Heart Maps

Writer's Workshop has launched in room 116. Students filled in heart maps with topics that they love. These ideas will serve as "seeds" for future writing pieces.

Our heart maps show what is close to our hearts: people, places, events, and memories.

 After finishing our heart maps we chose one "seed" to draw a detailed picture of. We labeled our picture to give the reader more information. Next, we used these pictures to add a caption and practiced going through the writing process. Check out how this caption was revised and edited. Only step left is to publish. Twenty plus days down and we are already becoming excellent writers.

Pete the Cat

1st grade kicked off our genre study on Animal Fantasy with our friend Pete.  Pete the Cat helped us learn all week with his positive attitude and catchy songs. We read all the Pete the Cat books by Eric Litwin and found out just how cool Pete is. Pete helped us in writing when we labeled his parts. When we write, labels give the reader more information. Then we used sticky notes to brainstorm describing words about Pete.

Click here to listen to Pete's song 

Pete visited in math and helped us graph our favorite color. We then analyzed our graph and found that students like green the most. The number of students who like red is less than the number who like pink.  We then compared our color graph to the graph filled out by visitors to our classroom for open house.  Purple got the most parent votes. Blue got the least amount of votes. Green and red got the same amount of votes.  Check our graphs out below.  What do you notice?

We can't learn about Pete the Cat without practicing our color words. During reading and center time we practiced writing, spelling and reading all the color words.  1st graders also used their read and respond journals to write about their favorite Pete book.

Pete's attitude was with us all week: no matter what happened, we kept working and singing our song!

Open House

Normally, Klipfel & Kids looks like this...

Last night, Klipfel & Kids looked like this...

It was a pleasure meeting all of you at Open House. The boys and girls loved seeing your picture, names on the Smartboard and reading your notes. Oh and of course they loved that you helped earn them some Klipfel Kash. Thank you for your continual support from home during this school year. I look forward to seeing you again soon!