First Graders ROCK with Mr. SOK

Twice a month the First Graders will travel to the high school to Mr. Sok's science room for thirty minutes of science instruction.   Mr. Sok is the high school science teacher and is Winside Public School's own version of T.V. personality Bill Nye the Science Guy.  :)

During the first visit to Mr. Sok's science lab the class learned all about rocks.  Mr. Sok showed the three different types of rock:  igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.  In addition to other rocks the class examined chalk, volcanic rock, and graphite. He also showed a video explaining the characteristics of these rocks and where they can be found.

The lesson concluded with each young scientist examining rocks using the high powered microscopes and hand lenses.

Mr. Sok explains that graphite is used in pencils.

 

First Grade Math and First Grade Chef

The boys and girls have been busy working with lots of hands on materials in math including blocks, cubes, straws, sticks, beads, and small marshmallows.  They have worked on the concept of place value in the tens and ones place using all the different manipulatives listed.  Making sure a student has ample hands on experience is vital before moving to the written abstract symbols.  On Friday the First Graders even make a live bundle of ten with the ones left over.  See below.

See the bundle of 10 students (They used a jump rope.) and 7 individual students outside the bundle of ten.  1 ten and 7 ones equals 17.  

First Grade Chef also incorporated the concept of place value.  First of all, each student received a chef hat to decorate for the year.  Twice a month the class will enjoy First Grade Chef.  Recipes will include delicious, healthy, kid-friendly snacks. This Friday the pint-sized chefs created healthy smiles.  The boys and girls learned the vocabulary word ingredients.  This recipe required small marshmallows, red apple slices, and peanut butter.  Utensils included plastic knives and paper plates.  The class counted the marshmallows by placing them into cups of ten.  See below.

How many groups of ten?  First Grader answer:  8 groups of ten which equals 80

Each student took two red apple slices, slathered peanut butter on each slice, placed three marshmallows between, pressed slices together and walla--an apple smiley! The marshmallows are the teeth, peanut butter the gums, and red apple slices are the lips. The class discussed the food groups that each ingredient belonged to:  apples to the fruit group, peanut butter to the protein group, and marshmallows that are sugar which should be eaten sparingly.  See the chefs and their creations below:

Ms. Loetscher's apple smiley may need braces!

Our own younger version of TV chef Rachel Ray--Mrs. Halpin, our afternoon para.

On Friday the First Graders went home with smiles on their faces and apple smiles in their tummies!

First Grade Magic Continues!

Another busy week in the land of the Winside First Graders came to a close on Friday.  The magic continues as the class learned more about the apple orchards, graphing favorite apples, and using real apples to create patterns.  They sampled three kinds of apples:  Red Delicious, Granny Smith, and Golden Delicious.  Then each student selected his/her favorite and made a picture graph. 

The class interpreted the data and found the apple with the greatest amount of votes was Granny Smith (15 votes) while Golden Delicious and Red Delicious received two votes each.  Questions were posed such as:  If Ms. Loetscher could only buy one of the three kinds of apples for the class, which should she choose and why?  This is an example of a higher level question which is H.O.T. (Higher Order Thinking).  This is the level at which we want our students to be able to function. 

Using an apple Ms. Loetscher cut it in half horizontally and something incredible happened--a star appeared in each half of the apple.  The class discussed the seed pockets.  Then each student made a paint print of the star pattern on a paper plate.  More magic!

The boys and girls continue to work hard on phonics rules and their application.  Please have your child do the Vowel Cheer for you.  In case they need a little help getting started here are the words:

Jump high,

Jump low,

Come on vowels

To work we go,

A, E, I, O, U    A, E, I, O, U    A, E, I, O, U
Vowels, Vowels, Vowels!

Each student received Dex the Pointer Dog to point while reading.  See pictures of students below using Dex while reading to their Study Buddies.

Next blog we will talk about math.
Your partner in education,
Ms. Loetscher