Fun with Fractions

Fair shares, equal parts, and fractions have been on the minds of my first graders lately as we have been practicing with these during the math portion of our day for the past couple of weeks. We wanted to share just a few of the activities we have been using to deepen our understanding, and to give you an update of what we've been up to in math lately!

The boys and girls created some cute fraction pictures and wrote about the fractions that were used to make them.

Everyone had fun playing matching or sorting type games with a partner or in a small group.

Individual seat work was also used for a practice activity.

Of course, we continue to practice problem solving, addition/subtraction strategies, math facts, telling time, and much more each day through our daily math journal activities, practice, and timed math fact tests.  Next, we will be learning more about measurement! 

Poems,Poems, Poems!

April is National Poetry Month!

My first graders have been very busy writing poetry the last couple of weeks.  They began in March with an acrostic poem about the ocean and since then they have been writing poems about spring.  Using their five senses they created "sensory" poems of things we see, feel, hear, smell, and taste in the spring.  These were very cute!

Next, we learned about personification through our weekly poetry, and by learning about a famous author, born in nearby Galesburg, Illinois.  His name is Carl Sandburg and he wrote an interesting poem about Fog that we illustrated after reading.

Everyone then did a wonderful job of writing a "persona" poem about the wind in which the wind acts like a person. 

Another poetry style we learned about is called "diamante."  Each line of poetry has a different number of words helping to form the "diamond" shape.  

 

The last type of poetry we added to our study is known as "quatrain."  It consists of four lines of poems written in couplets.  This proved to be the most difficult, but my students persevered and produced some awesome poetry!

Needless to say, the walls outside our classroom were covered from top to bottom with all of the great work the kiddos have been producing during this unit of study.  I am so proud of my first graders!