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.