We are Thankful

Happy Thanksgiving from all your 1st grade friends. There are so many wonderful people and things we are thankful for each and everyday.

I am thankful for my lovable first grade family. Happy Turkey Day!

GRA Finale

1st graders (and their teacher) are sad to say that Global Read Aloud has come to an end.  Last week the whole 1st grade joined together to celebrate the event and read the last chapter of our shared story.  Students had glow sticks, teachers wore chopsticks in their hair just like Mrs. Silver (the teacher in our story) and Mrs. Thomson even made a poetry man.

We couldn't end there!  We used our beloved book The Year of Billy Miller to help us work on retelling, which is a strategy we have been using to help us comprehend. Students split into four groups based on the sections from the book to discuss the characters, setting, and important events.  Students used the iPads as a digital tool to create their detailed illustrations.  Then we put our illustrations together to retell the whole book. Check out our final project created in animoto:

Common Core State Standard RL 1.2 Retells stories including key details and demonstrates understanding of their central message or lesson. RL 1.7: Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or events.

K Buddies

1st graders have begun working and meeting with their Kindergarten buddies. We love Fridays when we get to meet with Mrs. Newton's class.  So far buddies have shared poetry binders and shared a reader's theater skit.

This week in order to get ready for Thanksgiving, buddies designed beautiful feathers for Tom the Turkey. Buddies sat together and discussed different people, things, and places they are thankful for. 

After their discussion students designed a thankful feather with pictures, words or labels. Check out how beautiful Tom turned out!

Veterans Day

Thank you Veterans! Fuller Meadow had a wonderful assembly today in honor of Veterans Day. Our class and Mrs. Scharffenberg's 1st graders preformed the poem, Poppy Poppy. Check out our performance below.

GRA Continues

The Global Read Aloud project has not only allowed us to connect with classes around the world but also with classes right in our own school.  We have been pairing up with other 1st grade classrooms at Fuller Meadow to read The Year of Billy Miller and practice our reading comprehension strategies. We made connections based on the chapters we read with Ms. Flynn and Mrs. Scharffenberg's classes.  Lots of students connected to having an annoying sibling just like Billy's sister Sal.

We practiced visualizing with Mrs. Higgins and Mrs. Thomson's 1st graders by focusing in on one paragraph from the story.  Visualizing helps readers paint a picture in their minds and understand the story better.

Students then spread out across the classroom to create their visualizations in their read and respond journal.  We shared and saw what other readers pictured while reading-of course they were all a little different.  What did you visualize from the above paragraph?  

Retelling has been a focus during reader's workshop so we used our Global Read Aloud book to help. As a class we worked on retelling the Sister section of the book remembering to tell about the characters, the setting, and important events in order with transition words. 

Yesterday, we took advantage of the beautiful November weather and read a chapter outside with Mrs. Higgins' and Mrs. Thomson's 1st graders.  We were inspired by Billy so we headed inside to write poems about our family members-just like Billy.

As you can tell 1st graders have learned so many reading comprehension strategies and are becoming wonderful readers while staying connected to many teachers, classes and students!

First Grade Common Core Standards: RL 1.2 Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message. RL 1.3-  Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details. RL 1.7 Use illustrations and details in a story to describe its characters, setting, or event