Mark You Calendar for Upcoming Inquiry Presentations: November 29, 2007

Animal Inquiry Presentations on December 5
The students are putting the finishing touches on their PowerPoint presentations.  They are excited about sharing their research projects with you on Wednesday, December 5.  We look forward to seeing you on the 5th  from 12:45-1:45 pm.

Stormy Day
Mother Nature provided us with quite an amazing thunder and lightning show yesterday.  The energy of the storm outside certainly transferred inside. We watched out our classroom windows as the lightning flashed and torrential rain poured down, and listened as the thunder boomed overhead.  The students enjoyed counting the seconds between lightning flash and clap of thunder to track the storm passing by.  As the time between flash and boom increased, we figured the storm was moving further away.  The photos below show the students in their "storm safety zones." 

First Grade Math
If you walk into our classroom in the middle of class, you will certainly hear a lot of counting and see a lot of number writing.  Our focus this week has been on developing strategies for accurately counting a set of objects.  The students are practicing the oral counting sequence, writing the sequence of numbers, and identifying and using patterns in the sequence of numbers.  Yesterday we investigated the different sizes of our feet by tracing them and then finding out how many square tiles fit inside the outline (the area).  We then created a graph to represent the data.  The students found out the area of their feet using different manipulatives such as small cubes, checkers, and unifix cubes.  The class is coming up with great strategies to keep track of numbers while counting by ones, twos, fives, tens, and twenties.

Thank You
Thank you to SY for donating the following books to our classroom library:  Andy Shane and the Pumpkin Trick, Diary of a Fly, The Amazing Turkey Rescue, and The Big Book of Animals.  Thank you to MM for bringing in Christmas decorations to make our classroom festive for the holiday season!  Thank you to EM for having her Aunty Beth come and read to our class.  Her aunty was visiting from San Diego; we love meeting relatives when they come to Hawaii to visit!

Posted on November 29, 2007 7:45 AM | Permalink