During math students have been focusing on the Common Core State Standards of solving subtraction problems. Using math strategies and math talk, students have been making sense of problems around them. There has been so much student discourse and examples of how they solve their math equations, as well as to why this strategy helps them!

This week we have begun to transfer text features of nonfiction we have been learning in reading into our writing! Using our writing checklists as a reference, our focus has been on organization!

During readers workshop we have started some research about Polar Bears! We have been continuing to ask questions and going to our online resources to find a response! We have been recording our learning while in the writing nook and started our very own books! We have been continuing to discuss various text features of nonfiction books (ex: headings, table of contents, glossaries, icons, bold words, and index.)

Hope you all stay cozy and have a chance to play outside in this snow! As you stay cozy indoors check out National Geographic for Kids today! Explore the site and have fun! Link is on class website under for Parents tab- labeled websites to explore! Post a message of some research and facts you gained!

Today we had a spin on Subitizing! We have been working on dot images and finding the total number by grouping dots- or partitioning them. Well today we did it with squares! We made our very own set of cards and we then built the quick images using connecting cubes! We had some images that were a bit tricky to build! But we worked through it! Here we all our building image card N! It had 12 cubes altogether and looked like a square. We figured out some equations because 12 was our number for today. We came up with 4+4+4, 6+6,11+1, 10+2, and so many more!

This week we have been diving deep into nonfiction reading. We have been learning all about penguins and their environment. We have been exploring digital books on PebbleGo! videos on Discovery Education, National Geographic for KIDS, and even took a pre-quiz on BrainPop about Penguins! We thought we already knew a lot, but in fact we have so many more questions we want answered. During readers workshop we have started some research with our reading partners. We have been asking questions and going to our online resources to find a response! We have been recording our learning while in the writing nook and started our very own books! Check back for some links to explore more at home!

Today we ended our first day back from winter break by brainstorming our next goals as first graders. We reviewed what each of us came up with at the beginning of the school year with our hopes and dreams. We made a list and each one of us is aiming towards it! Ask us at home what our personal goals are!

Today we looked closley at an exemplar piece of writing by a student name Marco. We discussed how Marco was able to include in his informational piece the who, what, where, how, when, and why. This was something new for each of us and we worked together to figure out what he did in his writing. Then we had the chance to transfer this work into our own pieces. Tomorrow we will be continuing where we left off by rereading our work and self-evaluate it against the same critera that we used today to assess Marco's writing.

What an exciting day we had! Our morning started out by writing about something we did over our winter break! During morning meeting we read our pieces to our friends! We greeted one another with a high-five! It was SUPER exciting and thrilling to be back in our classroom! We reviewed the class expectations during readers workshop, as well as our learning targets for each workstation! Take a look!