American Symbols on Parade!

Well, I can't believe it has come so fast, but the end of first grade is here! The end of the school year is such a busy time... Have you been wondering what we've been up to?

We had a HUGE audience of students, teachers, and families for our performance of American Symbols on Parade. Thank you families for coming! Watch the video below from one of our many practice sessions to hear us sing a little bit of "The Statue of Liberty" and then watch a little clip from our finale! (Thank you to the Pineda and Safi families for the great photos and video!)

We reviewed all of the American symbols we learned about this year, from making our A is for America books and from singing our American Symbols on Parade songs. Then we talked about our favorites, and we each wrote an opinion piece.

After a little preparation, we did a google hangout (like FaceTime or Skype) with our third grade pen pals in Miss Mortimer's class all the way in New Jersey! Both classes were given a list of questions about local weather, the history of our schools and our cities, local restaurants, what we like to do on the weekends, fun places to travel to, and more. We each got to chat with our pen pal and share something about where we live. We learned so much about the East coast and had fun finally "meeting" our third grade friends!

We have been learning about engineering and about how light and sound waves travel. We got to do some neat experiments!

After spending the year learning about animals from habitats all over the world, we got to become experts on animals of our choice! We chose animals, did some research using the internet and books in our classroom, and then presented our research to our classmates.

And just for fun... I thought I'd draw your attention to the world map that's been up in our classroom all year. :)

October already?!

This week, I decided to share just a little something from each day with you...

Each Monday, at the end of the day, I show the kids the homework for the week. One of our digital challenges this week was to recommend a book. Check it out below!

Created with Padlet

We made a new world map together on Tuesday, showing European immigrants' journey to the United States. We learned that long ago, when the United States first began, many people moved to our country from Europe. When immigrants traveling from Europe reached the U.S. by boat, the first thing they would see was Lady Liberty. It was awesome to see that most of the kids remembered the Statue of Liberty from kindergarten!

On Wednesday, we watched a video of the story Owl Moon read aloud by the author, Jane Yolen. While watching the video, the kids had their writer's notebooks out, and they each made a list of interesting words that they heard in the story. Then, they logged into their google accounts on the chromebooks and with a partner, typed their words onto the padlet page below. It's amazing to see their technology skills AND their teamwork skills grow each time we use the chromebooks. :)

Created with Padlet

Thursday... what a great day for these first grade writers! Throughout our Woodland in Europe unit, we have been reading and discussing the story, Lacey Walker, Nonstop Talker. On Thursday, I asked the kids to retell, in writing, the story on their own, and let me tell you... it. was. amazing. The kids were so independent, so quiet and focused, and the writing they did was awesome! I was so impressed! In the afternoon, we all made our own little Lacey Walkers.

To finish off our week, and our Woodland in Europe unit, we painted little fallow deer on Friday. Some kids chose to make male deer, with antlers, and some made females, without antlers. Look at our sentence patterning chart for the fallow deer below, and ask your child to show you how we make a song!

Thanks for reading our blog post! First graders and families, have a wonderful fall break! Leave a comment below and tell us what you're up to. :)