Our First, First Grade Gathering!

Good Evening First Grade Families!

This week has been a blur. Between the Monday morning gathering, Friday afternoon gathering, the announcements each morning, curriculum night, and the Sandhills library trip, we have not stopped going and doing all week. I was excited to see so many families throughout the week whether it was at pickup, in the morning, watching gathering, helping with the library, or coming to curriculum night. It means a lot to me knowing we have such amazing families here at the center who support what we do but it means everything to your kids to have you there. So, thank you, whether you were there to see their achievements or just supporting them each and everyday along the way, you provide the foundation on which they grow.

Here are some of them speaking on the announcements one morning and all of them at our Friday gathering:

In our insect study we have spent the past week synthesizing what we have been learning into what each child wanted to share in gathering. We also thought about our study of insects in terms of collecting data. We went outside with the simple direction to collect any information we could about the insects we saw. This stimulated discussion on the different ways that information was collected. Some wrote observations, some sketched, and some took note of how many they saw. The next day I created a sheet patterned after what they thought the best way of collecting information on how many insects we saw was. It had boxes for a few different types of insects and some lines for writing observations. They were to make a tally any time they saw that insect. Through these field observations we were able to talk more in depth about the problems we faced. There were more different insects than we had categories for, there were too many ants moving too fast to count, and we couldn’t be sure every time we saw a bee it was a new one. These experiences allowed us to talk more frankly about data collection and how we need to know what we want to figure out in order to best formulate the method of data collection. From here we will continue this type of discussion as we start to track the way the temperature is changing during our morning meteorologist report. We will look at how to track and interpret data in a variety of different forms.

We shared what math looks like in our classroom on curriculum night so I will just briefly look forward into where we are going with our math study. This week we are going to be using our math journals more as I challenge them to make word problems for each other and respond to the “what do you notice about the number” before sharing out and making our class chart. This will allow them to see themselves as the mathematicians and will give them a chance to demonstrate a higher level understanding of the various problems we have solved together.

Our independent writing and reading times this past week have been the time that I have been able to talk with children one on one about what they wanted to share at gathering. Some wanted to share the books they found or ones we had read together so they looked through them again for their favorite part. Others wanted to write a story about gathering or worked with me on writing the fact they wanted to share. They worked so hard this week on preparing what they wanted to share and I hope it was evident to you how much our insect study has captivated us all as scientists, readers and writers. Looking forward to where this will take us but for now have a great night!

CFI Information:

October 28th- CFI’s fall festival at 1:30

Please return Zoo forms even if payment is paid online so that we know about chaperoning and lunch counts

November 4th- The school Zoo trip

November 11th- Grand Day and Veteran’s Day at CFI

November 11th- CFI’s family movie night at 7:00pm

Home to School Connection:

As we delve into creating our own math word problems in math, have your child make up some of their own at home. It could be talking about cereal, toys, clothes. You name it, we can think of it like mathematicians. Thinking about math outside of school helps us contextualize how we see and use math in everyday life. When we go to the grocery store, when we need to figure out how long it will take us to get home, when we pack for a trip and have to pull out a certain number of shirts. Even just using units that have meaning in everyday life expands our thinking and helps us gain a better understanding of the world around us.