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.