Daily Archives: October 17, 2017

Exploring Light and Sound!

We have been working on exploring light and sound in science right now, within the context of a story about three friends who get lost in the woods while on a hike.

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In small groups in our room,  kiddos rotated through several stations where they explored light in a variety of ways: mirrors, shadows, spectrascopes, and colored tiles.  Kiddos used flashlights in each station to see what they could discover about how light looks, how it travels,  how colors work and how to create shadows.  I love their faces in the pictures and how you can tell just what they are thinking in each picture, exactly what question they are trying to answer or what they are trying to do.  They applied this exploration to what they knew already and also what we had read in our story.   Kids worked in Rm. 112 on sound in addition to their discovery stations in Rm. 111.

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We’re excited to finish up this unit with a novel engineering challenge based on our Global Read Aloud book, as well as with an interview where kiddos can apply and  demonstrate their light and sound learning.  Can’t wait to see how it goes!

Global Read Aloud Week 1: Koala Lou Continued

I shared already about how we finally started this year’s Global Read Aloud, and about many things we had already done with our first book–Koala Lou. 

Well, those predictions and pictures weren’t the only things we did!  As in the story, we created our own version of the Olympics, but made the Robinson Olympics and created animals that we would see in our own “bush” that could cheer on Koala Lou.  We worked with our “pincher” fingers to create our animals, rather than scissors.  Ms. Turken created a fabulous tree for our Koala Lou to climb, and two friends also created a sign.   We were pretty proud, and hung our Olympics in our hall for all to see.

As we went through the week, however, I kept looking at our FABULOUS display thinking something was missing.  Those animals down there, who were supposed to be cheering on their friend Koala Lou, weren’t saying anything!  Also, we didn’t have a sign and so really only we knew what the mural was for but no one else who walked by and saw it knew what our creation was about.

So…we worked another morning to add speech bubbles to our animal friends.  We worked in partners to make sure our work was first grade perfect and that others could read what we were saying.  Our friends helped us make sure we used the word wall, put in all the sounds and had the correct punctuation before we “published” our final bubbles for the wall.

And so now when you walk down our hallway–which is a pretty great location for sharing what’s going on, by the way!–you can tell exactly what’s going on and what the mural is for. And so that way you can more greatly appreciate all the hard work that these first graders have done!  Way to go, Rm. 111 and 112 friends!

What a great way to respond to a great book!! 🙂

#classroombookaday 2017 UPDATE: Week 9

We ended our first quarter this week, and also our first chunk of fun in our #classroombookaday challenge.  We ended up with 142 books in our first 9 weeks together and WOW were there some good ones!  Here’s our wall as of October 13:

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We must have been busy doing lots of other things (including end-of-unit assessments I guess), and only read 10 books this week.  Here are the highlights:

We were in Week 2 of the Global Read Aloud this week, and so Possum Magic was on the top of our list. 🙂  We also added in This and That and also Particular Cow by Mem Fox.  As we like to do, we added in more books by authors we already know, and so we read My Teacher is a Monster by Peter Brown and The Incredible Book Eating Boy by Oliver Jeffers.

As we were studying light and sound in science, we read The Energy We See.   This week was disABILITIES awareness week in our school, so we read Aneil Has a Food Allergy, as we talked about physical disabilities on Thursday.  The Amazing Autumn book was just for some fall fun, as was the book When I Was Five.  Lastly, we added another Show-Me Award nominee to our list, and read Fur, Fins and Feathers: Abraham Dee Bartlett and the Invention of the Modern Zoo.

Whew!  That list makes me a little tired and a lot happy!  Here’s to adding even more to the wall this week as we start a new quarter of reading and learning together!

And just because I’m always thinking about numbers (and reading, too) I figured out 142 X 4 quarters means we’ll be at 568 (or so) and that beats last year’s number!!  Here’s to continuing to share amazing books with amazing kids!