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The children worked very hard on their Reader's Theater plays. This week the children made their costumes, rehearsed with and without costumes, and did their performances on Thursday. I was impressed with their work! Crestwood's talent show was great! There was even some donkey kissing to celebrate the school reading over a million minutes!!! ![]() The children seemed to enjoy the Magic Treehouse Party! After we met our goal of reading ten books, the children were able to choose a theme for the party based on one of the books. They voted for Night of the Ninjas. As you will see in the Crestfest photos, the whole class also became series experts! Crestfest was another huge hit! It was a great way to end the year. :) Congratulations to all of our Crestfest Winners!!! Thank you for making sure all of the library books were returned! Our class earned a special end-of-the-year reading by Mrs. Velle!
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Since we had finished all of our social studies and science units, I let the children vote on what they wanted to learn about for the remainder of the year. They chose dogs! :) I planned our daily lessons around that theme. So far the children have learned about how dogs grow, safety around dogs, guide dogs, and different breeds and personalities of dogs. On the first day we made Origami puppies! We also discussed charts, watched Discovery Ed videos, read books, and used Venn diagrams. I was sad missing field day this year! Thankfully my amazing sub took pictures for me and the blog! During shared reading the children have been listening to various end of the year stories and working on their end of the year memory books. I just had to do one more kindness project with the children to end the year. I loved the idea of doing kindness rocks so I bought a bunch of rocks and we got started. :) A third grade class also joined our project! After painting the rocks with their personalized messages, I added pictures of them on the back. On Friday, we placed our rocks in "Monarch Meadows" (the area inside the bus loop). We surpassed our goal for the kindness tree! The children did 104 kind acts!
The children made jellyfish this week and wrote about them using describing words. While we did continue reading stories by Ezra Jack Keats this week we also did writing not associated with the literature. One day, the children wrote about their favorite parts of first grade. In social studies we worked on our final standard this week; the Fourth of July. We watched videos on the holiday and did several writing activities. Since we still have more time in the school year, I let the children vote on what they wanted to learn about in science and social studies. The winning vote was dogs! So I plan on teaching the children about dogs in general, the history of dogs, service dogs, and safety around dogs. Instead of doing our normal reading groups, I decided we would end the year doing reader's theater! Not only is it practicing reading, but also a great opportunity for the children to work on reading with expression. There will be three different plays differentiated by reading level. We began working on the scripts this week! Here is a hint for our final kindness project of the year...
Lewis Ginter is always a wonderful field trip, although I wish the weather would have cooperated. The children really enjoyed seeing butterflies from all around the world, and their "tasting lesson" on plant parts in the children's garden. Thank you to all of our wonderful chaperones! With all the rain this past week we had to improvise with our recess plans. One day we took a field trip to Mrs. Miles' room in Kindergarten to see all of the animals being used for K's PBL. In math we have been working on addition equalities. One great tool to illustrate this concept works like a balance scale. We did a true/false equality activity using a Star Wars theme. We also did a Promethean board review focusing on the types of questions the children will see on the test. In shared reading this week we first worked on our last nine week's writing sample. This time the children wrote about the summer We have officially met our "kindness bomb" goal! We have kindness bombed every class in the school plus the office, custodians, and Mr. Lacy! Our last tadpole has been released. It left with a group of other tadpoles and froglets from the school.
This week in shared reading and writing we focused on nonfiction books about ocean animals. One day the children wrote about whether or not jellyfish would make good pets. In Science we have been working on animals. We have differentiated between wild and domestic animals and discussed where animals live. In math this week we have continued to work with measurement but focused on volume/capacity and weight. We did an experiment using rice to see which cup had the greatest volume. The children also did a Promethean board activity comparing the volumes of different items. Then we made a picture showing heavier and lighter on a balance scale. The children worked with a partner to use a real balance scales comparing and contrasting items. This week in shared reading and writing we worked with fiction and nonfiction stories. The children began learning about real pigs before reading fiction Olivia books. This week in math, the children worked on measuring various items using nonstandard measurement. The children first used items in their desk to practice measuring with snap cubes. Later in the week, the children measured a friend! We also did a Promethean board activity! In social studies, the children continued learning about economics. In this activity, the children first became a producer by making a bookmark to "sell". The next day, they became consumers and symbolically purchased each other's bookmarks. The children also learned about saving and spending money. I read the book Alexander Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday and acted out the book using real money and a "saved" and "spent" cup. We celebrated all moms in class! Our safety officer came back one more time to do a lesson on summer safety. She discussed bike helmets, life jackets, ocean safety, etc. "Fuzzball" is now a froglet!
This week in shared reading and writing we focused on nonfiction and fiction butterfly stories. To start the week I read the children a book about the Painted Lady butterfly life cycle and the children wrote about it using our retelling sequence. Later in the week I read the children a story I love called Adios Oscar. In the story, a caterpillar named Oscar believes he will turn into a Monarch butterfly, but ends up turning into a moth instead. The message in the story is beautiful, because Oscar decides he will follow his dream and go to Mexico even though he is not a butterfly. The children wrote about where they would like to travel in the world. I am only showing the pictures so you can guess where they want to visit. :) This week we finished our unit on place value. In one activity the children played a "I have, who has" game with individual cards. In another activity, we used the Promethean board to work through a review on place value. One of our enrichment groups performed their reader's theater play for the whole first grade! In social studies this week we began our unit on economics. This week the children learned about needs/wants and goods/services. In this partner activity we used a page from the book Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs to find various goods and services. Ms. Baker's last day was Friday. :( We are going to miss her! She asked to do morning meeting on Friday and taught the children about "Wonder" and "Wander".
This week we read various nonfiction stories about frogs and toads. We even have two new tadpole classmates which the class named "Froaker" and "Fuzzball". In this writing activity, the children used a Venn diagram to compare and contrast frogs and toads. After learning about frogs and toads, the children wrote about whether they would want to be a frog or toad and why. As we reach the conclusion of our plants PBL (Project Based Learning), the children made posters to advertise the sell of their milkweed plants at nature fair. They enjoyed this project and working as a team! This week in math the children began learning more about place value. In this partner activity, the children made numbers using snap cubes to show groups of tens and ones and observe the value of those digits. This week, the children finished their plants unit and were able to see their interactive folders complete. In honor of poetry month, we partnered with a fourth grade class to read poems. Crestfest is always a success! :) Congratulations to our Crestfest winners!
This week the students continued studying plants which is not only covered by our SOL's but also part of our PBL project. In this lesson the children reviewed the parts of a plant. Then the children did an experiment where they dissected seeds and observed the different parts. Mr. Singleton (owner of Jubilant Gardens) came to teach the children on Wednesday. During the lesson he discussed the parts of a plant and then they were able to plant a seed of their choice and take a flower home. The children also examined the roots of plants using magnifying glasses. In math the children have been working with higher addition and subtraction using word problems. In this activity the children used provided word problems, circled or underlined the important parts of the problem and solved it using pictures and a number sentence. This week Ms. Baker read a variety of stories that highlighted Earth Day. In this story, the children learned about animals and the rain forest. Then they practiced answering question words and using describing words in their writing activity. The safety officer came and did a lesson with the children on self control. Part of the lesson was blowing bubbles on the children and they could not talk or pop the bubbles. That took a lot of self control! :) Mr. Lacy also came and did a lesson on internet safety. The children learned about their "digital footprints" and what is safe and not safe to share online.
This week the children listened to fiction and nonfiction rabbit stories. They worked with retelling, story elements, making connections, and poetry along with the texts. In math, the children have been learning about more complex addition and subtraction story problems. In the first activity, the children listened to a Pete the Cat story and used real buttons to work through subtraction story problems. The week ended with a fun jelly bean activity using part/part/whole and story problems. We began our science unit on plants with the children first learning about living and nonliving. Then the children learned about what a plant needs to survive. They are performing experiment where one seed receives everything it needs while the other two are deprived of one or more things. At the end of the week the children learned about the parts of a plant through a fun song and a model display! The children have also started making review folders of everything they are learning about plants.
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Mrs. StearnsWelcome! This is my fourth year at Crestwood and my 15th year of teaching. I love the families at Crestwood! I received my undergraduate degree from Longwood University and later received my Master's degree in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in ESL. I am married and have a five-year-old daughter. I also have two dogs and one cat. When I am not teaching you will find me camping, reading, or going fun places with the family. Archives
June 2017
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