One Powerful Book!

 Every year it is so hard to choose what books to share at the start of the year.  Along with the my classroom library collection I like to gather great reads from the public library.  I place these books on the rug to entice my readers.

This year I decided to include wordless picture books now.
Here's why:
Meaning:  One of my big ideas for the year is making sure the children learn that to think, "what would make sense?"
in every subject they are working on. 

Wordless picture books force them to look at the pictures and think about the story. This is the best reading tool for them to use!

While reading this book before school last week I realized that this guy Hank has a problem to solve.  I want my students to know that mathematicians do the same.

So I put this story up on the doc camera as I introduced math for this year.  There are many different ways to solve a problem and showing perseverance on the journey is one of my goals for them.  Below are some pictures from the story that show how Hank persevered through his problem and how happy he felt when he succeeded! 

The children loved the book and they would enjoy sharing the pictures below with you!  Great discussions can come from just one book.  I'll be using it again and again.

Read / Write / Explore Time

Children need choice.

I have goals for them to meet.

Every day we both get to achieve this during what I call Read/Write/Explore time. 

The children have choice within these areas:

Word work, writing, reading, technology, math, create and construct. 

During this time we also work on collaboration with a partner. For our first week the children did beautifully with this. I was so impressed with their first experience with this kind of learning this year.

The Hula Hoop Lesson

We are learning the importance of keeping our hands to ourselves and to mind our own business.  This is the lesson that I taught the children to help them with this.  I use the visual of a hula hoop.

1.  We all have a hula hoop around us. (I let them think of what theirs might look like...maybe purple with sparkles or maybe decorated with soccer balls:)
2.  Inside our hoop is our own business.  What we think, what we say, what we do.

Our only job is to take care of our own business and hula hoop.

3.  We do not get into someone else's hula hoop unless invited in.   

Now all I have to say to the children when problems arise is this:  "Are you in your own hula hoop?"  Works like a charm.
You might want to use this at home too! 

Getting Ready!

Hi Everyone,
School is fast approaching and I am the mother of a bride in 9 days!  A lot going on!
Ms. Jill and I along with the the second grade teachers Ms. Dana and Ms. Jennifer went school supply shopping for all of the school supplies for our crews this week.  It took five carts and trips to multiple store sites to gather everything.  I'm in the process of labeling and putting things into the desks so all is ready August 3!  Looking forward to seeing you soon.

Message to Last Year's Crew

It's time to move on to second grade and unsubscribe to my blog.  I'll miss you! (You may stay subscribed if you wish to of course!)

It is very simple to unsubscribe. When you get the email regarding this blog, look at the bottom of the email for a little link that says "unsubscribe".  Click on that link and follow the directions. I know your child will have a great year in second grade.  Please stop by or drop me an email to keep in touch!

Math Under the Sea: The Green Ribbon Worm

Critical Thinking.  It takes work.  
Collaboration.  It takes practice.
Together, we are better.


We practiced these skills as a crew recently.  In our worm study we came across a green ribbon worm that lives on the ocean floor and can be as long as 100 feet.

I posed these questions:

Well, I suggested that we use something we've learned about this year.  Non-standard ways to measure things.  For instance, our bodies...
We know that 1 foot = 12 inches.
How if the average 1st grader is 4 feet tall, how many inches long would that be?

They went to work. They got a feel for how many inches long they are.  And an idea of how long this worm would be.


Time to get a visual on this.
They know that correct measurement has to be end to end! 
So they became ribbon worms!


We had 16 children at school that day. 
We began adding the 4ft. of children together.  And we determined that 16 children would be only 64 ft. long! 

They were funny here...they decided more children would have to lay down end to end, but they only had 16.  Where would they get more children?  

Finally, one of them realized that they could move the children from of the front of the line to the end and keep going that way.  So fun to watch them puzzle this out.  I stayed out of it!

These are the kind of critical thinking math problems that the children love.  Authentic.  Fun.  Collaborative.

I challenge you to do something like this at home.
When you do, share it with us. We can learn from each other.

Worms! Part of the Garden System

Spring has sprung!  Time to get back to thinking about the garden system.  Every healthy garden needs worms and today we began our study of these awesome creatures.

To introduce this new Expedition I set out containers of "soil" and told the children we would be "scientists" today and our job was to take a close look at soil using our scientific tools. 
(popsicle sticks:)

EEKKK! Soon the squeals began as the children found the worms hidden in each tub.  Yes, we will be studying worms!

Then it was time to assemble the worm farm and take observation notes in our scientific journals.  We will be doing experiments with the earthworms and we will observe the worm farm daily to watch the tunneling begin.  

What Do You Know About Geometry?

We are starting to learn more about the shapes in our world, a unit of study that the children always enjoy.

Before we began, I wanted to know what background knowledge the students already had around this subject.
So I asked them:

It was clear that we would need to take some time on this journey and we have begun. 

After the second day of study, I connected our new learning to something called a Padlet. Here we can post our learning along the way.  Very cool!

Created with Padlet