A Week in Review

Another wonderful week. Enjoy a quick picture tour. 

We made ScreenChomps to practice reading fluency.

The students identified parts of a book.

We learned a new Daily called Read to Buddy.

The students were working on ABC order using our new Fundations Boards.

We practiced hopping on a number line by playing a fun game with partners.

Jacob brought in our Wonder this week. See the beginning of our wonderings here.

Stay tuned for more on many of these topics. 

Introducing... Math at Mcdole

Welcome to a new website all about 1st grade math at McDole! The 1st grade team is excited to share our math journey with you. Click HERE to check it out!

Building our Audience - Authentic Learning

Hi Parents! 

We just had our first class Twitter conversation! We tweeted ScreenChomp and they tweeted us back! We talked straight to the app creator! 

I accidentally used my teacher account (@lbrightedu) so some of you may have missed it. I am sharing it with you now.

We are building our educational audience! Yay!

App Highlight: Screenchomp

Welcome to the first of our App Highlights. Today, we will be featuring ScreenChomp.

The iPads are going to be a year long feature in our classroom. We have discussed as a class that iPads are an amazing learning tool, not a game system. These amazing tools will be used to showcase our higher level thinking.

We love ScreenChomp for several reasons. 
1. It allows us to share our thinking through recorded messages and illustrations.
2. It is extremely kid friendly.
3. It's Free!

ScreenChomp allows the students to draw and explain their thoughts. These recording are then sent to me so I can listen to them when I am able to. This is insanely valuable to me because it means I get to listen to the thoughts of all of my students instead of just visiting with 6 or 7 during any given lesson.

This is the look of the screen that the kids are using. It allows them to choose colors to enhance their presentation and record both during the illustration and once it is finished.

We have used this app for a few different purposes so far this year. Click on the names to hear a few examples of our ScreenChomp projects:

1. "Wonder Monday" - Cicadas

Olivia

Josh

Calixto

2. Prove it! - Show me your understanding of 10 Frames and the Plus and Minus signs.

Ashley

Avary

Paul

Arisson

The ScreenChomps are examples of their learning and understanding. Therefore, they are assessed as an assignment would be. I am currently using the following rubric to help:

Our class has been doing really well with our new app. They are helping each other and trying new things. 

We have had fun getting started with this app and will continue to "Chomp" all year long.

Guest post by P. D.

Hi! I am P. D.

This is a book about me. This book is special to me because it is about me.

Listen to me read my book:

Thank you for watching this video. 

A Week of Wonder

Last week, we embarked on a week of wonder. What a wonderful week it was!

This is a series of educational events the we will call "Wonder Monday". 

We will experience our science and wonder through an inquiry based process.

We started with our first wonder object: The Cicada Shell

 

Next, we asked questions, investigated and chronicled these thoughts on our Kidblog.org page.

 

We also coded these thoughts on our bulletin board to help us understand our non-fiction thought process.

Once our thoughts were chronicled, we went through a series of research and discussion. We also sited our sources on our Kidblog.org page.

Our final bit of research was done with our new friend Sampson.

I was pretty sure Sampson was dead when I brought him to school but, "Lucky Us!", he was not (ask the kids for the story).
We were able to observe Sampson and identify all of the parts of the cicada that we had learned about. We also measured him and he was exactly how big we had heard he would be!

Through this process, we answered so many of our questions and even came up with many more! We couldn't have asked for a better "Wonder Monday"!

Please stay tuned to hear how we reflected about our learning. It is a pretty impressive showing of their knowledge.

*Teacher Note:
I had educational goosebumps last week with all of the excitement but two events really made me excited.
1. The owning of questions: The students remembered who asked specific questions and that student got to "own" that question. Paul wondered about a stinger and the students made sure that any stinger info went straight to Paul. This happened on more than one question and occasion.
2. After a long weekend, I had 4 students bring in Wonder objects today. Today's science lesson was spontaneous and authentic because of that. Thanks to our 4 friends, we were able to have wonder stations and use our new thinking stems with our friends. I am so amazed and really jazzed about this year!

**Sorry for the lengthy post. I just couldn't wait to share all of this. :)

Setting the Foundation: Read - To - Self

One of our foundational pieces this year is the Daily 4. It is based off of the books by The 2 Sisters and it is a defined structure that helps me provide meaningful and authentic learning time during our reading block. 

The first of the Daily 4 is Read-to-Self. It is exactly what it sounds like. The students are reading to themselves.

Here is the anchor chart that the students came up with to guide us through our first few days of practice:

We discussed that Read-to-Self was practicing our reading.

I could talk to them for hours about the rules of basketball. I could show them what a basketball is. We could even watch videos on basketball. However, if we never get to hold a basketball and practice with it, will we ever be a great basketball player? No way!

Same goes for reading. I am going to give them all they need to become a great reader. We will practices our phonics skills. We will learn new comprehension strategies and all about fluency. 

But most importantly, we will always have time to practice these new skills.

Here is what Read-to-Self looks and feels like:

I hope you enjoyed your trip through Read-to-Self. It is the most important part of our academic day.