Yesterday the children participated in Mill Run's annual "Planting Day."  We are so grateful to the moms who came to help!  Special thanks to:  A.G.'s mom, E.G.'s mom, R.K.'s mom, and J.B.'s mom!  While small groups of students were taking turns planting, the rest of us were in the classroom working on a sunflower craft (pictured at right.)  Thank you all so much!  The children had so much fun, and I know they are proud to have helped make Mill Run more beautiful.

This week we also sent our Flat Stanleys off to visit our friends and relatives.  Please see the slideshow below.  Again, we couldn't have started this project without your generous help!  I will keep you all posted as the Stanleys return to us in a few weeks.  We will mark their destinations on a map and review their adventures together.

In classroom news, I will be in the building but away from our class on Tuesday for professional development.  I will have limited time on Tuesday to check email, so if you have an urgent need, please contact the school office.

We have slowed the rate at which we add words to the word wall.  At this point, the children should be able to read and write the current word wall words independently and with confidence.  This is a good time of year to review the word wall words again at home.  Thank you!

On Wednesday, we will begin the spring round of PALS testing, followed shortly by DRA testing.  All of the reading test components occur within the school day, so it will take several weeks to complete this process.  I will include your child's scores in the fourth quarter report card comments, but if you are concerned, please send me an email.  They all have achieved so much this year;  you will want to celebrate their success!

In math, we are returning to addition and subtraction strategies as well as practicing our math fact fluency on ReflexMath.  In science, we are studying plants and seeds.  

As always, please contact me with any questions!  Thank you!

With 668 Box Tops, our class sailed away with first place for the March Box Tops contest!  Whoo Hoo!  Thank you so much to all of our families for your diligence in checking for Box Tops and sending them to school.  The children will all receive a coupon to CiCi's Pizza from the Mill Run PTO to mark this momentous occasion!

The character trait for April is responsibility.  We have been discussing what it means to be responsible, including doing what you are supposed to do without being told.  Please discuss your expectations for responsible behavior with your child.  Since we are also celebrating Earth Day this month, this is a perfect opportunity to link to how we can be responsible with our trash.  

In a recent guidance lesson, Mrs. Fulkerson was able to congratulate both our star citizen for February, R.K. (right) and for March, N.T. (below).  Well done, girls!

We have begun a math unit focusing on money.  You can help your child practice identifying a penny, nickel, dime, and quarter.  You can ask your child to tell you how much money you have with a small collection of change.  You could also give your child an amount, and ask her to show which coins you would have to equal that value.  Please encourage your child to find different combinations of coins to equal the same amount.  Yesterday, the children found two solutions to this problem:

I have 6 coins in my pocket that equal 50 cents.  What coins could I have?

In science, we are learning about natural resources.  We will be focusing on the three Rs:  reduce, reuse, and recycle.  The children are pretty comfortable with reusing, since we use scrap paper quite often in the class.  They also help with recycling.  However, the concept of reducing the amount of trash we produce is a little more difficult.  Thank you for discussing this at home.

Finally, I thought you would enjoy this shot of R.K. and a friend getting ready for a ride in a limo with our three principals.  R.K. won this prize at Mill Run's Carnival auction.  How fun!!!

I hope that you are all enjoying your spring break with your families!  I'd like to share a few notes with you about our work last week as we wrapped up the third quarter.

First, thank you all so much for helping us with our force and motion construction project.  The students explored the concepts we researched in our force and motion unit, for example:  friction, types of surfaces, speed, and motion along a straight, zig-zag, or circular path.  In addition, the children had the opportunity to work as a member of a small team.  They had to compromise, take turns, and use their words to solve problems together.  I wish I had taken a picture of their faces when I first explained the assignment.  Their excitement was priceless!

Here is the link to the March Motion Science Project video, in case it doesn't appear above:  http://youtu.be/fIt7O8HU6tE

Second, the children celebrated their work as writers in small sharing circles.  With a class our size, it is not reasonable to ask the children to maintain their attention so that all students have a turn to read to the class.  However, it is important that the children do share their writing aloud with others.  Small sharing circles is one way we celebrate our work.  Please enjoy the slideshow below of our sharing time.

As you can see, our sharing circles took place on "Wear Green" day.  We had 96% participation, so our class had the best showing among all the first grades!  Hooray!

Finally, please allow your child some time on the computer to log in to reflexmath.com to get some practice with math fact fluency.  When your child has demonstrated measured progress with a certain fact, the small circle in the top right corner will turn green.  This green light indicates that your child can exit the program without losing any progress.

Thank you, again, and I hope you continue to enjoy the break!

We are in need of several items in the classroom.  We have almost depleted our pencil supply for the year, so any donations of pencils are most appreciated!

Also, for an upcoming project, we will need an abundant supply of items that might be in your recycling bin.  Please send in any paper towel tubes, toilet paper tubes, various-size cardboard boxes (like cereal boxes, cracker boxes) and clean yogurt or tofu containers.  We will also be grateful for any donations of clear tape, masking tape, duct tape, and string.  If you're looking at something made of thin cardboard or plastic, and you're not sure, please send it in!  I promise to recycle any materials that come in that we don't use.  :-)  I don't want to spoil the surprise of why we need so many materials, so please stay tuned to the blog.  We will use these items the week of March 18.  Many, many thanks in advance for your help!!

We have already collected more than 400 box tops, so we are getting very excited about our chances to win the March contest.  Thank you to everyone for your help with this.  Every box top helps raise money for our school!  

In academic news, we will be finishing our math unit on fractions and moving into addition and subtraction.  We will build on strategies we practiced in the second quarter to solve harder problems and story problems.  We will also write our own problems.  When solving a story problem, students will be asked to show their thinking in pictures, numbers, or words.

We are also wrapping up our unit on matter and beginning a unit on force, motion, and energy.  Most likely this unit will continue into the fourth quarter, but we will begin by focusing on types of motion and pushes and pulls.

In reading, we are continuing to practice comprehension skills for fiction and nonfiction.  In nonfiction, we are paying attention to key vocabulary, the author's purpose for writing, and formulating questions that can be answered in the text.  In fiction, we are continuing to build fluency by reading in the character's voice, and we are thinking about our reading by visualizing what is happening and making inferences.

In writing we are finishing writing small moment personal narratives.  We have begun to work with a writing partner to help plan our writing and revision.  We are focusing on adding details to our writing to make our stories more vivid.

Coming Soon:

*  Picture day is Tuesday, March 12.  

*  Wednesday, March 13, we will attend an assembly provided by our wonderful PTO.  Wednesday is also "Wear Red" day for Youth Art Month.

*  The Mill Run Carnival is Friday, March 15.  By all accounts, this will be a fun family event.  "Just chill!"

Our study of our national symbols focused on the flag, the bald eagle, the Statue of Liberty, and the Washington Monument.  As you can see above, we culminated the unit with a project in the computer lab.  The children were asked to draw a picture and write at least three sentences about their favorite symbol using the Pixie software.

Now that we have finished the unit on U.S. Symbols, it is time to begin a quick unit on matter.  In this unit, we are focusing on science standard 1.3, which reads, "The student will investigate and understand how common materials interact with water.  Key concepts include
a) some liquids will separate when mixed with water, but others will not;
b) some solids will dissolve in water, but others will not; and
c) some substances will dissolve more readily in hot water than in cold water."  We will be squeezing in several experiments as well as building our nonfiction reading skills as we dive into our science textbook.  You are welcome to reinforce your child's learning at home by conducting simple experiments to see how various materials such as vinegar, milk, baking soda, powdered drink mix, sugar, salt, sand, oil, soil, and rocks act when mixed with water.  Making cookies for the sake of science?  Definitely.  It's a beautiful thing.  

In math, we have begun our study of fractions.  In first grade, we focus on halves, thirds, and fourths.  It is important that the children understand that a fraction represents a part of a whole, that fractions require the whole to be divided into equal parts, and that the fraction name tells the number of equal parts in the whole.  We will also learn how fractions can describe part of a set.  If I have three apples, two green and one red, I can say that 1/3 of the apples are red.  Studying fractions at home can be very fun at snack-time.  Pizzas can be divided into fractions, fractions of the pizza could have different toppings, and apples can be sliced into fractions as well.  Enjoy!

If you have the chance to visit Mill Run, please visit the bulletin board across from the cafeteria leading onto the kindergarten/first grade hallway.  Our class was responsible for decorating the bulletin board for the month of March.  We decided to link to Dr. Seuss' birthday and focus on reading.  Each student interviewed his/her reading buddy, comparing their buddy's answers to the children's own responses.  We asked:

• Where do you like to read?
  
• What do you do to become a better reader?
  
• What is your favorite book?
  

Then, the children turned the interview responses into books.  A brief self-reflection like this can be a very powerful tool to increase one's own confidence in reading.  I encourage you to discuss the same questions at home as a family.  

As part of the Youth Art Month festivities, Mr. Browning is organizing a contest for three "color days"  The first color day will be Wednesday, March 6, and the color is blue.  Please help your child to pick out an all-blue outfit on Wednesday.  Thanks for your help!

Finally, many thanks go to AV's mom for sparking interest in the PTO BoxTop collection.  If we all work together to check our pantries, tissue boxes, and ziploc bag boxes, we might collect enough to place in the March contest.  Quite a few boxtops came in yesterday.  The students will count them on Monday, and we'll keep you posted with how many we have.  Thank you for your help!

The children were very excited to take part in a scientific experiment this week.  This was a preview of concepts we will discuss in more detail later in the year during our unit on states of matter.  This project will be on display during Mill Run's Science Expo February 6th.  Here are the steps of our project:

Question:  Can two types of matter be in the same place at the same time?

Hypothesis:  We considered the materials needed and the procedure.  We each made a prediction of what we thought would happen.

Materials:  a bowl of water, a cup, and a paper towel

Procedure:

First, fill a bowl with water.

Then, crumple a small paper towel and stuff it in the bottom of a cup.

Next, turn the cup upside down and put it in the bowl.  Hold it firmly.  Count to ten.

After that, take the cup out of the bowl.

Finally, look inside the cup.

Results:  We discovered that the paper towel was still dry inside the cup.  We noticed that when we placed the cup in the bowl, it made a smacking sound when it touched the water.  Also, it took strength to hold the cup in position in the bowl. 

Conclusion:  We decided that two types of matter cannot be in the same place at the same time.  Air was trapped inside the cup, and the air kept the paper towel from getting wet. 

As we begin the third quarter, we are beginning some new units of study.

In math, we are beginning a quick unit focusing on place value.  We have been touching on place value all year during our calendar time within our morning meeting.  Key concepts in this unit include:

• understanding the expanded form of a two-digit number (74 = 7 tens and 4 ones), 
  
• representing a two-digit number with a visual diagram of tens and ones, and 
• solving to find the number when you add or subtract one, or when you add or subtract one ten (74 + 1 = 75, 74 + 1 ten = 84).  
  

We will also continue using Reflex Math and the Math Masters program (aka Rocket Math) to measure our progress in recalling basic addition facts quickly and accurately.

In reading and writing, we will use question words to enhance our understanding and our work.  In reading, we will ask and answer wondering questions to monitor our understanding of the text.  For example, Where is the story taking place?  Who is important?  What has happened so far?  Why did the character do that?  How did they get here?  Providing the answers to questions like these can improve our written work as well.   

In social science, we are learning about famous Americans and their contributions to society.  Specifically, we will focus on Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington Carver, and Eleanor Roosevelt.  We have also learned about Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.  Our "I can make a difference" essays, inspired by the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. are on display in the hallway.

Question:  If you were in charge of first grade curriculum for the Virginia Department of Education, what famous Americans would you add to our list?