Catching Up With Our Class!

Sorry it's been so long since the last post! We have been busy in first grade. Even though the students are on break, I am still thinking about them and wanted to share some of our activities from November and December.

One of our favorite activities in November was making homemade butter!  Since we learned about how things were long ago, we tried making butter using heavy whipping cream, baby food containers, marbles, and our own muscles! Students had a container with whipping cream and one marble and shook it until the cream turned to butter. It took quite a bit of shaking but the results were delicious!

December gave us an opportunity to complete some great STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) projects. First, we built shapes using marshmallows and toothpicks.

Next up we read the Gingerbread Man, and in the version we had, the Gingerbread Man gets eaten by the fox while crossing the river.  :(  We decided to construct our own bridges to help the Gingerbread Man make it safely across the river. Students were given different materials to test out and even tried different numbers of cubes to see how much weight their bridges could hold.

Finally, we had two very special visitors: Mrs. Coots' mother-in-law and aunt-in-law! They graciously brought in pre-made gingerbread houses and the students were able to decorate them using a variety of candies. The gingerbread houses and candies were an exciting way for us to review what we had learned earlier about shapes!

Our Busy October

Warning: This post might make you want to go back to first grade!

We have kicked off October with some exciting activities. First up, we had two firefighters visit our school! Firefighter Matt read stories to the entire first grade crew.

A couple days later Firefighter Jeremy taught us all about fire safety! We learned what it sounds like when a smoke detector goes off and what to do if there is a fire in the house. Firefighter Jeremy even showed us how he puts on his entire uniform and we touched some of his equipment. The students loved receiving their firefighter hats and becoming fire safety experts!

We also did some hands-on learning activities involving food. Our class has been studying landforms and created our own islands, inspired by Australia, using sweet treats! Take a look at the pictures and see if you can figure out what each treat represents (we couldn't find anything green so the hills are marshmallows!). The students even drew their own map keys to help you figure it out!

We also celebrated Walk to School Day with a walk around our school since it is unsafe for students to walk to school on the highway. The students learned about different countries on their walking journey. Thank you to the parents and family members who joined us on our walk!

 Finally, we have been studying the day and night sky and learning about how the sun, earth, and moon interact. Our students worked hard on creating the phases of the moon using cookies!

What's Happening?

The first month of school is coming to a close, and you're probably wondering what we've been up to!  The answer is... a lot!  Read on to see for yourself.

First off, we'd like to thank all the dads, uncles, and grandfathers who came out Friday morning for All Pro Dads!  It meant a lot to our students to have you there!

Last week we had some exciting visitors - Mrs. Coots' mom, dad, and grandmother.  They drove all the way up from Florida and spent a few hours with the class last Friday.  The students particularly enjoyed meeting Mrs. Coots' dad.  He performed magic tricks and kept us laughing with jokes!

The students also loved teaching Mrs. Coots' family how to play our math games.

Our favorite activity though has been reading with the fifth graders!  Our first graders have partnered up with fifth grade students to practice reading strategies.  The first graders read from the same passage each week to build their fluency and vocabulary.  These passages are aligned to our social studies and science standards.  The fifth graders then read books to the first graders for a few minutes.  Beginning in January, we will take this to the next level, and the fifth graders will learn how to time their first graders' reading.  Our students will work on beating their reading score each day!

That's all for now!  We can't wait to tell you what we're up to next.  Until then, Mrs. Coots will work on her photography skills. ;)

Homework

If you've ever received homework from your child's teacher and wondered, "What do I do with this?" then this post is for you!  In first grade, students are expected to go from reading words like "the," "cat," or "have" to trickier words like "before," "laughed," and even "marvelous."  Our first grade team has worked hard to put together fun and interactive ways for students to practice these words, but we need your help!  We will be sending home sight words for your student to practice at home each week.  These words are the most common words found in children's books so it is critical that our students learn them!  Please check out the video below to help you better understand how to complete your child's sight word and math homework.  As always, thanks so much for everything you do for your child, and let me know if you have any questions.

Character Education

Our class is having a great first week of school!  We have illustrated pictures, read stories, explored items in the classroom, and played games.  I am so pleased to have such a wonderful group of students!  They are proving to be excellent listeners and very creative.  I wanted to share with you a video I made regarding my behavior management system in the classroom.  Instead of using a typical color chart, or "clip chart," our class is learning how to be good citizens by embracing 7 character traits: perseverance, trustworthiness, respect, caring, fairness, citizenship, and responsibility.  Each day your student will come home with the number of tickets earned for each character trait.  So far we have discussed responsibility, respect, and fairness. Over the next week we will learn the rest.  Please take a look at the video to see how this system works in our classroom.  Be sure to let me know if you have any questions, and please excuse my presentation skills!  I enjoy  teaching children, not adults. :)

Back to School Fever!

Dear Parents, Friends, and Families,
Welcome to our classroom blog! I am thrilled to be your child's teacher for the 2015-16 school year. It's still summer break but I am working hard to prepare for an awesome year! I hope to use this blog as a way to share classroom information (homework, newsletters, etc) as well as to keep you updated with all the exciting learning we'll be doing this year. Please let me know if you have any questions by leaving a comment below or by emailing me at rcoots@ecps.us. Be sure to follow the blog by email so you don't miss any updates! You can do this by signing up to the right of this post. Thanks for checking out the blog! I look forward to working with you and your child this year!