Each week we have a theme. Often it has something to do with kindness in our classroom community. We took a look specifically at making fun of others and the not so great karma that comes along with that. We watched this silly Pixar Short that demonstrates our theme perfectly! For the Birds We then had the opportunity to giggle a lot and write about how we would have acted differently if we were one of the little birds on the wire. Just because someone looks funny, sounds different, or acts strange doesn't mean they should be treated differently. Public Service Announcement: BRUSH YOUR TEETH!!
Today we were lucky enough to hear from two very special secret readers! If you're looking for a great read, check this one out at the library. It's all about an octopus and his bunny friend. This book breaks down the key elements of writing a story and we'll definitely be revisiting it soon during writing time! We love funny books we can also learn from!
Wednesday's are the best days because we catch up on science, social studies, mindfulness, STEM, and everything else wonderful in first grade. Today we took on a STEM challenge with our classmates. We demonstrated PERSISTENCE as we worked together with friends, tried our ideas, watched them fall, picked up the pieces, and tried new ideas. Question: How tall of a structure can your team build? Materials: 50 index cards, a sheet of dot stickers, and your brains? Procedure: You tell me! Norah suggested we sketch our ideas first! What a great idea! Here are our plans. We quickly got to work. We learned that index cards can be very strong if you fold them in half, roll them in tubes, make triangles out of them, and stick them to the table. Here are some things heard around the classroom today: "THIS IS OUR TOP PRIORITY!" "THIS IS THE BEST THING WE HAVE ACCOMPLISHED!" "LET'S MAKE IT STRONG BEFORE WE MAKE IT TALL!" "I THINK WE WORK REALLY WELL TOGETHER. LET'S DO THAT AGAIN TOMORROW!" And some pictures of our final products! So many different approaches, lots of great teamwork, positive attitudes, words of encouragement, and learning shared.
The word yet is powerful stuff. We're learning about growth mindset in first grade and that instead of "I can't" we can say "not yet," because this is only the beginning! The best is yet to come!
Miss Kylie is an OK public speaker. One day she hopes to be an excellent artist. Check out our skills and aspirations. It's surprising difficult to rhyme with the word vocabulary! New week, new vocabulary. Check out these new words coming to your dinner table tonight.
This week is was Miss Kylie's turn to demonstrate Scientist of the Week. Walking water!? Have you ever heard of such a crazy thing? Today we experimented with primary colors, water, paper towels, and some regular old Ball jars. Here was the question: what will happen if you connect cups of different color water with paper towels? We had few good ideas, but we had no idea we were going to get such a beautiful rainbow! First, we were very diligent scientists and made some great observations. Next, we made some reasonable hypotheses and took our votes. 1. One side of the paper towel will get wet and the other side will stay dry. (2) 2. The paper towels will turn purple, green, and orange. (4) 3. The paper towels will soak up all the water. (1) 4. The empty jars will fill with orange and green colored water. (3) 5. The paper towels will rip because they are fragile. (2) 6. The paper towels will turn orange and green. (1) Last, we made some observations and found out that #4 was correct. The paper towels absorb the water. Gravity helps start to equalize the amount of water in each jar. The red and yellow mix to make orange. The blue and yellow mix to make green! This is a great experiment to try at home! Check out this video for step-by-step direction. You can even try it with some different colors!
Today we were lucky enough to make our way around Hallam Lake at ACES. It's always a special treat and we happened to get the most perfect weather. We used our eyes to identify Aspen, Cottonwood, Maple, and Geranium leaves. We used our fingers to feel the square, spiky, Spruce needles and red, round Rose Hips. We used our noses to smell the fresh, crisp breeze. We used our ears to listen to leaves crunching under our feet and rustling in the trees all around us.
Today we completed our second Three Act Task. And it was a good one... The Pringle Ringle! Here's the information we were given to work with: Naturally, we wanted to know if we could eat the Pringles...but there wasn't any math involved in answering that question, so we figured we should probably find out how many Pringles did it take to make the Ringle? Here's the missing information we needed to solve the problem: After a lot of math, some brain scratching, discussion of addition vs. subtraction, many pictures, and a lot of number sentences we arrived at our answers. 78-14=64 Pringles in a Pringle Ringle. And with the reveal...we were were correct! Then...because Wednesdays are Wacky....we got to try and make our own Pringle Ringles! Ah! It was hard, there was team building, smiles, frustration, laughter, screams, a few crushed Pringles, and a whole lot of fun! And only a little Pringle eating :)
Happy Wacky Wednesday!
First grade is the coolest because we're all learning different things at different times. We all move at different paces and we're all really great at different things. Today we reviewed picking "just right" books and we talked about how we're all working on "just right" math. It's OK to be working on different skills because we all need different things to learn and grow. Just like our books and math might look different, our plaid shirts might look different. These kids are all first graders, they're all in Miss Kylie's class, they're all really cool, they all have light brown hair, and they're all wearing plaid. BUT, their plaid is different colors: pink, orange, and blue. And THAT'S OK! Fair means everyone gets what they need not everyone needs the same. A new week means new vocabulary words. And new vocabulary words mean new poses and motions to go along with them to help us remember!
What a difference a day makes!
Each week we do a math challenge called a Three Act Task. It's an out of the box thinking problem where we have to synthesize a lot of different math skills to answer a question. The cool thing about a Three Act Task is we get little bits of information in three different doses and we get to do some wondering, come up with a question, figure out what more information we need to answer the question, and then give solving it a try. We all approach problems differently and it's fun to see how many different ways we can arrive at one solution.
Graham Cracker (Act 1) from Graham Fletcher on Vimeo.
What did you notice about the video? What are you left wondering? What should we try to figure out. As a class we decided we wanted to know: HOW MANY GRAHAM CRACKERS ARE IN THE BOX? How many big ones? How many little ones? After all, if we were to share them fairly with the class we would need to know how many we had to work with. But, we needed a little more information to figure it out...was the box full, how many sleeves are in the box, how many little graham crackers are in a big graham cracker? Here's some more information.
Graham Cracker (Act 2) from Graham Fletcher on Vimeo.
And finally...the reveal! We all arrived at the answer a different way, but it was so cool to work through this real life problem and challenge ourselves with some out of the box thinking!
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May 2023
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