Bullying Awareness Month

October is Bullying Awareness Month.  As part of our weekly wellness meetings, we have been discussing the meaning of bullying and how to help others who are being bullied.  I was very impressed by how much these first graders already knew about helping others and being good friends!

On Friday, to take a stand against bullying, first graders wore orange bracelets with an inspirational anti-bullying message written on it.  These bracelets reminded us of the importance of taking a stand.

Global Read Aloud

1-Thomson, along with other Fuller Meadow students, are participating in another very exciting "Global Read Aloud" this year! This means, that we are reading and discussing the same book as over 500,000 other students around the world!  This year's book, "The BFG" by Roald Dahl, is a fantasy story about a young girl named Sophie and her adventures with the Big Friendly Giant (BFG) in Giant Country.  We have been busy reading and discussing this book with each other and with other first grade students at Fuller Meadow!  Yesterday, we connected with Miss Klipfel's class to put our visualizing skills to the test!  Good readers visualize, or make movies in their minds as they read.  There is no shortage of descriptive language in this story, so this makes for some exciting visualizations, or mental images.  Here are some students creating images of "The Bloodbottler" (a not-so-friendly giant from the story)...

  To learn more about Global Read Aloud and The BFG, click the book below! We are also participating in this year's Global Read Aloud author study of Lauren Castillo. Learn more about it here.  

Common Core Standard:

Speaking and Listening.1.1: Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about grade 1 topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.

Fall Observations

This past week brought many changes to the trees around us.  If you look up, there is a sea of reds, yellows, and browns! What a beautiful sight!  1-Thomson scientists have been busy learning what it means to observe, so we put our observation skills to the test by observing the changes to our fall trees in the Fuller Meadow courtyard.

To begin, we talked a lot about how scientists observe, or monitor things closely to track changes by using their five senses.  Next, we each made a hypothesis about the changes we would see in the trees over time after learning about chlorophyll and why leaves change color. We have recorded our findings in our Fall Tree Journals twice so far by drawing, labeling, and writing about changes in color, shape, size, and texture.

Next week, we hope to see even more changes in the trees around us and we will take a closer look at the "leaf litter" that's on the ground. Enjoy this year's fall foliage!

Number Bonds

What is a Number Bond?
Each day begins with our math calendar routine and our Math in Focus lesson for the day.  We recently completed our chapter on number bonds.  The children built and then decomposed numbers to ten by breaking them into various parts.  We created number bonds using scales, connecting cubes, and we even made human number bonds!  Ask your child to show you some number bonds at home. This week, we began our chapter on addition strategies to ten.  Understanding number bonds has helped us to see relationships between numbers.  We are mathematicians!

We know a number bond represents Part+Part=Whole

Practice number bonds at home using the mathszone website:

http://mathszone.co.uk/number-facts/number-bonds-to-10/

Common Core Standards:
1.OA.D.8: Determine the unknown whole number in an addition or subtraction equation relating three whole numbers. For example, determine the unknown number that makes the equation true in each of the equations 8 + ? = 11, 5 = – 3, 6 + 6 = .