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.   

Math Workshop

Math Workshop involves a mini-lesson related to our math objective, followed by either working with a teacher, working with a partner, or working independently on the related math objective.  Students in 1S seem to be really enjoying working with their math partner.  When students work with a math partner, they can engage in "math talk."  What is math talk... you might be asking?  Math talk is simply a way for students to have meaningful conversations about math while learning to respect and understand there is more than one way to correctly approach and solve a problem.