Aside from the culture presentations, we also went to Discovery Lab last week. The students had a lot of fun investigating force and motion. They used a white board, as a ramp, to see how far a tennis ball would travel at certain heights. At the end of class, the students had a challenge to see which team could get their tennis ball closest to a predetermined line.
Here's what we've been working on in the classroom:
Reading : We finished up learning about the major nonfiction conventions last week. We talked about how nonfiction authors use different kinds of print, indexes, and glossaries to convey information. Now we'll use all that we know about nonfiction conventions and nonfiction text to learn about how to start doing research.
Writing : The students are well on their ways to completing their nonfiction all about books. Ask your child what he/she is writing about! Last week, we talked about how nonfiction writers sometimes lay out the structures of their books differently than fiction writers. We also focused on the students adding nonfiction conventions, like labels, captions, maps, and close ups into their own writing.
Math : We wrapped up unit 6 last week by learning about quarters and digital clocks. While I introduced telling time to the five minute marks, I do not expect the students to master this by the end of first grade. The goal for the end of first grade is that students can tell time to the hour and half hour. However, you can always practice time to the five minutes at home!
Read Alouds : I haven't talked about our read alouds in a while, but we've had some good ones lately. A couple of weeks ago, we read Tacky books, written by Helen Lester. The students fell in love with the main character, Tacky. We didn't read all of the books in this series, so you and your child might have fun reading some of the others at home. Now, we've moved into a Tomie dePaola unit of study during our read alouds. Many of his books are based in different cultures and time periods, so it ties in well to our multicultural unit of study in social studies. Check out some of his books, too!
Here are some pictures of 1-Bu in action last week :