Fairy Tale Day - A Big Hit 1/29/16

We concluded our study of the genre on Friday with our first ever, Fairy Tale Day. Children dressed in character for the day, and we spent time in writing, reading, and math lessons, sharing our enthusiasm. The children enjoyed showing off their outfits, writing opinion pieces, reading stories, and graphing about fairy tales.

Beginning with Base Ten

The children explored the beginning concepts of place value by using Base Ten blocks, and showing how to make larger numbers quickly using "tens" and "ones." This will enhance our abilities to compare numbers, add them and even subtract them, later in Unit 4.

New WIN Time Format for Student Choice

All year we have been trying to manage a WIN Time (What I Need) where we can make choices that help us grow, explore, and learn. Our new formatting for WIN Time allows for students to first make a choice on how to study their sight words (that list is always growing!). They can study using a Fry Word app on the tablet, play a sight word game with a friend, play a Read and Roll with their sight words, or run through flashcards with a friend. After a sight word choice has been completed, students can choose from another menu that includes coding, spelling word work, using iTooch to practice the MAP Reading Skills they were lowest in on the Winter assessment, or to make a completely different choice off the WIN Time menu. So far, it has been met with great enthusiasm and commitment.

Data Folders

The children of 1C are making greater meaning of the data they produce when they take formative assessments (Mimio Vote quizzes) and when they take spelling tests. We are graphing our scores, putting them into a visual representation so that we can see if we are meeting the 80% expectation. Anything that touches or goes above the 80% is our desired target. We will add other information like writing stages, reading benchmarks, writing benchmarks, sight words mastered and more.

Snow Story Snowmen

The boys and girls have been working on writing and solving word problems using missing addends. We took some time to write out snow stories with math problems to solve. These creative masterpieces have become part of a "scoot" in the hallway, where other grades can come try to read and solve our work. We already proved our thinking with equations (with a symbol for missing numbers) on the back.

PBIS Snow Bowl Assembly - 1/15/16

The children of GMS were rewarded for their great behavior choices with a Snow Bowl assembly where students knocked down snowman bowling pins. Our first graders tied for the overall points title with third grade, from our assembly. Later, there were human bowling pins (staff) knocked over with an over-sized core fitness ball. The children of Grace McWayne School earned this assembly with the great choices they have continued to make throughout the school year. In 2014-15, at this point in the year, our student body had accumulated 120 Office Discipline Referral forms on Mr. Modaff's desk. In the same amount of time this year, the children have only amassed 41. Great choices lead to great character!

This Week's WINs

Children have been making more choices with coding during our WIN Time. What I Need (WIN) Time is new to Batavia Schools this year, and it's been filled with various choices that students can make. We have days where there are "no screens," and the children will work on sight word activities as well as develop their reading and math skills. A group of students might be settled next to one another, but each one working on a completely different activity that they've chosen.

Welcome Back! 2016 is going to be epic...

Among many fun things that we will encounter as we complete our first grade year, we are set to tackle the following "New Year's Resolutions:"

1. Write with more "juicy" words, like Epic, to make our writing pop!
2. Earn more Class CLAWs with great hallway behavior.
3. Expand our number of mastered sight words by more than 100.
4. Revisit our classroom expectations on the CHAMPS chart so that we can succeed together.
5. Build our understanding of Base 10, geometry, time, as well as math facts through 20.
6. Double our entries in Seesaw to document our learning and share with families.
7. Learn about Scientific Method through the use of experiments and reflection on results vs. hypotheses.
8. Code more!
9. Show off our awesome behavior by using a new app called Class Dojo (coming in February).
10. Celebrate student choice in setting a personal goal and using WIN Time to help achieve it.

Sure, this isn't all we're going to do this coming year, but it's a good start. While anyone can write a list of resolutions, it takes perseverance and commitment to be able to check them off. This is our true goal.

Cheers to 2016!
Mr. C