January 25 - 29

We started this week off with a power outage! We were still able to start our day normally and went into the hall where we read books to a Kindergarten class and we talked a lot about what needs/doesn't need power. Later in the week we read a book about electricity.

In reading we have been talking about having mental images when we read, and how students may have different mental images because they have different schema or background knowledge. We also talked about how our mental images may change as we read because we get more information from the story and new ideas. Next month we will focus on retelling a story with a beginning, middle, and end. It can be hard for some first graders to distinguish between the main events to retell, versus every detail they can remember.

In writing we have been working on writing instructions for how to log on/off the computers in our computer lab so that other first graders who have never used the computers will know what to do. Having that audience in mind really helped students give more detailed steps. We have also begun to prepare for our school-wide writing day in mid February when we will share a piece of our writing with families and a buddy class!

In math we set aside some measurement activities and have been busy counting all the coins that families have sent in for the Haiti fundraiser. So far we have counted $37.75 and there are many more pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters more to go! Thank you for your generosity. We divided the pennies up into groups of ten to make the counting go faster. You can see many of them in the slideshow. Next week we will be using scales to compare weights and we will celebrate the 100th day of school on February 4th.

Here are some students working with Spanish/English puzzle vocabulary cards at a reading center: