Research

This third trimester our main focus in reading and writing is nonfiction and first graders are beginning to learn about nonfiction research! This is always a really fun unit/project and the kids are already excited about it. We will be doing a class research project about sharks during the next few weeks and I have started exposing the kids to some kid-safe research tools.

On the right side of this blog under "Student Links" you will find links for Kiddle and Kidrex which are both safe search engines created just for kids! Check them out with your child and do a little research at home. They can practice looking up nonfiction topics of interest to them. If they want to get ahead they can even research some information about sharks! Today we made a shark bulletin board project to help get excited about our upcoming research!

Classroom Request

Hi there families,

We are very much in need of plastic spoons and glue sticks in our classroom. These are things we seem to use very often and we are running low on the supply we had. If you are able to donate any to our class we would greatly appreciate it!

Pete the Cat at the Flynn

On Tuesday 3/28 first graders are going on a field trip to the Flynn Theater in Burlington to see the school matinee adaptation of the Pete the Cat books! This afternoon we had a little Fun Friday and read the book Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes then made our own versions of Pete. If you are not familiar with Pete he is a very cool blue cat with an excellent attitude about life. In the book about his white shoes he keeps stepping in things that turn his white shoes different colors but he always takes it in stride thinking it's "cool," "groovy," "awesome," and "all good." Check out the Pete the Cat books if you haven't already! We will read a couple more on Monday before our Tuesday trip.

Reminder: On the day of the trip students need a bagged lunch from home. We need to eat lunch early in class before we leave because we will be at the theater during school lunch time. We will have recess and a snack when we return to school.

Nonfiction Text Features

This trimester first graders are focused on nonfiction reading and writing. This is always a really fun unit that leads up to students learning to do some research for a nonfiction writing project! We started our unit by exploring the differences between fiction and nonfiction and learning how to read and get information from informational nonfiction texts.

For the past couple of days we have been going on nonfiction text feature scavenger hunts. Students each have an informational nonfiction text in hand and we look at different text feature descriptions on the smartboard. Students then hunt through their book to find examples of that feature. So far we have been really focused on illustrations vs photographs, headings, labels, captions, labeled diagrams, the title page, table of contents, index, and glossary. If you are reading nonfiction at home ask your child to help identify text features that help them read the book!

Here are some photos of our text feature hunt yesterday.

Book Fair

Our spring book fair at UMS is next week! Please check out the website below:

http://www.scholastic.com/bf/unionmemorialschool1

The homepage answers questions like:

When is the fair open?

Who do I make the check out to?

How long is the fair?

Where do I go to view the online fair?

We were on the news!

In a post yesterday I mentioned that meteorologist, Tom Messner, had come to visit first grade yesterday as part of our weather unit. He put a short video clip of us on the evening news and here we are!

Ice Cream and Popsicles!

Last week was quite a week! On Monday we met our class goal for our stoplight behavior expectations chart so we made ice cream sundaes at the end of the day (that is what the class voted on as a way to celebrate once we met our goal). Tuesday and Wednesday we had snow days because of our big storm. Then on Friday the whole school earned popsicles as a celebration for meeting our February break reading challenge goal!

Weather

First grade classes are wrapping up a science unit on weather this week. As one of our culminating activities Channel 5 Chief Meteorologist, Tom Messner, came to talk to us about how important weather is for his job today! We will be guest starring on the 6:00 news tonight on Channel 5! Check it out!