Tag Archives: first grade

Pictures of the Day: May 1, 2015

I am really starting to love this whole picture-of-the-day thing.  Some days’ pics are better than others, but as a whole, I think it’s encouraged me to think about the day as a whole in a new way.  Eventually (or maybe next year!), I would love to have kids in charge of what our POD is each day.  🙂

Engagement is a GREAT thing, and you can see it all over these faces! Don’t you just love that little smile on Emily’s face? We thoroughly enjoyed the stories we heard as part of the Storytelling Festival today!

Look at those proud smiles! 🙂 You did it!

Then there’s the Science Fair. 🙂  Lauren and Millie worked together (with Millie’s little sister) to create a SUPER project for the Robinson STEMfest, which then went on to the Greater StL Science Fair and got a RED RIBBON!  WOOHOO!!  Like Lauren’s mom said, “Red means ROCK’N!!”  Way to go, girls!

Picture of the Day: April 29, 2015

If you are a friend in Rm. 202, this picture needs no explanation.  But, since most of you have not been spending your weekdays from 8:30-3:40 with a room full of 1st graders, I’ll let you know what this pic is so wonderful.  But first I’ll show it to you. 🙂

Our brave friend, Diego, broke his arm on Monday. 😦  He was gone recovering yesterday and WE MISSED HIM SO MUCH!!  It was so special when he returned today and the class was so happy to see him.  Then it got even better when this afternoon we were talking about our roses, buds and thorns for the day, and most everyone’s rose (their favorite thing from the day) was that their friend was back and that they knew he was ok. 🙂  I was also super impressed when, after receiving a big ‘ole pile of get-well-soon cards from us, Diego asked for everyone’s attention so he could say thank you to them all for being so kind to him (used the microphone and the official attention-getting signal and everything!).  I am not kidding when I tell you I have the BEST CLASS IN THE WHOLE, WIDE WORLD!! 🙂

Picture (and Video!) of the Day: April 27, 2015

Welcome to a new week!  Let’s get started with some super pictures.  This week’s gonna be a good one. 🙂

IMG_4474We have been working on a design challenge in science lately (more later!), and this picture is of some friends working on it.  Even better, it’s a picture of first graders independently documenting their learning with videos explaining how their design works.  Amazing.  It’s cool when 5th graders do it, but when you’re 6 and 7YO and you can do that, somehow it seems better.  And now that we’re all 1:1 in KSD, it’ll continue to happen over and over.  What will these friends look like with tech and learning when they’re in 5th grade?  I’m excited to find out!

Here’s a video of this same work:

Can’t wait to share more!  Have a great week, friends!

First Grade Math-Warm Ups: Week of April 20-23, 2015

This was a short week with only 4 school days anyhow, and I was gone for one of those, so only 2 warm-ups this week, friends.  Still working on data collection….

Monday

The warm-up for this morning directly tied to our work in Math, as it was the basis for a formative assessment.  We had been working on collecting, organizing and analyzing data for many days in whole group and partner situations, and it was time to try it on their own.  It’s hard to see, but there are names signed on each side of the t-chart.  We skipped the post-its on this day to make sure the data didn’t change before we could analyze it (we do this EARLY in the day and hours pass before we talk about it).

IMG_4469Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday

Ok, so we really didn’t spend 3 days doing this one, but with a strange week, we did it on Tuesday morning, but didn’t have a chance to discuss it until Thursday afternoon.  The conversation we had around the analysis is documented on the sheet; the post-its were how we “voted.”  This is good stuff here. 🙂

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Pictures of the Day–April 23, 2015

What a great day back with my friends in Rm. 202!  Besides being a BEAUTIFUL Thursday, we also enjoyed another Walker’s Club day, as well as A.C.E.S. Day, which is a Robinson favorite every Spring.  A.C.E.S. stands for All Children Exercising Simultaneously, and I found out today it’s a 15 year tradition at our school (which is actually almost as long as I’ve been teaching there–I hadn’t realized it started at the same time!).  Here’s a pic from our fun today:

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Ok, so to be fair, it’s not actually from our festivities, but is inspired by them. Sara got to participate in Mrs. Clark’s A.C.E.S. Day routine to the song “Jump” and got some pretty great glasses as a result. Awesome, right? 🙂

For more on how Robinson can shake their booties, have a lot of fun and be healthy, check out teh link to our Facebook page here.  There’s a video and a TON of pictures to enjoy!  I was too busy moving and grooving I didn’t get ANYTHING to share.  Unbelieveable, right?  Luckily pretty much EVERYONE else had a phone or a camera. 🙂

I have one more picture, and I guess actually it’s more a number than a picture, but it’s this:

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That’s our new Walker’s Club total for the April Competition.  I’m amazed and impressed with our steady work towards a goal of winning recess and popsicles (plus having fun and getting healthy!)!  Keep it up, Rm. 202 kids!

Picture of the Day–April 20, 2015

Boo.  I only have 1 picture today, and it’s not even really from today (I know, I could have not told you that and you’d never have known.  Oops.), but it works for today as well as it did for Friday.  I was going to use it in a Walker’s Club update, and also for Math Warm-Up post, but alas I CAN’T GET THE PICTURES I NEED OUT OF MY PHONE!!  I am not someone who curses or hits things, so I might spit.  Or frown alot.  Or just say, “THIS IS SO STUPID!!”  But then that wouldn’t help anything, so I’ll stop throwing a fit and just show you my picture.  The one picture that DID upload from my uncooperative phone:

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I hope you can see that not only did some super great kids in our class use our numbers to make 10s again, but our total for just Thursday was 70 (our best single day so far), our weekly total was 124 (our best weekly total so far!) and our grand total is 351, which is THE LEAD FOR FIRST GRADE IN OUR COMPETITION!  Oh, and you probably can’t tell that I added 3 laps on this particular day which is my best total to date.  Wow–lots of best happening around here lately!  So technically this picture was not taken today, and the laps weren’t walked today, but there was an announcement on our school-wide news today announcing the standings so far.  Does that count?  Let’s say it does.  And I’ll do better with pictures tomorrow. 🙂

Pictures of the Day–April 16, 2015

This is day 4 of this feature, and I LOVE IT!!  I know I will always write long posts (because that’s just how I roll, plus sometimes there’s a longer story to tell), but I love how the snapshots we’re sharing give you a quick peek into life in Rm. 202.  Hopefully you feel the same! Here today’s gems:

After yesterday's picture of Emily, the group that finished the construction paper rules chart wanted to be in on the fun. Look at all of those words!

After yesterday’s picture of Emily, the group that finished the construction paper rules chart wanted to be in on the fun (see how she’s there again? 🙂 ). Look at all of those words!

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Check it out: we finished our rules today and we were SUPER proud of all of the words that we put on there! It’s a theme that has come up many times this week: how many words we have all around our room. I should post a video of tour of all of the authentic kid-writing that graces our walls. It’s pretty amazing what these little people can do!!

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Today was a Walker’s Club day, and since teachers’ laps count in our competition, I went out to do my part for Rm. 202. I was SUPER proud to be able to add 3 LAPS today! In flip-flops. And a dress. AND I ran some of it. So far I’ve only added 2 laps per week, but this week I got to put down 4 for Rm. 202’s total. YAY!! 🙂

 

Walker’s Club UPDATE–Using 10s to Add Laps

I’m sure you know about our Walker’s Club competition that is happening at Robinson for April.  Well, I’m SUPER excited to say that two weeks strong our class is in the LEAD!!!  We have done both amazing walking AND amazing adding as we figured out our totals.

This week (well really the week ends tomorrow), we used a strategy that I stole learned from my neighbor Ms. Turken to add our laps.  Instead of using the strings to make combinations of 10 (like we had many times previously), we each wrote our lap total on an index card and used these cards to create combos.  It was a great way to be able to manipulate the numbers in an easier way, and actually SEE the 10s–they made piles, after all.

Thomas and C.J. worked hard this morning to add up our mid-week total for Week 3 of the competition.  Their work looked like this (they did the card work, and I put it on the chart):

Way to go Rm. 202 kids–for walking and adding in an amazing way!! 🙂

Pictures of the Day–April 15, 2015

I am creating a hashtag now for this feature, so share it if you like as an easy way for people (including you!) to peek into what’s going on in Rm. 202.  I think I’ll use #RM202POD1415.  Ok, maybe it’s a little long….got any ideas?  Please feel free to share!

Ok, so here’s the cuteness from first grade on this BEAUTIFUL St. Louis Wednesday:

It’s a little heard to tell from this picture, but there are MORE LOST TEETH from Rm. 202 mouths!! The best part of this picture is that Amelia and Charlie lost the SAME tooth last night! Picture-of-the-day-worthy for sure!

After we got done with interactive writing today, Emily said, “WOW–look at all of the words I wrote today!!” OF COURSE I had to take a picture! Way to go, Em!

Remember how Cardinal Day and Hat Day were on Monday? Well in order to do Hat Day, I had to abstain from wearing Cardinal gear (it just didn’t match…). So when I saw Ms. Lewis also wearing her navy Cardinal shirt, we had to pose for a pic. Say cheese!

Nate came over to me at Choice Time and said, “I made a B from the Jenga blocks. Wanna see it?” First of all, I was thinking he meant a BEE not a B, so I was impressed anyway, but then he showed me the detail that he added of the green parts (“I made them from paper and colored them green!”) it was even better. I wonder if he made it that way on purpose because it’s my favorite color….:)