Another great week included collecting items for the Animal Shelter. The kids made Fall Fives Trees to count by 5s with!  We also did an actual "Story Walk" to retell stories we read this week!  A few students were ready to move up to the 100ths Place!  We are definitely learning in 1st Grade!  Thanks for all the support!

Have a great weekend!

September Fun

It was another great week in 1st Grade!  We were happy to have our grandparents for breakfast!  We experimented with air and mass and found out that air does have mass!  :)  We love reading with our 4th Grade buddies every Thursday outside!  It's  just another opportunity to read to someone and get some help if needed! We had treats galore today!  Thanks so much Lela and her dad for the pencil cookies and thank you Mrs. Cooke for being our Mystery Reader during Grandparents Week.  We enjoyed your stories and your memories during this special week!  Hope the video works, but  this was some math fun with number sense today!

Remember to dress like a pirate Monday as Fall begins next week!

Have a great weekend! 

Welcome Class or 2016-2017

What a great first week in 1st Grade.  We have been busy bees.  We have learned rules and procedures. We have been reading, graphing, creating patterns and pattern books.  We made Friendship Salad and discussed being a good friend!  We have been writing responses to some great beginning of the year stories like Wemberly Worried.   I am so happy to have the pleasure of teaching your children.  Below are some highlights of our week.

Remember:
Next week begins homework folders.
Return them on FRIDAYS!
 Wear tennis shoes for PE on Tuesdays!
1st Spelling Test will be Thursday!
1st Math Quiz Friday
Look over Math Pre-Assessments for Math Quiz on Friday!

Have a great weekend!

Thanks for all you do to make our learning fun!  

Spring Has Sprung

Such a great week as always in 1st Grade!  We were so happy to be finished with MAP testing.  "It takes a village to raise a child..." is truth!  It takes all of us doing our part to create successful, happy children.  The kids did well on MAP and they have worked hard all year!!

Thank you for participation in Dress Up days!  Sixties  Day was certainly a fun one!  The kids kept asking, "What is the 60s?"   Unfortunately, I knew the answer!!  :)  The kids were cuties and Lindsey absolutely stood out!

The week of Easter, we wrote using adjectives.  We read some lovely Easter Stories and decorated eggs.  The children completed some wonderful descriptive writing about eggs for our April Bulletin Board!!

The egg hunt was a success with over 400 eggs!   Wishing you and your family a wonderful Spring Break.  We are STILL WORKING as we are in our 4th 9 Weeks.  Please continue to read, complete math, and do word work at home so we are ready for 2nd!

March is Here!

February/March have been super months!  We have learned so much with our Natural Resources Unit.  The kids did a great job organizing their information into a Weekly Reader. We discussed water and the flooding from October of 2015 in SC and each group graphed one of the cities to show rainfall totals for October in SC.    
                                                                                                         Read Across America Week was a hit! We celebrated the birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel.               Dr. Seuss books are a favorite because they are easy to read, filled with  rhyme, have nonsense characters, and they make us smile!  We rotated from room to room in 1st Grade.  In my room we read "Green Eggs and Ham" and children made a green egg with a pretzel, frosting, and green M&M.  We then did some Dr. Seuss movement poetry.

Along with projects and fun days, we are reviewing for those important end of year MAP tests we will be doing over the next few weeks!  Remember to ensure your children get a good night's sleep, good breakfast, and sweet words on the way out!

Thanks for all you do!

Happy February

Wow!  The snow has put us out of sync for a bit, but happy to be back to blogging about our busy First Graders!  Mr. Groundhog DID NOT see his shadow so the good news is...Spring is on the way.  ( We will keep our fingers crossed!)  We have been busy with our study of water.  We have been viewing and answering questions about water on a map of the U.S. and also viewing pie charts and discussing water percentages across the world.  We have been learning about where water comes from, where it is, and how we can get to it!  We have been working in groups this week and preparing for presentations on rivers, lakes, oceans, and swamps!  We have also been working on subtraction in centers with "snowball" subtraction.  Manipulatives always help with our understanding.

We are enjoying our love letters from home!  Get your valentines in!  We are ready for our ice cream sundae party!

Have a great week!

Welcome 2016

Just a few pictures from December!  We had a blast tracking Santa's flight across the U.S.  Great Map Skills! We worked on the cardinal directions: North, South, East, and West.  We also counted down to Christmas by adding cotton to Santa's beard daily! This helps us prepare to count back to subtract as we move into January!

Our letters to  Santa were wonderful.  Several children didn't ask for anything but thanked Santa for being so wonderful!

As we head into the new year, we will really focus on reading and comprehending/remembering what was read.  IF  students struggle with answers, make them reread the passage.  Homework will correlate with this as well!

Math will move to subtraction and greater than/less than.

Social Studies will focus on important figures in History and their contributions! 

Happy New Year and welcome back!  Students will find a brand new place in our classroom as we head to a close of our 2nd 9 Weeks!  Let's finish strong!

Happy Holidays!

We have been busy little elves this first week back!  The students wrote about why Santa should hire them at the North Pole.  We discussed job applications and how people get hired.   We also had to cut out our picture like an elf! :) 

We threw in some photos from Clemson/ Carolina Challenge.  It was a blast and a lot of money was raised.  Thanks so much for the support!  OF COURSE...our TIGERS won!   

One of our "Wonderings" was learning another language.  We learned how to say excuse me today in Chinese... and students are making a Chinese counting book to 10...We are learning that life and customs are very different around the world!

Lastly, we read the Gingerbread Man and focused on literary text features:  characters, setting, problem and solution.  

Thanks for volunteering to help with upcoming Polar Express Day and Christmas Party!  We can't do it without you!  We are almost ready to deliver our books to 4K  for our November/December Project.  I think I found a connection with someone in Greenville to help get books to the lower part of the State damaged by the flooding earlier this year!  It IS the time for giving!  Thanks for all you do to help make our learning meaningful and fun!  We collected over 200 books in our class alone! 

Ready for the Holidays

What a fun week!  The kids had a lot of fun exploring careers and learning about solids, liquids and gases at Kids Senses!  It was a full day of fun learning!  We also enjoyed hearing from one of our School Board members, Mr. Craig Sims on the importance of leadership qualities.  Students need to be kind to everyone, they need to be hardworking, and trust worthy!  We applied those traits to how we can use them in OUR young lives!  ( ME INCLUDED!)  Teresa Ledbetter is a former teacher here and we enjoyed hearing about the ever changing laws and importance of listening! 

We enjoyed Parent Lunch and we uploaded our video through email of our Thanksgiving Skit Performance!  Thanks for listening to my 10 Marks speech!  I hope you are able to use that at home with your child and let me know if you have questions!

Have a blessed Thanksgiving!  I am very thankful for ALL of you!  Ask your child to read some of the things they wrote about from their thankful thoughts baskets on Thanksgiving this year! 

We are Thankful!

What a great week!  I am so thankful for the men and women who served our country.  Your children were the best greeters Oakland Elementary ever had! The kids are working on  Persuasive/Opinion Writing but they are writing daily about what they are thankful for so we don't miss this important holiday!   Those cups come home next week!  As you can see above, we have made cards, studied Indians and war ships, problem solved with doubles and worked on our new program, Ten Marks on the computer for math!  We are having a great year! Thanks for all the clorox wipes, snacks, and gently used books for 4K!  Looking forward to our Field Trip and Parent Lunch next week! 

Welcome November!

Our Community Helpers Unit is in full swing!  We had the best guests and the children learned about many interesting careers.  I was so thankful to have people come and give of their time...FREE!  

Mayor Huff of Inman joined us today and told about the qualities of a good leader.  We have a "Noticings' Chart" about what makes a great leader and we will add qualities with each visitor! :) We will move forward with the election process and pick a Class President of this month only!!

The children had so much fun carving pumpkins and candy graphing. This is a glimpse at learning in Literacy Stations.  The kids listened to a story about the life cycle of a pumpkin and responded with writing!  Great job everyone! :)

  Looking forward to our Field Trip to Kids Senses and seeing all of you at Parent Lunch.  We are writing each morning and adding to our thankful thoughts tupperware containers.  Those will come home the week of Thanksgiving!  WE are thankful for you and the children! 

Closing out October...

The kids did a wonderful job with questioning and learning how to annotate this past week.  Students  learned how to pick out words from our poetry and draw a picture on the side to show understanding...very different that illustrating.  This is a higher concept that prepares them for older grades! 

Flat Stanley photos and presentations were wonderful.  Students learned the importance of standing straight and tall, eye on the audience, and speaking loudly and clearly so everyone could hear you.  They were able to tell where they were in our community, what they do there, and why it is important to us! Those without access to photos drew a picture and presented.  It was all wonderful!

Congratulations for raising a great bunch of kids.  I think the children enjoyed getting awards and learning that hard work does pay off! :)  We are also very fortunate at Oakland to have THE BEST P.E. Teacher in the State!!  Coach Cabe puts her heart and soul into the well being of all students at Oakland.  I consider her a friend and I am proud to be part of 1 of 6 schools in the State of S.C. to be recognized as a "healthy school".  

Have a great weekend with all the harvest fun this and let's all get thankful as we head into next week.