Melting!

Our last post included a video of the class taking a movement break to get some energy out. 

Today, before writing, we needed to quiet our bodies down, so we used GoNoodle.com to "melt" our bodies.

The kids start out by "freezing" their bodies in a statue pose.

While freezing, the students are guided through scrunching up their faces, and tensing the different parts of their bodies.

Slowly, the students "melt" to the ground as they calmly breathe and relax their bodies.

We were all more relaxed and ready for writing after this 3 minute activity.

I always remind them (and hope!) that they can use these activities any time they feel like they need help settling their bodies and minds.

Movement Breaks!

Happy New Year!

The kids returned to school this week seeming well rested and ready to learn. 

After working hard, our class often needs a movement break. I remind the kids that these breaks help get their bodies and brains ready to learn.  Sometimes this means doing some controlled breathing and calm moves to settle our bodies down, and other times times we dance and move to get some excess energy out. 

We often use a website called GoNoodle which has guided movements and fun songs which the kids really enjoy.  This afternoon, they had a lot of fun dancing to a "Kids Bop" song.  Enjoy watching!

Number Talks!

On Friday we had a special guest, Ms. Pike, come in and do a "Number Talk" with our class.
We have started incorporating Number Talks into our routine 2-3 times per week.
Currently, Ms. Pike has been teaching a class of teachers, including me,  how to use Number Talks. We we were all excited to have her spend some time with us.

What is a Number Talk?
A Number Talk is a short, ongoing daily routine that provides students with meaningful ongoing practice with computation. This quick routine helps students develop computational fluency because the expectation is that they will use number relationships and the structures of numbers to add and subtract.

Number Talks do not replace current curriculum or take up the majority of the time spent on mathematics. They take only 10-15 minutes.

Ms Pike displays an image, using 2 "ten-frames." Students take the time to determine how many dots there are in all. They indicate that they have an answer by giving a "thumbs up."

 

Before asking for strategies, Ms. Pike asks for the answer and records it.

Children share their strategies and Ms. Pike records their thinking on the board.

Coding in First Grade

Last Friday our 4th grade Learning Buddies from Mrs. Dadmun's class taught us how to use a coding program.  The children learned how to "write code" to move a turtle across the screen to a pond. 
 
Today, our technology teacher, Mr. Fleury continued teaching code to the children by working on an iPad app called "Lightbot." This app can be used on iPads or you can use it on a computer at http://lightbot.com/ .  

The kids are really enjoying learning this new technological skill!

KinderKonzert!

Today, all K-3 students in South Portland boarded buses to South Portland High School to see "Lighthouse Keeper: The Story of Abbie Burgess."  We heard the true story of a brave young girl whose determination and courage kept the lighthouse lit against all odds. The piece paints an exciting musical portrait of life on an island, the shifting ocean, majestic lighthouses, raging storms, and even silly dancing puffins.  Students were able to interact with the musicians from the Portland Symphony Orchestra string section, connecting music, literacy, art, nature, and Maine heritage.

Mrs. Mason, our librarian, had read Keep the Lights Burning, Abbie to the class.
We then made nautical weather flags which we were able to use as part of today's performance.

We also learned the song "Shine On Me," with Mrs. Osann in music class, which the audience sang along to at the performance.

 

Abbie Burgess narrated the story, accompanied by the beautiful string music of The PSO.

Everyone agreed this was a great interactive performance to get a glimpse into Maine nautical history, and hear some beautiful music.

Morning Meeting

We start each day with Morning Meeting.  There are 4 components to our meeting: Greeting, Sharing, Activity and Morning Message. 
Here is a snapshot of our meeting today:

Greeting: "Playing Card Greeting" the children were dealt a card with a number on it. When it was their turn, they counted that many children and greeted whoever they landed on. Children learn to make eye contact and greet their classmates in a friendly manor.

Sharing: Each child has a chance to share once a week. They can share 3 sentences about their topic, using bean bags to keep track of each sentence.

 They can then call on 3 friends who have questions, again keeping track of the questions with beanbags.

 Activity: We read a new poem each week (this week's is "Months of the Year"). Most days our activity includes reading the poem. We spend time visualizing, doing word work and adding movements to the poems. Today we were searching for the sight word, "and."

Morning Message: We read our Morning Message together (chorally). The Morning Message gives them information about the day to come and the children help correct mistakes or fill in missing information.  Often, there is also a class survey to answer as part of the Morning Message.

PJs and Pumpkins!

We had a fun day yesterday, wearing our PJs and counting how many seeds were in 4 different pumpkins.

We started by reading this book which helped us make predictions about which pumpkin would have the most seeds.


We then scooped all of the seeds out of the pumpkins.

Some of us didn't mind "getting into" our mushy gushy work...

 

...while others preferred to use spoons.

We organized the seeds into groups of 10 so we could count them more easily. 

We were surprised that even though each pumpkin was a similar size, they had very different amounts of seeds.  The least was 181, and the most was 703!!

It was a great day, having fun and doing math at the same time!!