Alphabetizing in action

Skimming Alphabet books

First graders skimmed alphabet books to learn more about getting the "gist" of a book before reading and to think about alphabetical order.  This is what they noticed about the different books they skimmed:

"There was a book about Egypt.  There was an uppercase and lowercase letter on each page and a couple of things that started with that letter." (ABC : Egyptian Art from the Brooklyn Museum)

"Me and Colin were reading a dinosaur book and there were different dinosaurs.  Each dinosaur started with a different letter in order and they all had different names." (The Dinosaur Alphabet Book)

"One of the books had this little cat and we saw these different crazy boxes that this cat was looking at and they had words in them and they were in alphabetical order, and the cat was saying these crazy things like he liked them or didn't like them."  ("Check out Bad Kitty!")

"There was a book that was about fishes underwater.  They were lined up in alphabetical order.  Most of the fish were crazy because most of them were different and I was able to learn names of new fish that started with the same letter as other fish that I know." (The Underwater Alphabet Book)

"In a book there was lots of people with jobs and they were all lined up in alphabetical order." (ABC of Jobs)

"There was a letter and a picture of what word you could make with that letter in most of the books."  

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CHOMPerific!

The first graders made their class CHOMP goal - they reached 800 chomps on classdojo! On Friday they cast their ballots for their class reward. The results are below...Which one has the most?

Congratulations first graders!


CHOMP making day: 17 votes
Nighttime Day: 9 votes
Treasure Chest: 4 votes
Pajama Day: 4 votes
Lunch Bunch: 4 votes
Race Day: 4 votes
Stuffed Animal Day: 3 votes
Tae Kwon Do Day: 3 votes
Camping Day: 3 votes
Nature Walk: 3 votes
Dress Up Day: 3 votes
Glasses Day: 2 votes
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All mail correspondence to and from the Chapel Hill- Carrboro City Schools
is subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law, which may result in
monitoring and disclosure to third parties, including law enforcement.

Exploring Living Things

Our first graders are learning about living things as their first quarter science goal.  Our science teacher, Ms. Massengale, has been helping us explore different kinds of living things.  Last week, we looked at the mosquito larva that was living inside the black rain barrel.  This week, we learned about mosquito fish.  Here are some ideas from our first graders:

This is what we learned:

I learned that mosquito fish eat other things too besides mosquitos.

I learned that mosquito fish can eat pond grass, but they only eat if there's nothing else to eat.

I found out that mosquito fish were a fish and not tadpoles!

The pond grass was called elodea. 

I learned that mosquito fish are long, wiggly, spotty, small, and skinny.

They had stripes. 

I saw that mosquito fish looked clear.

This is what we wonder:

How do mosquito fish eat?

I wonder why mosquito fish eat mosquitos.

I wonder why mosquito fish have five fins (2 on the bottom, one on each side, and one on the back).

I wonder why mosquito fish seem to swim by wiggling instead of their tail fin going up and down or side to side. 

I wonder why mosquito fish always swim in a circle.  Mine were swimming in a circle the whole time!

--
Katie Jiang

K-1 Dual Language, English Classroom

Glenwood Elementary School

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools

919-968-3473 x38249

kjiang@chccs.k12.nc.us

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." 

 -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

All mail correspondence to and from the Chapel Hill- Carrboro City Schools is subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law, which may result in monitoring and disclosure to third parties, including law enforcement.

Getting over the first day jitters

We're so excited to have the first graders back at school!

We've been engaging in several read-alouds and activities designed to ease students back into the school routine and to strengthen our classroom community. For starters, we read First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg, and discussed all the different reasons we might be feeling nervous about starting school. Ask your first grader about the surprise at the end of the story, and what it means!

Students brainstormed ways to get past being nervous. One of the ways we discussed was to find things you have in common with other people. To do that, students embarked on a Classmate Scavenger Hunt, matching their interests with other classmates. Students practiced literacy skills like stretching out words at the same time as they practiced initiating and continuing conversations. The scavenger hunt started out fairly quiet, with students mostly talking to only their closest friends, but by the end of the lesson students were comfortably engaging in conversation with a wide range of classmates. Way to go first graders!


--
All mail correspondence to and from the Chapel Hill- Carrboro City Schools
is subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law, which may result in
monitoring and disclosure to third parties, including law enforcement.

Ice Cream Social!

Glenwood's Ice Cream Social will be tonight, Thursday 8/22 from 5 to 6:30 in the courtyard.
Teachers will be organized by grade level.  be sure to come through the front office so you can look for any other information like class lists or bus routes.

Come meet Ms. Wang, our new K-1 Chinese teacher, and give Mrs. Jiang a hug!

We're looking forward to the 2013-2014 school year!

How do you choose work for a Celebration Portfolio? - by the First Graders

Yesterday our first graders noticed how their writing has changed over the year.  They selected a range of their own work for Celebration Portfolios to show all their fantastic first grade writing.  Today students worked hard to explain why they chose each piece.  Below are some of their reflections on their writing.  Check out your students' Celebration Portfolio (coming home on the last day of school) for more fantastic ideas!

Examples of our best thinking:

All About Sapphires is a good example of my best thinking because sapphires are hard to describe.

How to writing is a good example of our best thinking because you have to think about what you know, and then think about the steps, and think about an introduction and conclusion.

Math journals are a good example of our best thinking because you have to think of a strategy to solve the problem, a strategy to check your problem, a number sentence, and a sentence explaining how you figured it out.

Examples of our most challenging work:

My most challenging work was when I had to think alot about my all about book because it took a long time to do it and I really needed to work hard.

My most challenging work was my how to because you have to have a lot of steps, introduction, conclusion, and materials.  You always need three facts and the facts have to be specific.

Examples of our best cooperation:

My example of cooperation is the persuasive letters because I got ideas from my friends.

The Chinese New Year voicethread is an example of my best cooperation because I had to work with a bunch of friends and they gave me ideas and those people I remember we worked well together.

The time when we made student learning teams was an example of my best cooperation because we had to choose learning teams that we would work well together and we would help each other.

First Grade Celebration Portfolios, by the first graders

  First graders are getting ready to become second graders.  They looked through their journals and writing pieces from the year to see how their writing has changed.  Then we worked as a class to figure out what we noticed, and how we could choose our best writing pieces.  All the questions, sentences, and ideas below are straight from the first graders!  Enjoy! -- Mrs. Jiang

What did first graders notice about their writing?

Did you ever wonder how the first graders writing has changed?  Well let's see!

• In the beginning of the year, we couldn't spell that good, but in the end of the year we know how to spell more words that we didn't know before.
• I noticed that the writing was growing.  At the first part of the year, we only wrote a little bit of writing, but as days passed, our writing got longer and longer, with more and more sentences.
• Our writing started out all sloppy and sometimes didn't make any sense.  Now its neat and not so sloppy and makes more sense.
• Our writing had more specific words and details at end of the year.
• At the beginning of the year we sometimes forgot more capital letters and periods.  Now we start fixing a few of those problems.
• At the beginning of the year I couldn't really read my writing because my b's were d's and stuff like that, but at the end of the year I could read it.
• At the beginning of the year, some of us forgot to add spaces between words, but now we all use spaces.
• At the beginning of the year, sometimes we forgot illustrations, or our illustrations didn't have color or details, but now we have more details in our illustrations.
• At the beginning of the year, we just drew pictures, and pictures are where there are only the things that you want to draw, like anything.  At the end of the year, we started doing illustrations, and illustrations are where you match the words with your drawing.

Now you that you know what we reviewed about our writing, you can review and compare your own writing.

Earth Materials unit gets rolling!

Our first graders will be learning all about earth materials in the next few weeks as part of an integrated science and writing unit.  Students will be practicing writing "All About Books" using introduction sentences, facts, and conclusions as they learn about the many different kinds of earth materials and their uses.

To continue the learning at home and satisfy those excellent questions the first graders ask, check out the links I've gathered on our class webpage:

First Grade Rocks!

These links have a range of informative text, videos, and games to help students explore earth materials further.

Many students have asked to share their own personal rock collections in class, so I'd love to get the students involved in creating a Earth Materials Exhibit!  The Earth Materials Exhibit will be a hands-on table of samples that students can use to investigate the wide range of characteristics of earth materials.  If your family has a rock, mineral, or other earth material that you'd be willing to loan with the class, please do the following:

1.  Put a small label identifying the earth material with its name, your child's name and where its from (if known).  This label could be written on a piece of masking tape and stuck to the earth material itself, or could be written on a small rectangle of cardboard (cut from a recycled cereal or tissue box), to sit underneath the sample.

2. Send the earth material to school with your child.  If the earth material is sentimentally valuable, please let us know so we can take extra precautions.  If the earth material is monetarily valuable, please consider sending a picture of it or a video of your child holding and describing it.

Let's Rock and Roll!

Saturday morning in the chick house

The chicks seem to have grown a ton overnight! Hopper and Skinny, who both spent Friday in our chick hospital, are back in good health and socializing with their siblings. As the chicks grow older, they're getting mischievous! 3 more chicks have earned names:
Fearless, who frequently runs at the window of the chick house at full speed (perhaps hoping to escape)
Pecky, who bravely defends the food trough by pecking everything that comes close (fingers, cups, extra food, etc.)
and Trouble, who needs a little extra help learning CHOMP - I caught him dragging another chick around by the toe! Hopefully our kindergartners will be a good influence on Trouble!

Nighttime in the Chick House

--
All mail correspondence to and from the Chapel Hill- Carrboro City Schools
is subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law, which may result in
monitoring and disclosure to third parties, including law enforcement.

Welcome Battle, Chick number 10!

Ms. Gondek caught our tenth chick on video just as he hatched. We've named him after Mr. Battle, our fantastic custodian and superhero extraordinaire for all of his help with the chicks!

Rise and shine!

 Seven more chicks hatched overnight! These pictures are from 7 am on 5/9. One chick is clearly older - look for the chick who looks more fluffy and dry. Norbert and Laoda look so grown up compared to their siblings!

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All mail correspondence to and from the Chapel Hill- Carrboro City Schools
is subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law, which may result in
monitoring and disclosure to third parties, including law enforcement.

Noisy eggs?!

Just listen to Laoda's and Norbert's siblings...I think they want to come out of those shells!


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All mail correspondence to and from the Chapel Hill- Carrboro City Schools
is subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law, which may result in
monitoring and disclosure to third parties, including law enforcement.

Norbert joins Laoda in the chick house

Norbert's gotten big and dry enough to move to the chick house with Laoda!


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All mail correspondence to and from the Chapel Hill- Carrboro City Schools
is subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law, which may result in
monitoring and disclosure to third parties, including law enforcement.

Laoda moves to the chick house

What will Laoda do when he's moved out of the incubator into the chick house? Let's find out!


--
All mail correspondence to and from the Chapel Hill- Carrboro City Schools
is subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law, which may result in
monitoring and disclosure to third parties, including law enforcement.

Hatching time at last!

Our chicks began hatching today, right on time (unlike most babies)! Students have been learning all about oviparous animals and what they need to hatch and survive - and now we get to put that knowledge to work! Students are also learning about growth and change, relating how the chicks grow to how other animals, including people, grow. Ask your child to share with you about our chicks a little each day, and stay tuned for more updates as our "new students" continue hatching and growing!

Laoda, our oldest chick, hatched around 9:30 am 5/8. This is what Laoda looked like at 3 hours old.

Here's our second chick, Norbert, when he was just 1 minute out of the shell.  He hatched around 3:30 pm on 5/8.

Here's Laoda at 9 hours out of the shell.  Look how fuzzy he looks now!

Laoda at 9.5 hours old on the left, and Norbert at 4.5 hours old on the right, just after they moved from the cramped incubator to the chick house.  We transfer the chicks to the chick house when they are fully dried, but before they get too big for the incubator.  Laoda was so ready to get out of the incubator that he was climbing on and kicking the other eggs!

Eight more chicks are trying to hatch!  Can you find all the eggs in these picture that show signs of hatching?

Read-a-Thon Basketball Game 2013

In true Chapel Hill fashion, Glenwood celebrated the closing of our Read-a-Thon with a unique basketball game: students versus superheroes!  You may have seen these superheroes around school or at Lincoln Center...can you figure out their real identities?

The top readers from each class played in the basketball game against the superheroes.  Our technology specialist, Ms. Starkey, put together the fun video below, and you can also check out the slideshow below for shots of our very own Bruno playing in the game, as well as some candid shots of our other first graders cheering for Bruno!

Read-a-Thon Basketball Game 2013, produced by Ms. Starkey

Read-a-Thon Basketball Game Slideshow

Famous Book Characters visit Glenwood!

Many famous book characters came to Glenwood today!  Fancy Nancy from "Fancy Nancy, Bonjour Butterfly" and The Number Devil substitute taught the class for Mrs. Jiang and Ms Gondek.  Even Ms. Tsai had a famous substitute - Totoro from "My Neighbor, Totoro"!  Among our students we had:

• Hermione 
• The Runaway Bunny
• The Cat in the Hat
• Jack from Magic Tree House
• Curious George
• Silly Kitty from Kiki's Delivery Service
• Elfie from Elf on the Shelf
• The Wicked Witch, Dorothy, and Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz (and Toto too!)
• Cole ZX (Ninjago)
• Flat Stanley
• Greg Hefny (Diary of a Wimpy Kid)
• Oggie Cooder
• Legolas (Lord of the Rings)
• Cinderella
• Jasmine
• Ladybug Girl
• Emily Elizabeth (Clifford)
• Bad Kitty
• The Interrupting Chicken (we had twins!) and their dad

We had a great day of reading and sharing our favorite books.  First Graders also LOVED seeing the other "substitutes" around the school, and the famous book characters in all grades!  Check out the Glenwood facebook page for some great candid shots of many of Glenwood's famous book characters!

Who will YOU be?

Tomorrow is Glenwood's Read-a-Thon Book Character day!

Students may come to school dressed as their favorite book character. These are just some of the great ideas our students came up with. I wonder what famous characters will come to school tomorrow?

100th Day Festivities

Kindergarten and First Grade students celebrated the 100th day of school in February.  Students worked in pairs as they rotated through reading, writing, and math centers focused on numbers to 100.  Students practiced reading, writing, and counting to 100 in both English and Chinese.  Watch the slideshow to see some of the activities students enjoyed on the 100th day! 

Are you ready to learn about Chinese New Year?

Our first graders sure know a lot about Chinese New Year!   We wanted our students to be able to synthesize what they've learned, and even more, we hoped that they could gain confidence as student leaders...so we turned them into the teachers!

Students worked with Mrs. Jiang and Mrs. Jackson, our media specialist, to create Chinese New Year presentations using VoiceThread, a digital presentation tool.  This project helped our students study a wide range of Common Core and North Carolina Essential Standards.  Students practiced the following skills (and more!):

Research: finding facts, synthesizing facts with background knowledge
Informative writing: introducing a topic, stating several facts about a topic, providing closure on a topic
Public speaking,
Using technology as a communication tool
Digital citizenship

 To get started, students worked with Mrs. Jackson, our media specialist, to research Chinese New Year and add to their already impressive knowledge.  After learning many new and interesting facts, students formed presentation teams.  Each team selected their own topics and drew a storyboard to map out their presentation.  Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Jiang helped students think about the topics on which they could become experts.

Then we got down to writing!  Students had to think hard about what makes an interesting introduction and a strong conclusion.  After Mrs. Jiang modeled these two parts of writing, students brainstormed different ways they could introduce and conclude their own topics. They worked with students who had chosen the same topics to write these portions of their presentation, and also to share facts and support each other in the writing process.  Mrs. Gondek and Mrs. Jackson were instrumental in helping students organize their thoughts and turn them into truly excellent first grade writing.

Finally it was time to get into the actual "making" of our presentations!  Mr. Brown, our technology specialist, helped Mrs. Jiang and Mrs. Jackson learn to use VoiceThread and got the iPads set up so we could use them to make our presentations.  Students uploaded their pictures to VoiceThread, rearranged their pictures to match their storyboards, and worked together to record their presentations.  Students edited the name and descriptions of their VoiceThreads and shared them with the teachers.

Now its time to celebrate!  We will be sharing our first graders' presentations with the Dual Language kindergartners and possibly other kindergarten and first grade classes so they can learn about Chinese New Year too.  And there was one group of people the first graders ESPECIALLY hoped could learn about Chinese New Year from them: their parents!

So, without further ado, here are our first four presentations!  Stay tuned for the next two!


Chinese New Year by The Firecracker Girls
This VoiceThread has comments from the kindergartners in the beginning slide.  We hope you enjoy hearing what the kindergartners learned from the first graders' excellent presentation!



Chinese New Year by The Dragon Lanterns


Chinese New Year by the Dragon Boys



All About Chinese New Year by the Crazy Rich Lion Dancers

Motion Challenge

First graders learned that objects move because of forces like a push or pull. Their challenge: Using only these materials, get an object to move. The trick: the object has to stay in motion for
at least two seconds without a person touching it! How can an object move without a person using a force like a push or pull?

Lets see what our first graders come up with!

Persuasive Letter Writing begins...