Learning Setting and Characters with Cartoons

This week we are studying characters and settings in a story. I thought this ipad app would be a perfect way to introduce the class to these story elements. I will show them how to use the app to create their own stories with their own characters and settings!

Special Readers at McKinley

We had special visitors come to McKinley today from Washington, D.C. They brought books for every child in our school. The mayor of our town came and read a book to our whole school.























Each child received 2 free books. We also got healthy snacks and water and went back to our rooms for a reading party. We were so excited to get books of our own to keep!























These are the books our class received to keep. The mayor read 2 stories from "Days with Frog and Toad."









We came back to our room to read and eat snacks and talk about our new books!

If you want to read the newspaper article about this event click on the picture above or click this link http://http//newsandsentinel.com/page/content.detail/id/551505/Area-students-receive-free-books.html

Mrs. S came into our class and shared her favorite book with us today. We really enjoyed the story and her visit. During the story we even heard our new vocabulary word, fiasco. It was nice to hear the word and know we had just learned that word today!













After her visit Mrs. S sent us a letter. We hope she comes back again and reads us another book. Thank you Mrs. S!

Read-To-Self in First Grade

We are working on "Read to Self" in our classroom. Each student has a book box that they take with them to a special place around the room. They read the books in their box silently to themselves.


















We have learned there are three ways to read books. We can read the pictures, read the words, or retell the story if we have heard it before.

















We are building stamina in our reading each day. Reading stamina is how long we can read to ourselves and stay engaged. This is a process that we have learned takes time and practice. At the beginning of the year we practice, practice, practice so that we can build our reading stamina up to 30 minutes or more.













We also practice choosing a "bubble space" so we don't distract others as they read. We read the whole time, too.





















We are learning about how to choose "Good Fit" books for ourselves. Soon the children will be "book shopping" for "good fit" books for their book boxes. Reading sure is fun in first grade! Be sure to ask your child about "Read to Self." They are very proud of how they are doing.

New School Year-2011-2012

Poetry Journal by Mrs. Childress

Hi Class,
I thought you would enjoy reading some of this poems over the summer. You will know a few of them. We added them to our writing journal in first grade! Remember to read this summer!
Sincerely,
Mrs. Settle
**** There are pages missing to this journal and they can be found HERE.

To My Class

Hi Class,
I hope you are enjoying your summer.  I hope you are not too hot.  I hope you are getting to play in water and splash, splash, splash!  I hope you are riding your bike, playing with your friends, jumping rope, singing songs, and having a BLAST!

I also hope you are keeping up with your summer reading goal you set for yourself.  I know everyone was going to read everyday.  Are you?  Leave me a comment below so I know how you are doing!

I'll write again later!

Here is a link to a fun site to play on after leaving me a comment CLICK HERE.

Happy Reading,
Mrs. Settle

Our Extraordinary Fun Day

Fun Day was really cool, exciting and awesome this year.  We went around  outside our school and did play stations.  We raced through an inflatable bouncy house.  We bounced and jumped down the slide in it.  The inflatable bouncy was spectacular.

We liked playing on the playground.  We had fun playing basketball.  We had fun stacking cups.  We had fun having scooter races. 

Then we got to have a break and got some cold water.  It was refreshing because it was so hot we thought we were going to pass out. After our break we started playing again. 

The beanbag toss was fun.  We drew pictures with chalk on the blacktop.  We blew bubbles and made more bubbles by waving bubblesticks.

We played with a parachute.  We put balls on the parachute and they popped like popcorn.  Some of the balls hit people in the head including D.  It didn't hurt though.

We played with swimming noodles.  It was crazy.We had a sword fight with the noodles. We pretended we were pirates.  We pretended they were telescopes.  We pretended they were snakes.  We used them like talking phones.  We talked through the holes.  We pretended to ride them like horses.  We made bows with them.  We played tag with them. 

We liked our extraordinary Fun Day!!!  We can't wait until 2nd grade so we can do it again!