Author Visit

On Tuesday, author and illustrator, Mary Newell DePalma visited us at Fuller Meadow School. The first graders listened and watched as DePalma told us about her job and her inspiration for stories and illustrations, which almost always comes from nature.

In class we read DePalma's book, The Grand Old Tree. This wonderful story tells about the life of a tree through the seasons and over many years. 

Click to Listen

After reading, the first graders created their own grand old trees through the seasons and wrote about them using transition words and details.

Common Core Standard W.1.2: Write informative/explanatory texts in which they name a topic, supply some facts about the topic, and provide some sense of closure.

An Egg-cellent Week!

This past week was all about eggs in 1-Thomson!  We started off by reading and interacting with  "A World of Eggs"  by Myka-Lynne Sokoloff on the Smartboard:

Interactive Nonfiction Text on the Smartboard

  This nonfiction text taught us all about different "egg traditions" around the world in places like Argentina, Russia, and Italy to name a few.  While reading, the students made "mental sticky notes" and then wrote about the interesting facts that stuck with them. In Writer's Workshop, our focus has been informational writing, so next we created our own traditional eggs and wrote descriptively about them.

To end our egg-filled week, we paired up with Miss Klipfel's class to share our Mystery Eggs.  Thank you for helping your child at home to brainstorm 3 clues to share about their mystery object!  They had a blast sharing their surprises with their peers.

Sharing our Mystery Eggs with Miss Klipfel's class!

Wishing you an egg-cellent weekend! Common Core Standard: W.1.2- Write informative/explanatory texts in which they name a topic, supply some facts about the topic, and provide some sense of closure.

Student Readers

The students in 1-Thomson have been practicing how to read aloud with fluency and expression.  To practice this, they are given the opportunity to take over as teacher for a few minutes to read a favorite "just-right" book to the class.  It is truly amazing to see the reading transformation all the students have made since September.  Take a look at some of our star readers in action!  

  Each week, more students sign up to share a book with the class.  Stay tuned to see more student readers!