Pen Pal Letters

A very special part of being in our 1st grade classroom is having a penpal!  Ms. Walsh, one of my best teacher friends and I are excited to begin exchanging penpal letters again this year.  This week, students worked hard to complete their introduction letters to their new 1st grade penpal in Chelsea, MA.  Students LOVED this writing project.  1st graders were so engaged in their letters. With a huge smile on one of my 1st grade friends face, he exclaimed, "I'm so into this".

 

Our letters are signed, sealed and delivered!  We're anxiously waiting to hear back.

Go Sox!

Today's lesson plans included a little Red Sox history.  The top poster is from the Red Sox 2004 World Championship and the bottom poster is from their 2007 winning year.  2007 being the year some of these 1st graders were born, which they quickly informed me...yikes.

Check out these old Red Sox faces

Thank you to Mrs. Klipfel and her former 3rd graders for sharing their posters with us. We're starting to add newpaper articles, pictures, and online stories to hopefully make this a trifecta. Be sure to send in your favorite Red Sox articles.

Get those beards ready tonight, Go Sox! 

Word Families

We're like a family...a word family that is.  Word families are groups of words that have the same spelling and sounds at the end of a group of words.  For example: cat, hat, fat and splat are all members of the -at family.  Word families have been helping 1st graders with reading, spelling and phonics. Students worked in groups to brainstorm as many words as they could for different word families.

Students used rhyming dictionaries and pictionaries to add words to their word family lists.  We took our lists and turned them into word family mummies.

Practice hunting and recognizing word families while reading.  Look for those word family chunks!