What's happening in first grade?: December 2016

It is now December and it is getting chilly, both outside and inside our classroom. We are now studying the coldest place on Earth, Antarctica! Maybe your first grader brought home some new whale-related knowledge. :)

We learned about two types of whales, the orca whale and the blue whale. We also learned some new chants about Antarctica, and we reviewed the world map. Ask your first grader to show you what the equator is.

This week we talked about the relationship between addition and subtraction and practiced writing related facts. If you know that 4+3=7, you also know that 7-3=4. When you add two parts, you get a whole. If you start with the whole, and you take away one of the parts, you get the other part. Such an important math concept! (If you want to practice at home, print out the game below-- all you need to play is two dice!) This wraps up our subtraction unit, and we'll dive back into addition next week. Now that we have covered addition and subtraction concepts, we are ready to learn strategies for adding numbers with sums up to 20, such as counting on and using a number line.

This week, we had our first "Magical Monday" and we were able to write about ANYTHING we wanted. Perfect timing after a week-long break. Lots of us wrote about our Thanksgiving Break adventures!

When good writers write, they don't just use any old words— writers are very purposeful with their language. We read Steve Jenkins's Move, which had tons of amazing verbs, all related to animals' movements. Then, very quickly before Workout Wednesday, we made a list together of verbs that we might choose to use in future writing, and we had a chance to write some of our favorites down in our notebooks.

We also read one of my favorite books, How Deep is the Sea? Almost everyone in our class loved it, too (according to the opinion pieces we wrote).

Today we got to watch a short clip from Finding Nemo and while watching, we made many connections to what we are learning in science. The video featured a blue whale AND krill. Watch the full video below, and hopefully your first grader will notice one more thing we learned about. (Hint: it looks a little bit like the bottom part of a broom!)

We had two guest readers this week, Mr. M, who read Lost and Found, and on Friday we had a visitor from a place with bears and lots of snow...Truckee! My grandmother came to read The Mitten! You can sign up on our volunteer schedule if you'd like to be one of our mystery readers!