Wednesday, September 25, 2013

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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Sunday, September 22, 2013

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
--

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.

Friday, September 13, 2013

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

"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.