Native American Unit

Our Native American unit culminated in sharing our Native American home projects. 

Every one of the five regions we studied was represented.  The students did a wonderful job sharing their projects with the class.  The students shared: 

1. The name of their Native American home
2. The region where the Native American home was located 
3. The materials they used to create it
4. The materials the Native Americans would have used
5. How the home was useful to the Native Americans

We spent a little over four weeks studying the different regions during our Social Studies time.  The students learned about the shelter, food, clothing, and customs of each region.  Students also created artifacts that reflected the culture and custom of each region. 

This unit included a visit from Diane Moran, Earth Woman.  She shared authentic artifacts from the Plains regions and told some of the stories that the Native Americans of the Plains told their tribes.

Ms. Moran also shared a game that Native American children played and had some students try it out. 

Students also touched an animal from the Plains region as well.

The students really enjoyed all of the artifacts and our special visitor.

We discussed the similarities and differences of each region we studied.  Here are some other highlights:

 

We learned a great deal about the people who lived on this land before us.  It has truly left a mark and has enriched our understanding of history.

Fall Party 2018

We had a wonderful Fall Party!  Thank you to our room parents and all of the parent volunteers that came to help out.  We had a really great time!  Click the video to see highlights from the party.

Digital slideshow customized with Smilebox

Red Riboon Week

Students enjoyed dressing up to celebrate Red Ribbon Week. 

We teamed up against drugs! 

We're crazy about being drug-free!  Crazy hair day was fun and funny! 

We say BOO to drugs!   

 

Book Character Dress Up Day was a hit!  

OB Eagles are drug free from head to toe! 

We love our OB school spirit and commitment to remain healthy and make strong choices.  Go OB!

2D and 3D Shapes

Students are enjoying our 2D and 3D Shapes unit.  Students are improving their spatial reasoning skills by identifying, classifying, and creating plane and solid shapes.

Students are also working on their shape vocabulary.  Not only are they learning the names of the shapes, they are also learning about the properties of shapes-- number of sides, number of vertices, ability to stack, slide, roll, etc.

Understanding shapes is important in construction and design.

Students will continue to learn about shapes and will gain a better understanding of patterns and repeating patterns in our upcoming lessons.  Our shape unit is a lot of fun!

Author's Celebration

Students enjoy culminating our writing units with an author's celebration.  This is a way to recognize all of our hard working during a writing unit and celebrate our authors.  In October, we culminated our Personal Narrative (Small Moment) writing unit.

Students chose to share in the Author's Chair in front of the whole class or in small groups.   

Each student has individual writing goals to focus on during the unit.  It's awesome to see their writing growth within a unit.

We enjoyed our Personal Narrative unit and we'll continue to grow as writers during our nonfiction writing unit!

Abilities Awareness Week

O.B. students participated in Abilities Awareness week.  The week was planned by a committee of teachers who designed lesson plans that focused on different learning needs, ability awareness, and empathy. 

Special visitors came with Noah and Tabby, the comfort dogs, specially trained to work with individuals who may be going through a difficult time in their life.  Students learned the difference between a comfort (therapy) dog and a service dog.

Students paired up with other first grade classes and learned about fears and phobias with Mrs. Arnold, Down's Syndrome with Senor Martin, and sensory needs with Ms. Wilfhoft.  

 The week culminated in a Field Day focused on ability awareness and empathy.  Students participated in Field Day with their O.B. school family.  This family consists of students from Kindergarten through 4th grade and an O.B. staff member.  Coach Jander and Coach Prange planned the field day activities.  The activities were led by many "actual" O.B. parents. 😀 The kids really enjoyed the time with their O.B. family.  
Thank you to the coaches and all the parent volunteers!

 It was a jam packed fun-filled week of learning!

Dance-a-Thon!

The Dance-a-Thon was a huge success this school year!  

The students had a blast dancing during their P.E. time with 1B and 1H classes and again in the evening with the whole school community. 

A huge shout out to 1S parent, Mrs. Soshnik, and the DAT committee for organizing this wonderful fundraiser!  So much money was raised for our school, and the students really had a great time.  I am so proud of 1S for raising $1,700 for our school.  

That is truly amazing!  

Our students will benefit greatly from your generous donations. 

Even Obi, the Eagle, joined in on the dancing fun! 

Thank you 1S families and all of our OB community!  Thank you also to Coach Jander, Coach Prange, and Miss Ladue for leading us in several dances and songs.  We had a blast!

Some more fun moments of dancing... 😀 

Kahoot!

Since we started playing Kahoot at the beginning of this school year, students have been walking in each day asking, "Will we be playing Kahoot today?!?"  

"What's Kahoot?" you might be thinking... Kahoot is a game-based learning platform played in a group setting.  The game is live and online.  All students connect to the game at the same time.  The questions are delivered on the smart board and students interactively respond to the questions via I-pad.  The game keeps track of the results and displays the correct answers immediately after students enter answers-- giving students automatic feedback and displaying student nicknames on the smart-board when answering correctly.  

We can play Kahoot individually and in teams. 

Some popular nicknames that students display are Oh my 😍😎😏🦄 (followed by various emojis),  Get Wrecked, LOL, and other fun ones. Teachers have the option of creating their own Kahoot games or using ones that other teachers have created that go along with our lessons.  The students are really engaged during this interactive game.

Listen to the reaction of the students when they get an answer correct on the Kahoot game! 😃

Writing Personal Narratives

Students have been hard at work during Writer's Workshop.  Our first unit is writing a personal narrative.  Students learn that personal narratives zoom in on a small moment in their lives.  Students created a collage of ideas to help them with ideas for their personal narrative stories. 

 Some of the mini-lessons have included:  Thinking of an idea,  Zooming in on that moment, Stretching the moment across your fingers (pages of the story), Beginning-Middle-End, Writing details in pictures and in words, and Re-reading the story as you write to make sure it makes sense.  Mini-lessons will adapt and change according to the needs of our class. 

 Students have learned that thinking of questions like "Who? What? How? Why? Where? When?" help us to include details in our small moment personal narratives.

Students enjoy sharing as well as listening to their classmates' personal narratives. 

This school year I have heard students say that they like Writer's Workshop time which is wonderful to hear because they work really hard during this time of our day.

Building Good Reading Habits

Reader's workshop during the second week of school was spent building good reading habits.  The students began by building up their reading stamina. 

Students also learned that good readers take a sneak peek before reading and then check their sneak peek.

Students worked on this skill independently and then with a partner.

Our partnerships are blossoming new friendships.

We look forward to adding to our repertoire of reading habits in the next couple of weeks and build our reading workshop partnerships.