Habitat Rotations

Our first grade team at CCE did a science rotation where each teacher chose a habitat to teach! We allowed our students to choose the habitat they wanted to learn more about!

Mrs. Hamilton turned her entire classroom into the rainforest! It was awesome and the picture just doesn't do it justice! Ms. Dietz made a jeep to take exploring through the jungle! Mrs. Kelly turned her classroom into cave city and the kids had a blast in the dark! Mrs. Z and Mrs. Picket took the kids on an African Safari! My class was the desert. Mrs. Smith and. Ms. Allen were diving in deep to the ocean!
Our kids had a blast visiting the habitats!

Number chat

Book clubs

It's book club time!! This year we had some very special guests model a book club meeting for us to observe! Our guests were our principal Mr. Anderson, our vice principal Mrs. Richardson, our literacy coach Mrs. Rudi and our guidance counselor Ms. Gabriel.

They did a fabulous job discussing the books Oliver Button is a Sissy and Amazing Grace.They discussed text to self connections , text to text connections, character feelings and the message they felt the authors were trying to portray beautifully!

After they left our class made a list of what we observed. The kids picked four books they wanted to start book clubs with this week and everyone chose the club they wanted to participate in. We chose The Recess Queen, The Brand New Kid, A Bad Case of Stripes, and The Royal Bee!

Stay tuned to see our first book club meeting next week!!

2 digit subtraction

Here is today's math lesson! Kudos to Connor for figuring out how to use sticks and dots for subtraction the same way we use them for addition!

Today's Number Chat

The living museum

Every year all of the First Grade classes put on a Living Museum! Each student chooses an important American Historical figure or symbol to research. We expect them to learn 5 interesting facts and explain how their symbol/character has impacted the world we live in today! Everyone did an AMAZING job!

We invite other grade levels, parents, and administration to come view the museum and let the kids show off all their hard work!

Number Chat

Check out my awesome kiddos solving their number chat! They amaze me everyday!

Life Size

During our recent penguin research we discovered that there are 17 different types of penguins existing today! Which is perfect since we have 18 students in our class right now each student (and one pair) got to have their own penguin to measure and draw a life size chalk portrait of their penguin! This way students were able to visualize the actual size of the different types of penguins and gain perspective of just how different they are in size!

Here they are hard at learning :)

We used string to measure the penguin height in inches and then we marked the ends of the string so we could see just how big to draw each penguin.

My Awesome Media Specialist friend and her bubble gum day!!!!

The Library by the Sea: Bubble Gum Day at OPE: We had a BLAST! Our first author Skype with Ruth Spiro was a huge success, she read a 3rd grade class her book, Lester Fizz, the Bubble Gu...

Science Experiments with Penguins

We have been researching penguins for about a month now and the kids are truly AMAZING me with how interested they are in their new learnings!

Here they are buddied up recording their new learnings on sticky notes!

Jade with her awesome new learning...

 

We learned that penguins have two layers of feathers to keep them warm. The outside layer of feathers is coated in oil to help keep out the icy cold water! I asked the kiddos to infer what would happen if we mixed the two liquids. They were not expecting the oil to sit on top of the water! We mixed oil and water in a ziploc bag, drew our observations and then shook the bag up to see if that would help the liquids mix!





Logan AMAZED that the oil stayed on top of the water!

Trey and Kyla checking out their bag of coolness!

In their science journals they recorded what they learned about oil and water, and how what they learned today affects penguin survival in Antarctica!

 

Blubber Gloves

 

We also learned that penguins have a layer of blubber under their feathers that helps keep them warm while sliding around on the ice! 

I filled buckets with ice and a smidge of water for each table. They had one hand in the blubber glove and one hand naked in the ice water! They learned quickly the vitality of blubber in the Antarctic!

 

  The girls wanted to see what would happen to the ice if they burried it in the sand...it melted :)

 Next week we will be learning about the Arctic! Stay tuned to see how different The Polar regions are!

Penguins

Our class has been studying Penguins this month! We have had an absolute blast! I started out by introducing the Schema File Folder originally inspired by the fabulous Debbie Miller in her book Teaching with Intentions (This is actually who I have named my blog after). We charted all of our schema about penguins. The kids actually know a lot of facts already! Then we read Penguins by Anne Schrieber together and I modeled how to record a "new learning"  on a sticky note. We added these to our mental file folder and our chart! All week long I let the kids buddy up and research penguins on their own! They have blown me away with how well they are staying on task and digging deep without me!




We also read Pierre the Penguin and have been watching the live penguin feedings at African Hall everyday at 1:30 our time! The kids have loved this! It is an excellent resource too because the biologist talks about the penguins as she is feeding them! Click here for the link-> http://www.calacademy.org/webcams/penguins/

In our classroom we have 6 different life size penguins on our wall of Antarctica. Mrs. Davidson came in last week to measure the kids and see how tall they are compared to the largest of the penguins...the Emperor penguin! Most of the kiddos are about the same size!

 

 

We learned that the Emperor penguin is about the same size as a 7 year old child...yup!

 

 

Here is our class in Antarctica!

 

Stay tuned for more penguin activities!!

Buon Natale!

This week our first graders traveled around the world to learn about Christmas traditions in other countries. They traveled to Mexico, Sweden, Denmark, China, Germany and Italy. Each one of our first grade teachers chose a country to dig into!  My classroom studied Italy. We had a special visit from La Befana herself!

 

Our class continued to learn about Christmas traditions from Italy today. We learned about The Feast of St. Lucia, St. Nicholas, the Feast of 7 Fish and that the most important holiday symbol in Italy is the Nativity scene. Then we had a taste of Itlay! We had our own "Feast of St. Lucia" (which in Italy will actually occur December 13th) with fettucine alfredo, spaghetti, garlic bread, canollis and biscottis! It was delicious!

Here is Wyatt digging into his feast!

Genevieve, Lily, Peyton, Connor and Evie feasting it up!

Wyatt, Jade, Braelyn, Caleb, Drue, and Logan digging in!

 Grace, Madeline, Dante and Logan stuffing themselves!

Jade loved the pasta!

 

Emma, Senali, Trey, and Kyla say "Buon Natale!"

 Mrs. Davidson brough in our bread and desserts! She also served the food!

 

Blog Brag

Welcome to Gingerville!

My sweet teacher friend Mrs. Kelly has just finished up an awesome Gingerbread Unit with her darling firsties! I just HAVE to brag on her brilliance a little bit. She started out by reading as many of the Gingerbread Man versions she could find to her students. While reading students were making text to text connections and predicting if the stories would end the same.

Since Mrs. Kelly's class theme is pirates students got to pick a Gingerbread story to retell on a pirate ship they designed! Students recorded The beginning, middle, and ending of a Gingerbread story of their choice. Then she put them outside her classroom in the ocean!

She made gingerbread play dough so that her students could smell the gingerbread and make their own creations from the dough. Her students tasted ginger snaps and charted descriptive words from their five senses. Then they thought about how they eat a gingerbread cookie...what part do you bite off first? They charted their class data and it turns out the majority of her students bit off the

Mrs. Kelly asked her students to think about why in all the gingerbread man stories the gingerbread avoids water. Then her class did a science experiment: "What will happen when we put the gingerbread cookie in a tub of water?" Her class documented their predictions in their science data notebooks. Then the class observed the gingerbread cookie in the water and figured out that gingerbread cookies dissolve in water!

Mrs. Kelly and her class then brainstormed what would be in a Gingerbread community! They were inspired by this poem:

If I Could Build a Town

If I could build a town , well then

I know just what I'd make:

An icecream store, a toy store

And a store with bread and cake.

I guess I'd make a park,

And build a nifty fire station.

Say, would you like to help me?

It just take imagination!

 

Then they got to build their own Gingerbread community! They used small milk cartons as the base and covered them with colored paper. They included buildings like a hospital, vet office, mall, movie theatre, JEA, porta potties, and so much more! They decided to name their community "Gingerville" and even named the streets. They each built their own house out of graham crackers and added a neighborhood! Mrs. Kelly and her class had a blast!

 

 



Mrs. Kelly and her first grade class!

 The kids raided the treasure box to find occupants for their homes!