Lots Going On This Week!

Events This Week In First Grade:

 

It's a short week packed with lots of events and activities!  Here is what is happening on the week of February 9 - 13:

Wee Deliver!
This week starts a school-wide mail system in which children can write, seal and mail notes and letters to other children in other classrooms.  There will be a large mailbox in the lobby of our school if you want to write and mail a letter to your child!  Our address is 111 JiJi Street, Burlington, MA 01803

Pajama Day Has Been Rescheduled for this Wednesday

Please let your child come to school in their favorite PJ's this Wednesday. If they want to play in the snow at recess, make sure that they have boots and snowpants!

Valentines Day

Since we are going to the Museum of Science on Friday, we will exchange Valentines on Thursday. A list of all of the children's names in the class will be sent home tomorrow (Tuesday). Please know that this optional and voluntary. If your child decides to send in valentines, please help prevent any broken hearts by making sure they send a valentine in for everyone.

Museum of Science Field Trip

This Friday we will see a show at the Planetarium and then visit some other exhibits at the museum.  Please be sure that your child brings in a paper-bag lunch with a drink in a non-breakable container.  Also, the busses leave promptly at 8:30 so please make sure your child is on time that day. Chaperones can arrive around 8:15.  Please plan on carpooling.

Persuasive Posters on Which Season Is Most Important

Which Season Is the Most Important?
While we learned that all seasons are important, the students of Room 111 took their writing to another level and chose one season to write about.  Their goal: to persuade their readers that their chosen season was the most important.

Step One: Learning about all of the seasons:
First we watched educational videos and read books on each individual season:

We recorded all of our facts about each individual season into our Seasons Notebooks:

Step 2: We learned about the Features of a Great Persuasive Writing Text:

Step 3:  We each chose a season to write about and began to outline our writing in our "planning sheet":

Step 4: We chose the most important facts and reasons from our research notebook and our list poem to use in our persuasive piece. Then we began writing our rough draft:

Step 5: We created a beginning to draw in our readers and placed it in the middle part of our poster.  We then supported our topic sentence with reasons, facts and pictures.  Some pictures were drawn and others were photos which went with our words.  Here are the final Persuasive Posters!  Enjoy:

Step 6: Self-Assessment:  We used the following kid-friendly rubric to self-assess our writing.

Chicks In The Classroom

The Chick Hatching Experience In Room 111:

The chicks arrived last Monday and were placed into the classroom incubator:

When we arrived at our classroom on Tuesday morning, all of the chicks had hatched!

The students began recording what they observed 

in their paper Chick Notebook:

They also took pictures of the live chicks and their own writing and recorded in their 

iPad Science Notebook:

Twenty-four hours after birth, the chicks were moved to the classroom Brooder Box:

We continued to record our observations of how the chicks developed over the next few days:

We also had plenty of time to hold the chicks and observe their changes up close:

It was a great experience!  Thanks to the Science Center for providing the incubators, brooder box, eggs and eventually ... the chicks!