Sterling's Snippets: Field Trip Fun!

Greetings! We have had a busy couple of weeks in first grade with lots of learning and fun! Last week we visited Essentia Health for Operation Big Band-Aid and had a blast. Students all took part in a mini-play about visiting the hospital. We had amazing actors and actresses in our class! I hope you were able to view the photos via Seesaw.

Hip-Hip Hooray! We celebrated a birthday in 1st Grade. Happy Birthday, Elizabeth!

A Peek at Our Week

Reading: While reading Amazing Animals, we will work on using text evidence to draw conclusions about what an author doesn't directly say. We will pair this text with several others written by Sandra Markle including What Would You Do with Animal Teeth?, What Would you Do with Animal Feet?, and What would you do with Animal Hair?. These texts will pair nicely with our unit in writing as well. We continue to learn about R controlled vowels (ir, er, and ur) this week. Last week we had a blast learning about ar and or on our treasure hunt.

Writer's Workshop: Students participated in a gallery walk to showcase their writing skills with one another as we wrapped up personal narrative writing. Now, we are knee deep in research in first grade! Students began the research process by selecting a topic (animal) to learn more about. Students will utilize both print and digital resources to answer research questions. Last week we began collecting information working hard to identify key words. Over the next month, students will continue researching, draft and publish an All About _____ book. We are hoping to have our books complete for the Reading Medalist program where students will also share art work and writing in the classroom after the program.

Math: We continue to work with two and three digit numbers and place value in math. Students are working to decompose numbers in their expanded form. Last week students were introduced to the symbols for greater than and less than with a fun alligator chant: "Hungry for lunch, hungry for lunch! Find the greatest number and munch, munch, munch!"

Social Studies: In social studies students began learning about maps. This week several hands on activities will allow students to create maps of the school, classroom and their neighborhood. We will introduce key vocabulary words including map keys, symbols, cardinal directions and compass.