Last week, the students got their first visit from their Adopt-a-Cop, Officer Paul. Adopt-a-Cop is a great program in which a River Edge police officer is paired up with a first grade class. The police officer visits the class throughout the school year to teach the students different ways to be safe in the community. The students loved when Officer Paul came to visit last week and can't wait for him to come back.
Even though we have yet to have a full week of school, 1-Bu is really getting into the groove of things. We are spending less and less time each day going over routines and more and more time learning new content. Here's what we were working on in the classroom last week :
Reading : Last week, we continued to develop our reading stamina so that the students can read for longer and longer periods of time (thus, getting more and more practice reading). We came up with a few ways that may help the students read for longer periods of time. We spoke about sticking with one book (rather than casually, and mindlessly, flipping through one book after another) and about closely examining the pictures.
Writing : The students have done a phenomenal job picking up the structure and work ethic of writing workshop so far. They are all working on writing stories about events that have happened in their lives. Last week, the students worked on the very beginning of the writing process - coming up with an idea and getting it down on paper. We'll fine tune that a little bit over the next few months, but so far they're going a great job!
Math : In math, the students reviewed numbers and how to compare numbers on a number line. They also learned all about tally marks and how to represent various numbers with tally marks.
Phonics : We continued reviewing letter sounds and proper handwriting techniques by going over the letters b and t.
Science : Last week, our caterpillars changed in to chrysalises! The students were very excited to watch this change and can't wait for the next step of the life cycle.
Social Studies : Our first social studies unit of the year is on communities. Last week, the students learned about various types of homes that people may live in. The students also learned very basic map skills in order to locate different kinds of homes on a map.
Here are some pictures of 1-Bu last week: