Time for Africa!

We read Oh No, George! -Mihir

Today we wrote our own stories about discipline after reading Oh No, George! -Aiden

We learned about the African elephant. They dig up roots to eat with their tusks. -Lilliana

Baby elephants have baby tusks and they fall out just like our teeth do. -Owen

We read a book called Little Elephant's Trunk. -Alexis

There are different teams now. Our teams are Lions, Cheetahs, Elephants, Giraffes, and Ostriches. -Antonio

We celebrated Dr. Seuss this week. We did a Cat and the Hat math job during workshop. -Noora

We learned that there are different species of elephants. We are learning about the African elephant. -Jacob

We did Kahoot. It had questions about the world map. -Oscar

We learned new chants. My favorite is the chameleon one, because I like when we say "I'm a... chameleon!" -Krishelle

Last week we used an app called Chatterpix to make animals talk. We made our animals from Europe say facts. -Sophia M.

We made a new world map. It shows where savannas and deserts are. -Logan

We started "Polar Bear March." We get to adopt a polar bear if we walk to school the most. -Brielle

We learned a new word, matriarch. The matriarch is the female leader of a family or group. Elephant groups are led by a matriarch. She is the oldest and biggest. -Lucia

One our new literacy awards that we can earn
for showing respect, making good decisions,
or solving problems!

We did a new blue chart. We are working on discipline. Discipline is when you have excellent self-control all the time. -Savannah

We brainstormed times that we showed discipline after we read Oh No, George! George showed discipline when he was on his walk. -Alexia

We watched a video with a fact family song. It has the same tune as the continents and oceans chant from the beginning of first grade. -Ella

A fact family has 3 numbers, the mama and two children. If we are being scientific, we call the children offspring. If we are being mathematicians, the mama is called the sum or the whole, and the babies are called parts or addends. You can use a fact family to make related facts, which are math facts with the same 3 numbers. There are two addition facts and two subtraction facts. -Jonah

We learned a word called savanna. A savanna is a warm, grassy place with scattered trees. Elephants live in the savanna. -Henry

We learned about two types of trees in Africa. One is called an acacia tree and one is called a baobab tree. -Sam

We wrote on sticky notes about what we know about African animals. -Carson

We have a new inquiry chart with lots of information and lots of questions. -Sophia D.

We learned about the African elephant and it took two days to finish the whole chart. We didn't do smart cards on the elephant or the world map yet. When we first did the map, Miss Kloczko forgot to label the continents, but we reminder her the next day! -Ginger

Old Sac, Chatterpix, and More!

This week I had your first graders email me their contributions to the blog! Here's what they had to say:

We did chatterpix. We painted ostriches. We did smart cards on our ostrich chart. We learned about the ostrich. Ms. Dolly gave us stickers. We learned about the pangolin.  -Alex and Jared

Today we did a spelling test. Yesterday we learned about ostriches. -Ryan and Aaqil

We went on a field trip. Our class did a test. Here are some words we did: sneaking. -Indigo and Carol

We had a field trip. It was fun. For Fun Friday we watched The Lion Guard. -Cooper and Juan Carlos

We learned about ostriches. It was pretty cool. -Jaykob  

We watched the second Lion King, The Lion Guard. I bet the third is going to be The Lion Dad. Liam and Nya are partners again! -Liam and Nya

We learned that a single stride of an ostrich can cover 10-16 feet. And we also learned that ostriches can't fly. On Tuesday we had a field trip. We had to mind our manners every time we answered a question. -Jade and Lea

For Social Studies our class went to a field trip. -Fabiana and Kendall

(Thank you parent chaperones for all of your help and for the fun photos!)

We want to learn about the cobra and the cheetah. -Jules and Lorenzo

A few things the kids didn't mention...

We read a funny book, "Stand Back," Said the Elephant, "I'm Going to Sneeze!"

Mrs. Duley was our mystery reader!

What's happening in Math? The kids are becoming place value experts! This week we learned about hundreds and we continued to work on comparing numbers. Understanding place value makes comparing numbers easier! (We even got to practice comparing numbers during science, when we watched a video of an ostrich racing a football player! 43 miles per hour is greater than 20 miles per hour, so the ostrich is faster!) 

The kids wrote some great poetry! The best part? They went through the entire writing process DIGITALLY! We got some inspiration from Giraffes Here, Giraffes There, used our sentence patterning chart to do some prewriting, and then typed our rough drafts! The kids were doing some pretty advanced stuff... copying and pasting, changing font colors, sharing google docs, clicking between tabs in google chrome... So impressed with their teamwork while learning these digital skills and reviewing all of the parts of a sentence.

Here's something new we've started doing during our Africa unit... picture prompts! Today the kids were shown the photo below and given the task to simply write! So amazed at what they came up with!

Every day, I do my best to encourage my first graders to be good citizens. In the classroom, on the playground, and at home, they seem to have a pretty good idea of what that looks like. But what about being good digital citizens? Because so much of what kids do inside (and outside) of school is digital, and because technology is likely to become even more prevalent in their lives as technology continues to advance, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about digital citizenship. We started with a lesson on internet safety. Ask your first graders if they remember the three rules from the video we watched on Monday! 

Last but not least... Chatterpix. :)

Reason #342 to become a first grade teacher

Have you ever heard of the dik dik? As of last week, neither had I!

But thanks to Indigo, our first grade dik dik expert, I have now!

We are currently studying Africa. Everyone knows about Africa's most famous: the lion, giraffe, the elephant... But last week, Indigo told me that she had learned about the dik dik.

"The what?" I asked her.

"The dik dik! It lives in Africa," she told me.

"Hmm..." I was still puzzled (but interested!) so I looked it up and found that the dik dik did, in fact, exist.

Indigo had recently visited the San Francisco Science Academy Museum, and she couldn't wait to tell me about it when she returned. (I actually got an email from Indigo and her mom the weekend they visited.)

I suggested that Indigo write a blog post for the class to read, but instead, the next morning she marched up to me ready, "I want to teach the class about the dik dik, Miss Kloczko."

"Today?" I asked her.

"Yes, I have some notes in my backpack... external features, diet, habitat, all that. My dad helped me. Can I do a poster like you do?" This girl knows the way to my heart, I'm telling you.

Because Friday was a minimum day with not much time to spare, I told her that on Monday, she could teach the class. She could show me her notes at recess Monday morning, we'd do a little planning together, and after recess before writer's workshop, she would be in charge.

Giggling with excitement, Indigo shared her notes with me, and with the help of Allyson, she traced a picture of the dik dik onto a big piece of chart paper using the projector. "This is how you draw the pictures?!" they asked me. My secret is out...

I'm still smiling. This is why I became a teacher. ♥