Publishing Party

We published our nonfiction writing!

It was hard work revising, editing, and rewriting our final copies for our published piece!  

We decided to celebrate.  

The genre of writing that we are studying is non-fiction (informational) writing.  Students published an "All About" book that showed their expertise on a particular topic.  

Soon we will be finishing up our non-fiction writing unit, and this makes me a little sad because it's my favorite writing unit!  

I think many students enjoyed it as well.

Integrating Social Studies and the Arts

This week 1S had an opportunity to gather with other first graders for a special presentation about Native American stories and traditions.  This presentation was led by Diane Moran, of Arts Partners. Arts Partners is a unique program that joins fine arts resources of the St. Louis Community with our school. When we gathered, we immediately felt like we were a part of a Native American celebration.

Click on the video to view how our gathering began.

We were immediately engaged and interested.  Students were shown authentic Native American dress and participated in a special dance and song.

Some students demonstrated a Native American game that required some concentration and skill.  

We are fortunate that our first graders have the opportunity to participate in these wonderful Arts Partners activities.  

Honoring Others

We took some time to honor our nation's Veterans this week.  

Thank you Veterans for your service!  We appreciate you!  

To view the awesome slideshow put together by our counselor (Mrs. Arnold) and music teacher (Mrs. Ladue) of Veterans in our OB family, please click here.

Also, some of the art work that students created with our amazing art teacher, Mrs. Roth, is being honored at the Board Office of our school district.  One student and his mom decided to take advantage or their day off on Friday to view the artwork in person.  Our one-of-a-kind superintendent decided to meet with them and even gave them a tour of her office!  
How cool is that? 

And finally, we have been honoring some of the traditions of Native Americans we have been studying.

We will continue to learn about many other Native American tribes and regions in the upcoming weeks, and we will recognize and honor many of their customs and traditions during our learning.

Halloween Party 2015

Halloween Party was so great! Thank you again to our wonderful room parents and all of the parents that came to help out.  One room parent took some fun photos, and we wanted to create a fun photo album to go with it.

Click here to view this video

Learning to Read & Write Nonfiction

We have been hard at work learning how to read and write non-fiction text.  Some of the tips we learned about being a great non-fiction reader so far are: 

  1. Take a Sneak Peek Before Reading
  2. Stop and Study Each Page
  3. Notice the Text Features
  4. Chat About a Page in the Book
  5. Think About What Might Come Next

Since we have been noticing so many text features, we have started to include some text features in our own writing.
                                       

Some of our writing mini-lessons have also included: 

1. Think About Questions the Reader May Have
2. Write in Twin Sentences to Explain
3. Make Comparisons to Help the Reader Understand
4. Draw Detailed Illustrations with Labels

After the mini-lesson, students are invited to share the strategy that they used with the class.

Students are also invited to share their entire story in the Author's Chair at the front of the room at the end of the lesson.  

Students have really enjoyed both our reading and writing non-fiction units of study.  We have learned about many exciting topics...sculpting, drawing, hockey, rivers, wolves, dogs, cooking... you name it!

Seurat and His Dots

We took a departure from our normal routine to celebrate Dot Day.
What exactly is Dot Day?...

We took the term, "Dot Day" rather literally.  :)

We began by completing a "close read" about George Seurat and wrote about our learning.

We learned some interesting things about George Seurat.  We learned that many people did not like his new way of painting.  He  became friends with Vincent Van Gogh and Edward Degas, and they created their own  group of independent artists.

We tried the pointillism technique after learning about it.  We started with a simple image and used colored pencils.  Then we tried creating more complex images with dots.

Mrs. Roth let us use some of her Seurat work for inspiration and learning.  

Then we tried using this technique with paint and q-tips.

Here is a video of the students working on their pointillism project.

When we went to art class, Mrs. Roth challenged the students even further to create a clown using the pointillism technique in the art room. 

We took photos of the clown pointillism projects using a 3D app. Students can look at their clowns with 3D glasses to make the clowns appear 3 dimensional.

We had a great time learning and celebrating Dot Day!

Close Reading

1S has been learning about many topics using non-fiction text and also using a strategy called close reading.   

After reading about apples, we integrated math and science to make a recipe.  Students assisted with the process.  We even had a student photographer documenting the steps of "How To Make Applesauce."

We voted and counted how many students liked the taste of the particular recipe we used.  Some students made suggestions on changing the recipe to suit their taste. 

We will continue to learn about many non-fiction topics using a close-reading strategy.  In first grade, we learn to read and read to learn. 

Learning About Ourselves and Others

One of our first Social Studies units in first grade is to learn about ourselves, share about ourselves, and then learn about each other.  We spend time getting to know each other, learning about interests, and seeing what our similarities and differences are.  One activity that we enjoyed doing is sharing our interests with a partner and creating a Venn Diagram to note how we are similar and how we are different.

A Venn Diagram is a graphic organizer of information.  Similarities go in the center of two overlapping circles, while differences are noted in the left or the right.  

New discoveries about ourselves and others in our class connect us and help us appreciate one another.

A Writer's Inspiration

What inspires you?  That was the question we asked ourselves when creating a collage of inspiration for writer's workshop.  Students created a collage of pictures and words to keep in their writing folders to use when thinking of a new topic for writing.  Our first writing genre that we are studying is personal narrative.  When we write personal narratives, we zoom in on a small moment in our lives.

Students enjoyed putting their collage together.  It was inspiring me to think of ideas for my stories too! 

Students will be able to use this collage along with other brainstorming lists we have created for personal narrative stories.  

Before we made our collages, we read The Best Story.  We learned that the best stories are stories that come from the heart.