Happy Thanksgiving!

This week in 1-Thomson, our focus has been on gratitude.  After reading several Thanksgiving stories, discussing the meaning of traditions, and learning about the history of the first Thanksgiving, we brainstormed all of the wonderful things in our lives that we are thankful for. We wrote our ideas on fall leaves. For me, among many other things, I am thankful for my first graders and their families!

Families and friends, please take some time to add to our Padlet below.  Double click anywhere on the Padlet screen to type or share pictures of your Thanksgiving plans and/or traditions with us. Wishing you a happy and safe Thanksgiving!  Gobble, gobble!

Halloween Parts of Speech

 In 1-Thomson, we've been adding some Fall and Halloween twists to our learning!  This week for "word work" our focus was on nouns and adjectives. We started  by creating a list of Halloween nouns--people, places, and things! Then, we worked together to create a spooky Halloween "Noun Town" full of ghosts, black cats, haunted houses, vampires, bats, pumpkins, and more! 

Next, we learned all about adjectives and how they can make our writing more descriptive.  We practiced using adjectives in pumpkin poetry, and then we ended our study of adjectives by creating and writing about our own perfect pumpkins.  Some were funny, some were mad, others were small, and some were scary!  Have a look at our pumpkin patch!

-Mrs. Thomson :)

Common Core Standard: L.1.1,4: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.  Use common, proper, and possessive nouns.  Use frequently occurring adjectives.

Reader's Workshop: Character Traits

Our Reader's Workshop is well underway in 1-Thomson!  This past week, we spent lots of time reading books by one of favorite authors, Kevin Henkes.  We especially enjoyed reading Chrysanthemum.  This story is about a sweet little mouse who loves her name until her first day of school, when some of her classmates make fun of it!  By story's end, Chrysanthemum learns to love her name again after she realizes it's what makes her special and unique!  Using this story, along with other Kevin Henkes stories, we discussed character traits and how a character's feelings, thoughts, and actions can change throughout a story.  We thought of just the right words to describe Chrysanthemum as she changes throughout the book- happy, proud, angry, upset, frustrated, confident...

We added these words to our character map:

Then, we made our very own Chrysanthemum puppets! One side shows a happy Chrysanthemum, and the other side shows a sad Chrysanthemum.  As we retold the events of the story, students would hold up the appropriate Chrysanthemum face based on her feelings at that point in the story.

Practice retelling stories at home and using character trait words to describe the people or animals in the story.  Do the character's thoughts, feelings, or actions change?  Happy Reading!

-Mrs. Thomson :)

Common Core State Standards:

RL.1.2: Retell stories, including key details, and demonstrate understanding of their central message or lesson.

RL.1.3: Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.

First Grade Beginnings

I always love the first weeks of school! It's so fun getting to know each other and hearing all about summer adventures.  I can tell that this is going to be a great year filled with lots of fun and learning. We have been busy establishing our routines and learning rules and expectations.  We were able to do this with a little help from our friend, David.  After Reading David Goes to School by David Shannon, we brainstormed a whole list of things we should and shouldn't do at school.  The first graders know their stuff when it comes to expected behavior!  After some good discussion, the students and I created a "classroom promise".  Here is what we came up with:

We are looking forward to a great year ahead!

P.S. We wanted to share- we had the best first day ever! 

-Mrs. Thomson :)

Welcome to First Grade!

I am so excited to see you all very soon!

Summer letters are on their way with all the info you will need for our first day!  If you misplace your letter or parent questionnaire, click the links below for additional copies.  Enjoy the remainder of your summer days! 

😎

Summer Letter

Parent Questionnaire