Ice Cream Election, Curriculum Night, and the Nutcracker

Good Evening First Grade Families!

Since the last blog posting we have celebrated the results of our ice cream election, attended the Nutcracker, and shared some of our learning at curriculum night. I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving break. I know I heard lots of great stories from the kids about their adventures.

Before the break, we explored the election process with the CFI kindergarten classes through our own ice cream election. The kids each were secretly asked which ice cream was their favorite and put into parties. After this primary, the chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla parties were asked to gather and formalize their opinions on why their selection was the best. They then made signs, banners, and flags to carry in our convention and parade. On that Monday we held the convention and parade in the gathering area presided over by Dr. Mueller. Each child was given the opportunity to give a reason to vote for their group and we paraded around the school. At the end of the day they cast their votes armed with their voter registration cards. The next morning the results were announced and Chocolate was the winner. We celebrated with chocolate ice cream at recess time. This fun process allowed us to examine the election process that the kids were aware of and had observed over the past few months and put them in the position to be participants in the political process.

Here are some pictures of the fun event:

We also had a great time at the Nutcracker. Thank you to all the amazing parent volunteers who accompanied us to the show and the Children’s Garden for lunch. Despite it being long, the kids seemed to really enjoy the show.

This trip starts our conversations over the next week into the ways we tell stories and exploring perspectives. We have already looked at how the story of the nutcracker is told through dance and other ways of telling stories. We will be looking at the components of a story and the best mode of communicating that story. Look forward to hearing our ventures in this direction.

Curriculum night allowed us to share some of the ways we approach reading and writing in our classroom. Here is a recap for those who were unable to attend. Our days typically start with a morning message and word work looking at letter sounds, combinations, and sight words. We then either read together using a big book looking at ways of decoding words and the act of reading, or we engage in a read aloud looking at the content of stories and the analysis and comprehension part of reading. We then use this in practice during independent reading workshop and writing workshop. We use mentor texts like the If You Give a Pig a Pancake book we shared during curriculum night to pattern our own writing after.

Our math has centered around our can count the past two weeks. We have sorted, graphed, and counted our daily influx of cans for the passing of the canned food drive. We debated whether different types of beans should be included in the same category and voted to separate them. We have light beans, black beans, kidney beans, etc. and are hoping to continue growing our collection. This is just one of the questions we have tackled while being statisticians.

We are also working on problems with missing addends. For example, Landon has six stickers and Darryl gives him some more. He ends up with twelve. How many did Darry give him? These problems force us to rethink the linear nature of addition and gain a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between addition and subtraction. We will continue working on these problems in multiple ways. The current method of choice is using the number line or using what we know of doubling problems. As we look into the next week please remember to bring in cans for Harvest Hope and have a great night!

School Dates:

December 9th- Passing of the Cans

December 16th- Sandhills Library Trip

December 19th- January 2nd- Winter Break