Native American Clothing, Artifacts, Music, & Dance

First Grade students received a visit from Dianne Moran, a woman who specializes in Native American teaching and story telling.

She had some students model the Native clothing of the Plains.  The clothing included a deer hide dress, a fur hat, and a badger vest.  The clothing was adorned with authentic beads and shells.

The students were able to touch a live red rat snake. This was very exciting for the students.

Thank you Diane Moran for enhancing our study of the Native Americans.

Halloween Party 2016

1S had a GREAT Halloween Party!  Thank you to the head room parent and all of her helpers!  We appreciate everything you do for us.  We had an awesome time!  To see highlights of our Halloween Party, please click here.

Kids Voting 2016

We voted for the President of the United States today in the library.

 

A parent helper helped to check our voter's registration cards while we signed in to vote.

Our voter registration cards were used to verify our identification.

The students selected their choice between the two candidates,

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. 

We are anxiously awaiting the results!

Thank you, Mrs. Kelly and Mrs. Brown for helping to organize Kids Voting 2016.

Partner Work: Learning With and From Peers

During the first few months of school, we spend some time getting to know each other...Not just our hobbies and interests...We learn about each other's learning styles and ways of thinking.  We spend time learning with and from peers.

Students learn many ways that partners help each other learn as well.  In some of our daily reading lessons, we learn that partners work as a team, build good habits together, give reminders, grow ideas together, and give suggestions.

In some of our writing lessons, partners help each other add details to enhance their writing.  

We enjoy learning in different ways: individual work, group work, and partner work.  Working with others is an essential skill for the future.  In many jobs, students will have to work with partners or in teams to achieve a goal. Cooperative learning helps students become better at self and social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making.  It also increases their engagement and active participation in the classroom.

Cheers to learning together!

Dance-a-Thon and Celebration

We had a successful Dance-a-Thon that helped to raise money for new technology for our school. We are grateful for the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends that helped to contribute to this wonderful cause! 

We captured some fun moments from the 

First Grade dance routine! 

Root Beer floats were the perfect way to celebrate!  

Thank you, OBPTO Dance-a-Thon Committee!

Readers' Workshop & Literacy Stations

In our first Unit of Study, students build good reading habits. These habits include taking a sneak peek before reading, smoothing out our voices when reading, scooping up words in phrases, and using many strategies to figure out hard words.

 Along with practicing their reading strategies independently and with a partner, students are able to practice other areas of literacy like word study, writing, and listening to reading.

We will continue to add more rigor to our literacy stations as the year progresses.

Students really enjoy this time of our day.  It's our time to build our reading repertoire and enjoy literacy.  

A Writer's Inspiration: Ideas for Personal Narrative Writing

A personal narrative tells the true story of something that happened to you. In order to write great personal narrative stories, students need IDEAS.  To gather our ideas, we created a writer's inspiration collage.  Students brought in photos or drawings that helped ignite their memories of events that happened in their lives.

Students worked to create a personal collage to keep in their writing folder.  This collage can be pulled out whenever a student begins to brainstorm an idea for a new story seed. 

We learned that great personal narrative stories zoom in on those important moments-- that's why we call them seeds.  Rather than broad topics, we zoom in on one event and really try to capture the details. 

 

We also get writing ideas from reading books.

Students are able to share their personal narratives with the class in our Author's Chair.  Author's Chair often inspires even more seed ideas!  

First Week 2016-2017

First Grade is in full swing!  The new classmates in 1S spent some time getting to know each other. 

Students shared something about themselves, and while doing that we weaved a class web. This web symbolized that we are all an important member of our class.  We help each other, we hold each other up, and we work together.  If one of us lets go, the web falls apart.  Together we keep the web strong and in tact.  We will use this web in future class meetings to help us remember to try our best and keep our connections and relationships strong. 

We worked with partners to explore materials in our classroom and practice classroom procedures. 

Students also worked to increase their reading stamina for our independent reading time during Reader's Workshop.  

Students learned the expectations for Reading with a Partner during Reader's Workshop as well. Their reading partnerships were impressive! 

New friendships and connections were forming this week!  It will be exciting to see our learning progress in the upcoming weeks.  Strong relationships enhance our learning.

Welcome, 1S students!  Here's to a great year!