew the coop". After playing the game in a concrete way, we switched our learning to representing what we were doing with pictures. We'll be doing more picture representations and acting this week before moving to more abstract problems where it is just the numbers (6-2). Or goal is for students to truly understand subtraction language (take away, flew away, ate, rolled away, etc) before moving into using abstract language such as "minus"

We also practiced our fact fluency today with a game of Kahoot! We are definitely getting better with our count on facts ( facts where we add 1,2, or 3) 

Any help you can give your child at home to reinforce these facts would be greatly appreciated. We always say the big number first and then count on. For many, it would still be beneficial to have them use objects to count-on. 

For example, put 3 pieces of Halloween candy out of the table and then ask them how many they would have if they got 2 more. Put two more pieces to the right of the original pieces and then have your child say 3, move one more over and say 4 and then move the last one over and say 5. At this point, just working on facts to 10 would be wonderful but if your child is ready, feel free to go to 20.