Peacocks, Peacocks, and More Peacocks!

Peacocks, peacocks, and more peacocks! That's repetition! Ask your first grader why authors sometimes use repetition in their writing!

We did Star in Motion in the gym. -Cedrus

We had two Kind Kids Club meetings this week. -Cooper

We did "F is for Fireworks" for our America book. -Juan Carlos

We learned about iridescent feathers. -Nya

We read Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Day with Ms. Hines for Kind Kids Club. -Ryan

We learned about a new animal, the Indian Peafowl. -Aaqil

We learned that peacocks have long feather trains. They are longer than their bodies. -Anshika

We read Mr. Tiger Goes Wild. -Alex

We learned that peahens don't have colorful feathers because they have to blend in to protect their babies. -Deniz

We made a panda song with adjectives, a noun, and a verb. -Jaykob

Ask your first grader to sing it to you!

The peacock's feathers shine to get the females' attention. -Isandro

We did the "I Can Spell Anthropologist" chant. -Fabiana

I remember from last week that there is a mountain in Asia called Mount Everest. It's so tall that you can touch a cloud. -Damion

We learned the word "solution." -Jade

We do fireworks for 4th of July to celebrate independence. -Allyson

We added some pictures to our charts. We put a picture of a mom with her eggs on the peacock chart. -Anahi

We sang "Pandas Here, Pandas There." -Lorenzo

Miss Kloczko used a real peacock feather for a pointer one day. -Tanaya

We did a team task of a peacock. -Tianna
(The photos below are of the "Pandas Here, Pandas There" team task and the peacock team task.)

We used repetition in our writing this week. We learned about repetition from Panda and Polar Bear. -Jules

We made a story map for Panda and Polar Bear. -Indigo

We put the pictures from Panda and Polar Bear on a chart to help us remember the story. -Carol

I liked Mr. Tiger Goes Wild. -Liam

The kids got to "Read to Someone" this week. We talked about sitting "elbow to elbow, knee to knee," and taking turns reading in a whisper, so only our partner can hear us. They did great! -Miss Kloczko

Check out two of this week's homework digital challenges!

A few "proud teacher" moments this week...

"LOOK! It's repetition!"

"I just learned that the boy peacocks show off their feathers to make the peahens fall in love."

"Tigers live alone! That's like our signal word, solitary!"

Finally, a special thank you to Lorenzo's mom for being this week's mystery reader!

Thanks for reading! Leave us a comment! :)

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Week 3!

Another busy week!

We made skunks during Fun Friday! -Aaqil and Lorenzo

We made a book called The Day the Playground Quit after we read The Day the Crayons Quit. -Nya and Carol
Watch the video below to hear the letter we wrote together from Basketball! Check the blog next week to see our finished class book!

The projector exploded yesterday during math. -Jade and Indigo

Miss Kloczko's salad exploded too. -Kyara and Anshika

We tried to read for 20 minutes without stopping. We almost made it to 5 minutes! -Isandro and Anahi

We got new colored pencils as a reward for making our work nice and neat! -Cedrus and Ryan

We learned some new routines for Star in Motion after we saw kindergarten doing them. We learned sky, T, H, V, tree trunk, bridge, and elbows, and head. -Jaykob and Alex

We revised our letters for The Day the Playground Quit. -Tianna and Fabiana

We read Night Animals. -Juan Carlos and Cooper

We learned what "revise" means. -Damion
*Watching the video below, I just realized the kids are saying "to look at something again and prove it," rather than improve it! :) Looks like we get to use this signal word again on Monday! 

We read Stuck and it was very funny. -Deniz and Lea

We read Tea Party Rules by Ame Dyckman. -Parker and Jared

We learned the word "vast." It means huge, gigantic, or enormous. -Allyson and Tanaya

We learned about the skunk. Its spray is called musk. -Kendall and Jules

We played a special version of Connect Four to practice addition and we read the story Bravest of the Brave. After hearing the story, the kids wrote their own stories about when they've had to be brave! I loved listening to some of the kids share! -Miss Kloczko

Thanks for reading! Leave us a comment! :)

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Finally Feeling Like Fall!

What happened in first grade this week?

This week we started our unit on Weather and Matter. Ask your child to tell you what the word "matter" means. That was one of our signal words this week! We learned about solids, liquids, and gases, which are everywhere!

We also reviewed the four seasons of the year and the different weather each one has.

Check out this week's Science Digital Challenge...

Created with Padlet

Since it's officially feeling like fall, we talked about all of the things we know about fall. There is a lot to do and wear and eat during this season!

We brainstormed a big list of settings for stories. Some of these came from things we have learned about, like habitats, but most came from places we have been or places we have seen in movies of read about in books. 

We also learned about informative writing, or writing that gives information. We wrote informative pieces about something we each know A LOT about... ourselves! The kids did so great. I LOVED reading them!

The social skill we are working on right now is self-control. We launched our discussion about self-control with this silly video! 

We thought of some ways that we can show self-control at school, and throughout the week, we read some stories about characters that learn to show self-control!

Mad Science came to visit us for an assembly where we got to see some super cool experiments. A few first graders even got to participate! A form came home in your child's Friday Folder about the Mad Science after-school program.

A special visitor came to our class! On Friday, Wesley's mom was the mystery reader, and she brought Cinder, therapy dog-in-training. Cinder was a great guest and a great listener during the story! And the first graders were SO surprised to see a puppy in first grade!

For Fun Friday, we made pumpkin mosaics with Milo's mom. They turned out so cute!