Movement and Learning

Children need to move throughout the day. Adding exercise and movement breaks to the daily routine increases attention, focus and engagement. The first graders love to stretch, dance, count, and move to music!

Birthdays!

We have a few special activities we do in first grade to celebrate birthdays. We make a card and sing to the birthday friend. The children share on their birthday and receive a special birthday pencil and bookmark. They also get to take home the morning message decorated with birthday wishes.  Unfortunately we cannot share snacks on birthdays due to food allergies in the school. We will make sure the children are recognized on their special day in other ways.

Partners Work as a Team

First graders work together during many parts of the day. They play math games together to practice skills. They read their writing and plan stories together. They read just right books and build good habits together.

Building Number Sense

First graders are busy identifying, comparing, visualizing, adding and subtracting numbers during math workshop. They played Compare and Dot Compare this week. They practiced telling which card was more and how they knew it was more. 

They played Plus or Minus 1 Bingo with partners. They developed fluency with adding and subtracting 1 with numbers to 10. 

They also played Quick Images. They saw an arrangement of dots flashed on the screen for 5 seconds and had to make a mental image of it. Then they had to build the image from memory when it was covered. We talked about patterns they saw to help them remember the image. 

Our Classroom Rules

The first graders brainstormed classroom rules together. They discussed important things to do while at school so we all learn, stay safe, and have fun. Our rules are:

Follow the Golden Rule.

Follow directions and be safe.

Try your best and have fun!

Reading Workshop

First graders are learning how to select just right books to read during their independent reading time. They are looking for books that are interesting to them and they can read on their own. They are learning how to build good reading habits like previewing books, checking predictions, and finding ways to engage with books longer by doing something when they finish reading stories. They are also learning how partners work together as a team to read together and build strong habits.

First Week of School!

We had a great week in first grade! We spent time sharing about our vacations, getting to know one another, making new friends, exploring materials and learning new routines.