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 :)