A Week in 1st Grade

Now that I am home from school for the summer, I will be volunteering in several elementary school classes in Williamsburg. This week I spent most of my time helping in a first grade class.



The first graders are doing a big writing project where each student creates his/her own book to read to their parents during an Author's Tea at the beginning of June. This week, I helped the students finish writing their stories and then typed the stories on the computer as the students read them aloud to me. I also worked with each student to help them create an "About the Author" page for the back of their book by filling in the blanks in a paragraph listing where they go to school, who they live with, their favorite part of school (which was usually recess or math), what they like to do outside out school, their favorite color, and their favorite thing to write about. After working on this project all week, I have now finished typing all 17 stories and About the Author pages and the books are ready for the kids to start illustrating them next week. It is a very time-consuming process, but I think the books will look very nice when they are finished and will be a great way for students to share some of their writing with their friends and families.




In addition to making their books, the main topics that the 1st graders were learning about this week were money and economics. In math, the first graders have been learning about money and in social studies, they have been studying economics. So we did a lot of activities related to coins and money this week. For social studies, we read several good books related to money and economics, including The Go-Around Dollar by Barbara Johnston Adams, Tight Times by Barbara Hazen, The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills, and A Chair for my Mother by Vera William. The students learned the difference between goods - something that you can make or grow and that someone can take home with them after they buy it - and services - something that you do for someone - and we discussed examples of both goods and services in each of the stories that I read to them. We also used several graphic organizers to help the students review what they had learned. After reading Tight Times and The Rag Coat, we created a "double bubble chart" as a class to compare and contrast the 2 stories. At the end of the unit, each student made a circle chart listing things they had learned about money and then wrote 7 sentences starting with the prompt "We have been learning about money..." When they went to computer as their center class on Wednesday, the students used Kidspiration to make a tree chart with columns of pictures showing needs, wants, goods, and services.

In math on Tuesday and Wednesday, the students used money manipulatives to help them complete several worksheets about counting coins. On Thursday, they played the game "Race to a Quarter" with a partner, and then on Friday, the students rotated to 8 fun money stations to review what they had learned about counting coins. The students really enjoyed the money station activities and by the end of the weekend, everyone seemed to have a pretty good understanding of how to count pennies, nickels, and dimes as well as what money can be used for. Click here for instructions for the "Race to a Quarter" game. You can find additional money activities, including a money PowerPoint with interactives games on my class website.



Yesterday, the students also made an extremely cute Mother's Day card . The card was shaped like a purse and their moms can open up the top of the purse to see the note that they wrote inside. The teacher had already cut the purses out of several different colors of construction paper and then the students used sparkly pom-poms, foam stickers, and gems to decorate their card. I will definitely consider using this idea with my students in the future. Here is a link to a similar project, although the one the kids made at school was much simpler.

Webquest

I just finished making my first webquest, titled "Let's Make a Zoo". Click here to go to my webquest. My lesson plan and all student handouts are located on the Teacher's page of the webquest.

A webquest is a computer-based learning activity in which students use specified websites, pictures, and videos on the internet as a resource to help them complete an activity or project. For more information, here is a link to an article about webquests.

My webquest is designed for 1st graders and is about animals. It goes with VA science SOL 1.5, which states that students will understand that animals have life needs (including food and a suitable place to live) and can be classified according to certain characteristics, such as body covering, body shape, method of movement, and where they live. The final goal is for students to create a class zoo. To complete this webquest, students will work with a partner to create an exhibit for 1 of the animals in our class zoo. Each pair of students will research their animal using the links provided in the webquest and record the information they learn in their "Zookeeper Journals". Then they will create both a visual and a written description for their exhibit. Students can choose from several project choices for each part. My webquest is meant to be used at the end of a science unit on animals. I think this would be a fun and engaging way for students to apply what they have learned about animals and I hope to be able to use it with my future students!

Webquest Animal Videos

The following videos are from TeacherTube.com:

"All about Giraffes" video

"African Elephants" video




"Tigers" video

"Meet the Gorilla" video

(from TorontoZoo.com)

"If you lived with George Washington" Podcast

Here is my first podcast. It is about George Washington and is intended to be used in teaching VA social studies SOLs K.1a, K.2, and 1.2. Click here to listen to my podcast!

First Grade Science Fun

This week I was home for spring break and I spent a few days helping in a first grade class at an elementary school in Williamsburg. It was a lot of fun and the kids were SO cute! The first graders were finishing up their science unit on matter this week, and we did several fun activities about solids, liquids, and gases, including making root beer floats, "cooking" Jello, and playing with Oobleck.

Yesterday we made root beer floats and talked about how the ice cream is a solid, the root beer is a liquid, and the bubbles that appeared when we poured the root beer on top of the ice cream are a gas. Then the class made a T chart listing different qualities of each type of matter and wrote a short story about what type of matter they would like to be - for example one little girl wrote, "I am air. I am a gas. I would like to be air because then I could go flying through the sky" Another student wrote, "I am root beer. I am a liquid. I want to be root beer because I could drink myself". Then this morning the kids helped their teacher make Jello and talked about the powder (a solid) dissolving, the steam rising from the boiling water, and the Jello solidifying and changing from a liquid into a solid while it was in the refrigerator. These were both simple (and yummy) activities that provided real examples of the different states of matter.

Another science activity that we did this week was the "Oobleck" experiment, which is based on the book Bartholomew and the Oobleck by Dr. Seuss. I read this story (which is VERY long) to the class while the teacher covered the tables with paper and got ready for the kids to play with their own Oobleck. In the story, the king is bored with the sun, fog, rain, and snow that usually come from the sky so he orders his royal magicians to create something new to fall from the sky. The magicians comply with his request, and their new creation is a green sticky goo called Oobleck, which eventually gets stuck to everything in the town and creates a big gooey mess. The Oobleck continues falling in bigger and bigger globs until the king finally realizes that he has caused the whole problem by asking for this goo and then admits his mistake. As soon as the king says the simple words "I'm sorry", sun comes out and the Oobleck disappears, adding a moral lesson to go along with the science experiment.

This gooey green slime is easy to make; all you need is water, cornstarch, and a little food coloring. Click here for a recipe for making Oobleck. The 1st grade teacher had made the Oobleck ahead of time, which seemed like a very good idea with young children. The Oobleck was a little messy, but the kids thought it was really cool and we managed to keep it mainly on the paper covering the tables. We discovered that Oobleck has properties of both liquids and solids at the same time. Like a liquid, it molds to the shape of the container that you put it in and if you hold it in your hand it will start to drip. If you press quickly on the Oobleck with your finger, it will be hard like a solid and your finger will not go into the Oobleck. Here are links to 2 Oobleck lesson plans that I found online:

• Discovering the Properties of Oobleck
• Oobleck cooperative learning activity

These lessons are designed for upper elementary students, but they could easily be adapted for use with 1st or 2nd graders as well.

These activities were all a lot of fun for both me and the students. The kids learned a lot about matter and the activities seemed to increase their understanding about the different states of matter. I will definitely consider doing all 3 of them with my own students in the future.