Holiday Concert Time!

We are stars! Thank you Mrs. Cardillo for all of your hard work in preparing for the concert.

We wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year!

Check out our Fairy Tale and Winter Reader's Theatre

Ms. Ball has been working hard with the class preparing to perform plays. We practiced reading with expression and got to use puppets too! Watch our movies below.

Fun with Reading

We have great readers in our class and we can prove it! Listen to four of the fantastic readers read Hey Diddle Diddle. They practiced reading with expression and even threw in a funny voice too!

To hear them click here.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

To put you in the holiday spirit we have recorded a song for you.

Click here to hear the Turkey Song.

Watch the movie below. We made corn muffins and then had a feast just like the Pilgrims.

November's Character Education Awards

It is my pleasure to announce that two children in our class won the Cherry Lane Character Education Award for the month of November.

Congratulations!

The class is working on being TRRFC (terrific). That means we are trustworthy, responsible, respectful, fair, and we show citizenship.

Happy Halloween

The Halloween festivities began on Thursday afternoon when we displayed our Spooky Houses for the kindergartners and second graders.

We had a spooktacular day on Friday with all of our Halloween celebrations.

The day began with a laser light show by Prismatic Magic sponsored by the PTA. The kids loved it!

Next we carved a pumpkin after designing the face with shapes we are using in math.

The excitement did not stop there. Mrs. Greenhut and Mrs. Fahmi (the class parents) brought in two great Halloween craft activities. Then we finally got to dress up in our costumes for the parade!

Parent Information about First Grade Literacy

One of the most exciting things about teaching first grade is the metamorphosis that each child undergoes as a reader. There is such a wide range of readers at this age and parents may not know what is expected of a first grade reader. In my cyber travels I have found fantastic resources for parents on the Literacy Information and Communication System (LINCS) web site. In particular I saw a publication entitled Shining Stars: First Graders Learn to Read. I hope you take the time to look it over because I think it is very informative and not too long to read :).

Also, I found a quote that I liked so much, I put it on the home page of the class web site.
It is...

Reading without understanding. It's like...

Spring without flowers

Chocolate chip cookies without chips

Facebook without friends...

It's not really reading at all.

-International Reading Association Inspire newsletter (November 2010)

We are authors!

The class has published their first books of the year. We celebrated by sharing our books with a partner and then putting it in the "Class Books" basket in our classroom library.

Here are some pictures.

A New School Year Begins

Already September is almost over. We have spent the last couple of weeks getting to know each other and learning routines. We are now learning to make predictions and connections (text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections) when we read. Good readers are good thinkers. In math we are developing our sense of numbers and now we are beginning to explain our answers to addition problems.

Here is a video showing what we have been up to lately.

Olympic Day 2010

We had gorgeous weather on the raindate of Cherry Lane Olympic Day 2010. Thank you to all of our fans that supported us through each of the events, provided sustenance, and kept us hydrated. In the end, the Red Team won but we all showed great sportsmanship.

Dinosaur Rocks Assembly

We had a great assembly yesterday (Thank you PTA!) about dinosaur bones and fossils. We got to see how large and small some dinosaurs were and even got to touch a meteorite!

Later on, we got to do an archeological dig for minerals, gems, fossils, and shark teeth.

Watch the video clips of our experience.

Our Trip to Bear Mountain

We had a great time and weather at the Bear Mountain Zoo. It was a great finish to the research we have been doing on woodland animals. We took notes, synthesized the information, and wrote a report that we typed in Keynote. Watch the video to see the woodland animals.

Our Trip to Bear Mountain

We had a great time and weather at the Bear Mountain Zoo. We saw a statue of Walt Whitman.

We also saw the twin bears Pal and Sade (Palisades) who are cinnamon bears. Reaba was there too (bear spelled backwards).

Then we went to the reptile house.

The class had an amazing time at the zoo. Thank you to all the parents that chaperoned and joined us on our trip.

Happy Mother's Day

We honored our mothers in the first grade annual Mother's Day play. Thank you Mrs. Tamburro for filming it (I was backstage). The video file is so big I am going to have to break into smaller segments to load on the web.

Earth Day 2010

We had a wonderful Earth Day and hope you did too.

We learned about how to reduce, reuse, recycle. Watch the movie to see us rocking out.

We also had a chance to do an Earth Day Reader's Theater play.

Celebrating LitWorld's World Read Aloud Day

We participated in LitWorld's World Read Aloud Day. Check out our video that tells the world, "I am a reader..."

Folktale Reader Theatre Play

As part of our work on developing fluency when reading we have been practicing with reader's theatre. The class performed The Three Little Pigs, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, Little Red Ridinghood, and Little Red Hen (in this case, rooster). When asked, the kids will say that they are reading with expression. Thank you kindergarten classes for being our audience.

Here are videos of the plays.

LitWorld's First World Read Aloud Day March 3, 2010

Click below to find out more information about World Read Aloud Day!

LitWorld's First World Read Aloud Day March 3, 2010

We will be participating by creating movies about what it means to be a reader.

Rockland Read In 2010

It was a fabulous and festive occassion on Friday for a Valentine's edition of Rockland Read-In. We had Dr. Leach, Mrs. Hoberman, Mrs. Rubin-Richards, Mrs. Tamburro, and Marcus (a former student) read to us.
A special thanks goes to Mr. Gonzalez from the Ramapo Central School Board for performing an animated and fun reading of Juan BoBo. Judging by the pictures the students were captivated.
The fun did not stop there. We had time to read to our special "friends" (aka stuffed animals) and each other.
Later on it was Pigeon Party time! We celebrated our work with Mo Willems' books involving his characters Pigeon, Gerald, and Piggie. I will have to get my hands on his latest books featuring the character Cat the Cat! Thank you to all the parents and grandparents that came in to support the children in their writing and reading endeavors. I hope you love Mo Willems' books as much as we do.
Check out a slideshow of pictures from the day.

We read to each other and our special stuffed friends.

Parents don't forget to sign your child up for Raise a Reader!

Stay tuned for more information on this great program!

Dear Parents,

Please help us spread the word:

Cherry Lane has entered the Raise a Reader program, sponsored by Parents, Parents.com, and the International Reading Association.
Please check out our school page with your child or children: www.parents.com/reading/cherrylaneelementaryschoolsufny Parents can register their children to read with our school beginning March 8. About Raise a Reader:Motivate your children to read by rewarding their reading milestones! The Raise a Reader program allows your children to log their reading minutes as they devour books throughout the spring. Raise a Reader will track which schools have the most logged minutes per student, one winning school will receive a $5,000 library grant!
The free program includes a personalized school page where our students, staff and parents can watch our school's progress. Online spelling games and worksheets keep it fun, and there are recommended books for every age level. Plus, children who log at least 60 minutes of reading each week will be entered for individual prizes.
Fondly,
Ms. Rubin-Richards

Top 5 FREE and great websites for kids when reading

Well some great websites have come my way over the years and if you are looking for websites as resources or for games here is a small list of all the great sites out there.

In no particular order:

1. Readkiddoread is a website to find books for kids at certain ages. There is a description of the books and links to buy the books from stores such as Barnes and Noble and Walmart.

2. Starfall.com not only has phonetic books but if you dig deeper into the site, you will find folktales and other types of electronic books.

3. Professor Garfield has all sorts of games and activities to do beyond reading.

4. iknowthat.com is a website that has games for all subjects. You do not have to pay for it either. When the registration page comes up you just click on "maybe later."

5. PBSkids Between the Lions is great as well because if you click on "stories" it will read stories aloud while highlighting the words said.

Learning about Solids and Liquids

This week we explored the properties of solids by building towers with different materials such as a paper cup, screw, wooden cylinder, rubber band, aluminum foil, straw, piece of cloth, plastic triangle, wire, and plastic tube. Watch to see how we constructed our towers and then our discussion about what worked.

Today we looked at liquids and their characteristics. We noticed that liquids can be bubbly, different colors, "see through," "sticky," and slow. Next we get to play games to learn vocabulary associated with these characteristics such as bubbly, foamy, transparent, translucent, viscous, and colored.