Ms. Eknoian's Class
1st Grade
Hello and welcome!
Dear Families,
Welcome to my webpage! I am so excited you are here! A goal of mine is to inform, include, and excite families about what is happening in our first grade classroom. On this webpage you will find reminders and event updates, curriculum updates with a "focus subject", an author study page to learn more about awesome authors we are studying, and a student work page to showcase 1E's excellent work. Thank you for visiting my page, and please feel free to contact me at any time!
Enjoy!
Ms. Eknoian
Reminders and Updates:
*Friday, January 16th is a half day for students. Dismissal will begin at 11:45. Students will not bring lunch, but please send in one morning snack.
*Monday, January 19th - NO SCHOOL - Martin Luther King Day
What are we learning in 1E?
*Fundations - Students began Unit 7 in Fundations! Unit 7 focuses on new glued sounds. Students learned four new glued sounds ending with 'ng' (ang, ing, ong, ung) this week. Students practiced reading and spelling words with these 4 glued sounds, and practiced “marking up” glued sounds by drawing a box around the glued sound. “Marking up” a word helps students to identify the spelling patterns they see in words. Next week we will learn four new glued sounds ending with 'nk' (ank, ink, onk, unk). Check back later to learn more about our work!
*Math Workshop - First graders continue their exploration of Module 4 this week. Module 4 focuses on subtraction and solving word problems with addition and subtraction. Children are solving word problems that involve addition and subtraction. They are also recording a number sentence to match. We go through a series of steps to solve the word problems:
1. Listen/read a word problem displayed on the SmartBoard or page
2. Identify key words that would signal which operation to use - addition or subtraction
3. Draw to solve
4. Record a number sentence to match
Students completed many word problems in small teacher time groups, with a partner and independently. Students followed the outlined steps and they were able to verbalize the steps to their classmates.
Next week we will be taking our Module 4 assessment. Our upcoming Math Workshop unit is addition strategies, focusing on doubles and doubles-plus-one.
*Daily 5 - After coming back from winter break, students reviewed Daily 5 routines and expectations. Students reviewed and practiced expected behaviors in order to do their best work in Read to Self, Read to Someone, Word Work, Work on Writing, Listen to Reading, and Technology (iPads and Computers).
Our mini-lessons for the remainder of the week will focus on the comprehension strategy visualization. Visualization is a strategy that students use when they take the words in the story and make a mental picture in their heads. To practice this skill, students have read the poem “Green Giant” which used many describing words to describe a giant. Students listened to the poem and read it to themselves many times and drew a picture of the mental image they made of the giant!
Next week we will begin our non-fiction unit!
*Science - Students are beginning a unit on animal habitats. A habitat is where a living thing lives. We will explore many different habitats including freshwater, arctic, rainforest, ocean and many more! Please check back in soon with more updates as we dive deeper into our new unit.
Some pictures from our curriculum focus areas this week...
Student created I-charts
Visualizing - "Green Giant"
Fundations
*WRITING FOCUS: OPINION WRITING*
In Writer's Workshop, we are currently engaged in our OPINION WRITING unit! Before we could start writing, our first step was answering the question "What does the word 'opinion' mean?" Students learned that an opinion is a person's belief or feeling about a topic. We determined that each person has their own opinion about things, while others may agree and have the same opinion, or disagree and have a different opinion.
We took this time to connect our "opinion" exploration to our classroom rules! In our classroom, one of our rules is "Be kind and respectful." As part of our discussion, students shared examples of how their opinions could be different from one another, and even if we don't share the same opinion, we need to be kind to everyone and respect everyone's opinions.
On our Morning Message, I posed the question to students: "At recess, would you rather play on the slide or the swings?" Students each had one vote and put a tally mark next to their choice. The next day we moved on to our next step in opinion writing: providing reasons that support your opinion!
After we have stated our opinion about something, we need to provide reasons why we believe what we do! I posted our question "At recess, would you rather play on the slide or the swings?" and students provided at least one reason why they chose swings or slide on a sticky note to share with the class. This led to a wonderful and very friendly discussion among the students! After our discussion, students were ready to turn all of their thinking and sharing into writing. We used a graphic organizer to help organize our thinking and plan our writing. The students produced their very first piece of opinion writing where they stated their opinion and provided reasons to support their opinion. Take a look at some pictures of our work below!
In our opinion unit, students will learn:
*the meaning of the word "opinion"
*that everyone has their own opinions
*we support our opinions with reasons
*in our writing, our opinion needs to be clearly stated with supporting reasons and a closing sentence
Our Opinion Writing unit meets the following curriculum frameworks:
MA Curriculum Frameworks:
Writing Standards, Grade 1: Text Types and Purposes
1. Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic, or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure.
PLEASE VISIT OUR STUDENT WORK PAGE TO VIEW BEAUTIFUL OPINION PIECES WRITTEN BY 1E STUDENTS!