What's the Weather?

Through our study of the weather, we are practicing many things such as: reading for the main idea and looking for supporting details, writing poetry (see a previous post), and learning about different types of measurement tools and what they are used for.

We learned about key ideas and details while reading our Scholastic News.  It was an article about the good and bad things that the wind does. 

We also read some books about rain and used excerpts from the text to discover details used to support the main idea.  The boys and girls got into groups and used highlighters to discuss and look for repetitive words that would give them a clue as to the detail the author was emphasizing in that passage.

                    

We learned about the water cycle and made a diagram.

We wondered about clouds and practiced writing questions.  Later we read some books about clouds and used an internet site Weather Wiz Kids to answer as many questions as we could.

                          

We also learned different types of clouds and the type of weather they bring.  Then, everyone created examples of four cloud types.

 

We also learned about many different instruments meteorologists use to measure and predict the weather.  

 

We will be finishing our weather unit this coming week along with learning about Earth Day.  Stay tuned!

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!

Oceans of Fun!

 The last half of March we dove into learning about ocean habitats and the animals that live there. We began by watching a video that takes the view from the seashore, to tidal pools, to the coral reef, to the deep ocean discussing the creatures that inhabit each particular zone. Each student chose an ocean animal to research and completed an assisted research project. The kiddos poured over books and used printouts from Enchanted Learning to find facts about their animal and recorded them into a special report booklet. We used an online program called Tagxedo to create a type of word cloud to enhance the front cover of the individual reports. Students used words specific to their animal to type into the Tagxedo program and chose an illustration to fill with the words. They were amazed at the results!  The boys and girls took turns sharing their completed reports, so, everyone learned about a variety of ocean animals.

To help the boys and girls further understand the relationships between all creatures and plants we learned about food chains, first through a "United Streaming" video about humans and the food we eat, then, by viewing a Magic School Bus video titled "Gets Eaten" in which the characters become a part of the oceans food chain.  Following a discussion of the two videos everyone made an ocean food chain. We also read a book titled "Who Eats What?"  

Then, everyone made their very own paper replica of a food chain. 

Our book focus was a wonderful little story about a clever little fish named "Swimmy." 

We used this to practice story sequencing,

to practice writing a story summary,

to learn about fact vs. opinion,

to practice writing opinions,

to learn about character traits,

and to discuss during a session of our "Brown Bag Book Club" (see an earlier post about this).

We also had fun using various textures to create a picture similar to the illustrations in the book.

To begin a poetry unit, we learned about "acrostic" poems and brainstormed words to use to describe the ocean.  Each student had a variety of words to choose from to complete their own poem.  As you can see, each line of the poem needs a word that begins with a particular letter.

We had lots of fun learning about the ocean!

There will be much more poetry to come as April is National Poetry Month!  See you soon!