For morning meeting on Wednesday the children watched a video of a celebrity reading a powerful children's book called White Socks. It is about a little African American girl who thought she could drink from a water fountain that said "Whites Only" because she wore white socks. Later in the week we continued reading a Jan Brett story called Berloitz the Bear. The children worked on story elements such as characters, setting, important details, and the problem/solution. To end our unit on fractions, the children did a review game on the Promethean board. On Friday we started working on adding doubles. While the children are only expected to know their doubles to six, we practiced this "rap" that goes higher. You may notice them singing it at home after we practice it more. :)
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The children were happy Friday was not a half day because we were able to have Flashlight Friday! It truly is such a magical day of the week. We have a surprise! The children will be publishing their own book about kindness. The publishing kit arrived on Friday, but the book will not actually be published until March. I will be sending order forms home in the next couple weeks if any of you would be interested in buying our hardback class book. No pressure to buy because it will be published regardless of purchases. I plan to purchase two, one for the classroom and one to donate to the school library. The children are so excited to become authors and illustrators!
We had a great first week back at school and the children were very excited about the impending snow. :) In January, I enjoy doing a week of shared reading/writing experiences about penguins. The children really like learning about them. We focused mainly on nonfiction literature. Monday we worked as a class to complete a KWL chart about penguins. KWL stands for K (what the children already know), W (what the children want to learn), and L (what the children did learn). The book focused on Emperor penguins, but did include other types as well.
We watched a Brainpop Jr video about fractions. We worked with "fraction pizzas" and did a Promethean board activity for equal parts.
Mr. Lacy came and did a lesson with the children about the tools people need for various careers. As always, the children enjoyed his visit.
This week the safety officer came and did a lesson with the children on respect.
We did a fun review lesson for geometry using toothpicks and marshmallows. The children made various shapes and talked about how many sides, verticies, and right angles each shape had. ![]() The Polar Express is one of my favorite holiday books! The children really loved hearing the story and writing about what they would choose for the "first gift of Christmas". After the book, I gave them bells and we participated in the first grade tradition of singing through the halls. The children have witnessed the happiness they have brought to the other classes through their "kindness bombs". Response notes and their notes have been displayed on classroom doors! :) Our presentation at Crestfest went well! The children did a great job!!! Congratulations to our new Student of the Month! Thank you to everyone that sent in items for the winter treat! They really enjoyed it. :)
This week I continued sequencing work with The Little Red Hen and versions of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The children worked on writing from the point-of-view of the charcters in this writing activity. This week we continued our work with geometry. In this activity, the children used pattern blocks to trace different shapes and record the number of sides and vertices. Johnathon the Juggler was a big hit! The children enjoyed the performance and learned about recycling and why taking care of the earth is important. Have them tell you about the pictures. Our kindness tree is beautiful! The children love watching it grow. We have also been preparing for CrestFest. Speaking parts have been assigned, a song has been learned, and we will put it all together next week. The children are so excited! Special thanks to our December Mystery Reader! We had our free pizzas on Friday! The children enjoyed the treat and eating in the classroom. Thanks again for your support of the Papa John's Teacher Delivery Night! This has been a blessing! Thank you to Santa for sending this from the North Pole. It sure has come in handy. :)
This week we read different versions of The Three Little Pigs. The stories are perfect for working on sequencing, retelling, comparing/contrasting, point-of-view, and character analysis. In this writing activity, the children sequenced pictures from the story and then worked on writing a written retelling of the story. Later we read The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs and discussed the different point-of-views of the characters. I was surprised most of the students sided with the wolf's story! :) Heritage Night is my favorite school event! It was nice to see a lot of you there. I didn't take many pictures because I was enjoying the night so if you want to see more check out the PTA's Facebook page. We have started our geometry unit in math. The paper that went home is an overview of what the children will be learning. At first we focused on shape identification and shapes within the environment. In this activity I read a book to the children and then they turned a shape into a real life object. On Friday, the children practiced making shapes using geoboards. They really enjoyed this activity! While making the shapes the children counted the sides and vertices (if it had them) and recorded the shapes they made. The Kindness tree has grown a lot! We have also started creating and practicing our CrestFest presentation.
This week we had our annual Transportation Fair. The children were able to see four vehicles; animal control, GRTC bus, fire truck, and police car. The people discussed their careers with the children and emphasized the importance of education to achieve career goals. For math this week we focused on plus 2 and review. The children played this spin game and recorded the information in their math journals. The children's timeline projects are my favorite! I love seeing the children when they were younger. They did a great job presenting their projects. The children had so much to be thankful for in this writing activity! Once again, CrestFest was a lot of fun! Thank you to everyone that supported the Fall treat! As you can see, the children really enjoyed it! Congratulations to our new student of the month! A special thank you to our guest reader who chose reading to our class as a reward!
With Thanksgiving right around the corner, we focused on Native American literature this week . The children seemed to enjoy the stories and learned a lot about the Native American culture. These are four of the stories we read: The children continued to work with writing the beginning, middle, and end of a stories using various graphic organizers. They also practiced verbally retelling the story using a Kagan strategy. I saw a lot of growth with their writing this week! On Thursday, the children got to have a little fun with their writing. After learning about Native Americans from long ago, they tried writing using symbols instead of words to tell a story. During math we have been working on plus and minus one. The children played a partner game where they rolled a dice took away 1 and put a counter on the board. The first to complete a row won! We reviewed plus and minus one on Thursday. The children used playing cards and a plus/minus dice to create and solve number sentences and recorded the equations in their math journal. Ms. Haga is a volunteer from a church partnership that comes every two weeks to volunteer in our class. The children read books from their independent book boxes with her for some extra practice. Our class will be participating in the December CrestFest! Mr. Lacy learned that our class was working on kindness with our classroom tree. Later he discovered we have been doing top secret kindness missions throughout the school. Here is an example of a pack of happy notes we delivered secretly to "kindness bomb" another class. The children even came up with our code name! We will have our big reveal at CrestFest. :)
Our Kindness Tree is growing! Please continue to send in any acts of kindness. It would be nice to reach 100 before our winter break. We will continue our work with addition and subtraction until close to winter break. This week we focused on plus one and using different number strategies. The children will learn how to use strategies such as counting on/back, mental math, using manipulatives, and number lines. The unit will cover plus 1, 2, 3 as well as, minus 1, 2, and 3. The children will also learn their doubles facts. They really enjoyed playing this partner plus one game. The children practiced using a number line to solve problems with this Promethean board activity. Mr. Lacy came and did a lesson with the children on different careers. On Friday we honored veterans. In the morning the entire school gathered and recognized veterans through music. It was a special moment for us all. When we got back to class, the children watched a short video about Veteran's Day and then wrote about how they honor veterans. A special thank you to our November Mystery Reader! We enjoyed the visit.
On Monday I read the children a book called Popcorn which was actually a story I read as a child. After discussing the story elements, I gave the children popcorn and they brainstormed describing words using their five senses. We finished our unit on sun and earth relationships this week. I made a review game for the children to play prior to the test. They really enjoyed it! We also acted like scientists by doing a sink/float experiment. The children wrote predictions in their science journals for whether a pumpkin would sink or float and observed the results. Math Night was so much fun! Thank you to all the families that came. We have started a kindness mission in the classroom and we need your help. Some of you may have heard about it already because the children have been bringing notes about their acts of kindness. :) If your child does any kind act outside of school please write me a note about it so we can add a heart to our Kindness Tree. Our goal is to reach 100! With the upcoming election, I decided to spend a couple days reading relevant literature. One day we read Duck for President and we had a class election (Farmer Brown vs. Duck). Duck won! Then the children wrote letters to Duck. CrestFest was a success! You should have your child tell you about the pictures. Congratulations to those recognized at Crestfest!
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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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