If I Had a Pet Turkey...

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, last week was Turkey Week in 1-Thomson!  To kick things off, we read a nonfiction book about turkeys: "All About Turkeys" by Jim Arnosky.  We gathered facts and completed a turkey "can, have, are" chart.  Did you know turkeys can fly as fast as 50 mph and that females lay as many as 18 large eggs at once?!  After learning a bit more about these interesting birds, the students used their imaginations to visualize what life would be like living with a PET turkey!  Using transition words and descriptive sentences, we wrote amusing stories about our imaginary pet turkeys while focusing on the following questions: What would your pet turkey look like?  What would your pet turkey eat? Where would your pet turkey sleep at night?  What would you do with your pet turkey for fun? The answers to these questions were very creative!  Please enjoy our class movie to see what life would be like with a pet turkey...

Click here to listen to our pet turkeys :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Padlet: A Thanksgiving Share

The first graders in 1- Thomson were asked to think about their plans for Thanksgiving this year. After reading several Thanksgiving stories in class, the students wrote about their exciting Thanksgiving agendas!  Next, we shared our writing with a writing buddy to do some peer revising and editing. Lastly,we posted our final ideas on Padlet.  Take a look at our Thanksgiving plans below:

Created with Padlet

Family members, add some thoughts or ideas to our Padlet by clicking anywhere on the board to add a note! Happy Thanksgiving!  I am very thankful for my first graders and their families!

Retelling Stories

For reading, the students are working on retelling fictional stories to their reading partners and in reading groups.  We are becoming "retell experts"!  We discuss the importance of including as many important details in our retells as possible so that the listener can learn a lot about the story without even reading the book!  When we read a story and retell it, we use our handy, dandy checklist to be sure we are including all the elements of a strong retelling:

This past week, Ms. Klipfel introduced us to a fun way of retelling stories using iPads!  After reading our fictional story in small groups, we retold the story using the Drawing Pad app on our iPads!  The students were able to draw the events of the story and retell them orally when their artwork was complete. 

If you have an iPad, try this at home for some fun practice with retelling!
Common Core State Standard: RL.1.2: Retell stories including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson 

We Are Thankful

1-Thomson loves visitors!  It is always fun to share our knowledge and ideas with someone new.  Today, Ms. Corelle visited us from North Shore Community College to share a read-aloud about Thanksgiving.  Then, she discussed thankfulness with the class and asked what the students are thankful for.  Some answers included nature,school, family, friends, and our pets (to name a few)!  After the discussion, the students created colorful turkeys by tracing their hands and wrote about the things they are thankful for.  Thank you for visiting with us, Ms. Corelle!  We had so much fun!

Shapes Are All Around Us!

What shapes do we see in the world around us?
Math has been all about shapes in 1-Thomson! Check out what we can do with planar and solid shapes!

Common Core State Standards:
1.G.A.1: Distinguish between defining attributes of shapes; build and draw shapes to possess defining attributes
1.G.A.2: Compose two-dimensional shapes or three-dimensional shapes to create a composite shape, and compose new shapes from the composite shape

Five Senses Fall Writing

1-Thomson is filled with talented authors and illustrators, but every author must start with a draft and revise it time after time to really get it right!   First graders have been learning how to revise their writing to make it better.  An area of focus has been adding adjectives to our writing to make it more descriptive. This past week, we visited the Fuller Meadow courtyard to do some "Five Senses Fall Writing".  We traveled outside to take in the fall surroundings using our five senses and recorded our observations in our journals.

When we returned to the classroom, we got out our green revising pens and began adding description to our fall nouns that we recorded!  Trees became VIBRANT trees, air became COOL, CRISP air, and pumpkins became PLUMP pumpkins! 
The final product resulted in well-written Five Senses Poems about fall.  Take a look at a sampling of these poems below.

Common Core: W.1.5: With guidance and support from adults, focus on a topic, respond to questions and suggestions from peers, and add details to strengthen writing as needed.