Getting started as insect scientists!

Hi everyone!
We have had a few busy and exciting weeks in first grade as we begin our study of insects. 
During back to school night, we talked about how learners acquire new information when the learning is meaningful, purposeful, and has value...so the work we do in first grade together is based around science concepts.  This also helps us learn importance life science concepts as we read, write, think, speak, view, listen and calculate - the processes of literacy.  The more concepts we learn in any subject areas, the more neural connections we make, and the better learners we become!

Here are some of the things we have been doing:

All learning begins with what we already know, so we began by telling our stories about bugs and sharing them with each other.

Then we decided how scientist learn new things - and how an entomologist would learn about insects - this is what we decided we could do to learn more about insects







We decided that we need insects to observe - so here are the mealworms!



We researched by reading books to find out where insects lived, the drew and wrote about our ideas.




After learning more about bats, we decided to research other insect predators - we read, spoke, listened, viewed, drew, and wrote about insect predators.

We have had a great two weeks starting our insect learning - stay tuned for more!

Our First Open House!

It was wonderful to see so many families yesterday - thanks so much for coming.  The kids were super excited to "show off" their space, Special Person books and posters.

You may have head that we have begun our study of insects!  Things are going to get exciting!

Enjoy some pictures from the event and have a great weekend!

Moving along with math

Hi everyone!
We have been working hard in math, and there have been some big concepts we have been covering.  One of them is combinations of 10.  Understanding combinations of 10 (1+9, 2+8, etc..) is foundational as student begin to add larger numbers such as 20+80.  We use a mathematical model called a Tens Frame to help us visualize these combinations:



Using a Tens Frame can also help young mathematicians to "trust" certain numbers.  For example , when holding up 8 fingers (5 on one hand and 3 on the other), many children will count the five fingers on their hand ,then the 3 on the other- we want them to trust that their hand is five, the count one from there "5 - 6,7,8".  Tens Frames allow children to do this by trusting that if the whole frame is filled, then, using the above example, we can say "10 - 11, 12, 13, 14, 15" instead of counting every dot.  Of course, some children would see the 10 and 5 and immediately see that it is 15.

So, we have been playing games with Frame cards and exploring how many combination, such as odd and even numbers, look on these cards.
 Here are a few pictures of "Make 10's" concentration - a big hit!

Have a great week everyone!