Today in room 5 we continued to learn about being big first graders! We continued practicing our routines, getting to know each other, reviewing academics skills, learning about classroom materials, and had an introduction to Guidance class with Mrs. McCleary!
Today we started our Morning Meeting with some math exploration, recording and analyzing data showing the number of students who either did or did not like the "jitter juice" we made yesterday, using tallies and a bar graph. During our regular math time today we began with our "number of the day" routine then explored ordering numbers and using number lines through song, and different games. "Number of the Day" will be an ongoing routine at the beginning of math time every day this year. We will record the number of days we have been at school, then practice representing this number in many different ways such as writing the word for that number, drawing tallies, using base 10 representation, showing how many coins could be used to represent the number, writing a "number sentence" for the number (ie today's number was "2" so a number sentence could be 1+1=2 or 3-1=2), deciding if the number is odd or even, writing numbers greater, less, one more, one less, ten more, ten less, etc. for the given number. This will all be done as part of a math meeting/math mini-lesson at the beginning of our math block for the purpose of helping first graders to develop "number sense," or the ability to compose/decompose and better understand number.
Today students also continued to explore the use of classroom materials through Guided Discovery, practiced first grade routines and expectations, and we began word study with our "Mystery Name of the Day game." Each day I will choose the name of one student in our class and the class will play a guessing game (similar to 'hang-man'), guessing letters to figure out whose the "mystery name" is. Once we have guessed the name, I write the name across sticky notes, with one letter on each, then scramble them up and stick them to my easel. Students take turns coming up to help unscramble the name and put it back together in order (as we review the letter names and sounds being used). We finished our "mystery name game" with guided writing of a sentence about the "mystery student's" favorite animal. Once every child in our class has had a turn having the "mystery name of the day" we will create a class book using the sentences created during our shared writing! Below are photos of our "mystery name" word study activity as well as photos of students using team work to build puzzles during a Guided Discovery time!
