Tuesday Centers

Well, today the kids exclaimed that it was one of the "most fun centers day ever!" so I would like to take the opportunity to post some pictures!

    To explore why (in first/second grade) we can’t subtract a larger number from a smaller number we explored with dice. We rolled for an initial sum and then wrote that as the minuend. We rolled again for the subtrahend which had to be smaller than the previous number since the subtrahend is subtracted from the minuend. When we saw the equation 4-9=__ we realized we had to roll again to find a lesser subtrahend.

We also used Wiki-sticks to form our spelling words based on our differentiated lists and our phonemic principle 'est'!

Motion Exploration

This week we started our science unit on motion. We discussed pushes and pulls and how they have been all around us without us even realizing it! We explored motion, distance and speed. We wrote new words for our work wall to include: motion, speed, position, push, pull, and friction. We also completed a sort of pictures of everyday activities and glued them under PUSH and PULL headings; this brought up the realization that some things are pushed and pulled. To wrap up the first day of motion exploration we pushed toy cars, rolled Ping-Pong balls, and pulled on springs for authentic exploration (this helped us to see friction in action, which is a very abstract concept). What a fun day!

The Key to Math Is Understanding Numbers

It has been a goal in our classroom to not only understands how numbers work but also what a number really stands for, or its value. We are using different manipulatives to represent numbers and show how in an equation if you change one part of the number sentence you will also influence another. We used keys and number mats and had the keys represent ones, fives, and tens and worked through equations together to see, with tangible objects, how numbers work and what we should see in our minds when we read a math equation.

A Peek at Our Centers!

Here is a peek at three of our favorite centers!

We love when a center involved math (especially when it is a math game)!

We also really enjoy science and technology centers.

Here is a fun literacy center involving compound words.

We were so great at this center we had to have one of our students call a tie breaker! 

Seasons Book

To go along with our study of seasons we created our very own books. We were sure to include a title page, author name, page numbers, and table of contents since it was a nonfiction book. Take a look!

Writer's Workshop

After the morning meeting we begin our day with Writer’s Workshop. It is a great time to put our thoughts on paper. We have special writing paper and a rubric that is displayed on the board so we can check that the work we turn in is “quality work”. Our writing is then placed into a folder and we make sure to keep it in chronological order so we can see how our writing is improving. This week one of the students noticed how full our folders were and how papers might start to fall out. So, we had a publishing party and hole punched our writing, placed it in our own binders, and flipped through to see how much our writing has developed already. We were pleasantly surprised!

Veterans Day

  In honor of Veterans Day we began the day by creating our own flags that said what freedom means to each one of us. Some of our thoughts:

"Freedom is playing in my room."

"Freedom is eating my desserts."

"Freedom is a playground.”

“Freedom is living my life and being free and all the things I do.”

Later, we submitted our own messages to the Kids Thank a Veteran website. We hope that our messages express how truly grateful we are.  

“How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!”-Maya Angelou

Jewish American Heroes

We have been studying biographies and we came across a book titled Portraits of Jewish-American Heroes.
As a class we selected to study and compare Levi Strauss and Hank Greenberg. Please ask your child more about the two Jewish-American Heroes!

We used a Venn diagram sentence strip chart and wrote our own ideas and organized them under the titles Levi Strauss, Hank Greenberg and both.

Here are some snapshots of our work!

math + games = fun learning

For mathematics reinforcement we have started a few math games; look how much fun we are having!