Busy 1st Graders

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Spice Cake

One of our decodable books that we have been reading in class was titled "Spice Cake". The targeted skill is practice with long vowels with a silent e, mainly the long i sound. The story is about making a spice cake but many of the children were not familiar with spice cake so what's a teacher to do... bring some in for them to try, of course!!!! They were a HUGE hit and was fun to connect our text to our real world in order to build comprehension and motivation to read. Here we are enjoying the yummy Spice Cake!!!!

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What are centers???

We do our Center Time almost everyday so if you are looking for something to talk about with your child each day, you can ask about centers! Each center rotation is for 15 minutes and there are 5 centers to visit each day. The Reading center is always with me and we work on reading in small groups. "Desk Work" is a daily center but the task to complete at their desk varies from day-to-day. Computer center is when the students each log-in under their own user name and password to work on our school-wide Successmaker program. This program has various components, but our class works with Reading and Math. We alternate between the two throughout the week. This program allows each student to work at their own pace, with targeted skills for each individual. It will remediate and challenge, whichever is necessary, to meet the needs of the students. The last two centers each day change. Here are some pictures of the students working hard at their centers. I am so proud of how hard they work, how they are learning to work independently at times and cooperatively at other times, and how far their ability to read is coming along! Center time is daily from 9:20 to 11:20 and at times I have parent volunteers to help "run" a center. If you are interested in helping with centers just for one day, or on a regular basis, and you are available during these times, please send me an email and let me know! It's always great to have parents as teachers, as well! Feel free to email me at: cguerrettaz@fuesd.k12.ca.us . Here are a few pictures of some centers from our class Center Time!!!

Listening Center... listening to a story on tape or CD

Word Wheels... read the words, practice word families, illustrate the words

File Folder Games.. mix of skills involving Math and Reading

Reading Center with Mrs. Guerrettaz

Check back for more Center Time activities!
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Tearing Paper Art Class

This round of art class involved making a creation by tearing paper. It is so funny to watch how difficult it is for some students to actually tear the paper. Some kids get really into it and tear WAY more paper than they need, and others struggle with the concept of NOT any straight edges. As the teacher, I enjoy seeing how each unique personality responds to these art projects. Here are just a few pictures from the class tearing away and making their creations!

You will be seeing the results of this particular project coming home to you, very soon!
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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Holiday Party Fun

Thank you to everyone for your generous donations for our classroom Holiday party! It was a HUGE success and the kids were all very excited and had a great time. We did make little snowmen out of marshmallows and here are just a few pictures of what we created... and then they quickly disappeared! :)

Our next class party will be for Valentine's Day! There will be more information to come in February!
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School-wide Holiday Sing-a-long

Thanks to everyone who participated in our school-wide Holiday Sing-a-long. It was great to see some of the parents there to sing with us! Here are just a few pictures of the class right before we started singing.

In addition to the singing, our school hit our goal of collecting 2,500 cans for the canned food drive so the Principal Mrs. Curcio, our lead teacher Mrs. Foster and the executive board of the Student Council all received pies in their faces. Here are a few photos of Mrs. Curcio:

And Mrs. Foster also getting a pie in her face...

The kids were so excited about this and it was probably the highlight of the assembly, but they sure were great singers, as well! Thank you for your canned food donations. Our class turned in 128 cans!!!
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Writing a story...

We did our first whole story as a class in December. With our writing program, I believe that children need to be able to "say it, before they can write it". This is essential for first graders because they will forget what they were going to write, leave words out, or write an incomplete sentence. So with every story we write together, we will have hand motions to "act out" the story. Using the graphic organizer you will see below we draw "icons" (not pictures because 1st graders will spend all their time drawing, so an icon is a QUICK picture to represent what we want to say). There are actions (or hand motions) for this story, so pull this up on the computer, click on the image to make it larger and ask your child to tell you our story from December! I'll add the text in the caption of the picture just in case they need a prompt. We begin with the elements of a story:

Every story has a setting and a character.
The setting tells us when and where.
The character can be a person or an animal.
Every story has a beginning, middle and end.

One snowy day at the North Pole, a reindeer searched for Santa.
Next, he visited the workshop.
In the end, an excited reindeer found jolly Santa.

After working on developing all the elements of our story and making sure it has an ending. We practice and practice and PRACTICE saying it before we begin to write. This was our first FULL story and I have to say that I was VERY pleased with their writing. Here are some samples of their work!! AMAZING!!!