Our Media Specialist (Ms. Thames) is always looking for ways to encourage our students to read!  She recently started the Book Tree where students can earn Book Bucks for reading.  They can use a Book Buck to buy a book to keep!  In first grade, we decided that 10 nights of fluency reading would earn a Book Buck.  I can't wait to see what books the students choose!  Thank you Ms. Thames!

**If you are interested in donating to the MES Book Tree, please e-mail me with more information.  We are always looking for more books!!!**

Two weeks ago, my non-ESOL students listened to the story No Mirrors in My Nana's House by Dr. Ysaye M. Barnwell on Storyline Online.  We blogged about it here.  

Last week we created silhouettes as a part of our shadow unit.  The students couldn't help but make connections to the beautiful words of the story we read.  Life-long learners are always seeking connections and new ideas!  Way to go kids!

Today we continued to collect information about our rainforest animals through Pebble Go.  It was so fun!  Students worked with their partners to collect interesting facts about habitat, the life cycle, feeding habits, and the body of their animal.  Soon we will be ready to put all of this information into an organized hamburger paragraph!  

This morning we had the laptop cart signed out, so I decided to use it during Morning Message.  Usually students respond on the Activeboard, but this morning we created a Morning Message Blog.  Students took turns visiting Kidblog, reading the Morning Message, and responding to the question.  It was an interesting addition to our morning routine and the kids were incredibly engaged!  I hope we can do this frequently!

This week we started our rainforest animal research project!  The first thing we did was learn a little about the rainforest habitat through Brainpop.  Then students worked with their partner to choose a rainforest animal that they would like to study!  

On Thursday we went to the Media Center where our Media Specialist, Ms. Thames, showed us how to use reference books to find information.  We learned about the Contents, the Index, and how to find useful information about our animals.  Each team added at least one good fact about their animal to their research folders!  Next week we'll use the internet to find more information about our animals.

Want to learn about your animal from home?  check out our Wonderful Writers page where there are links for rainforest animal websites.  

Elmo is a new friend in our room - and no - he is not a furry friend from Sesame Street!  "Elmo" is the nickname for our red document camera!  I was able to borrow this from the Media Center for a few days this week.  The best thing was using Elmo during Writer's Workshop, where we could review peer's work and edit it together!  

Each week we add a new poem to our poetry notebooks.  Sometimes the poetry focuses on a specific language arts essential question, sometimes it relates to a theme or a holiday, and sometimes it's just for fun!  We practice reading and reciting the poetry, and the students love to read and re-read the poems during our "Just Read" or "Read to Self" times.  

This week's poem was just for fun - it was called Pizza!  After we practiced reading the poem, students wrote about their favorite kind of pizza in their poetry notebooks.  

Student pictures will be coming home tomorrow.  Please return the pictures or payment for the pictures promptly.  There is detailed information about the different packages available in the picture packets.  

Thank you!  

We love to blog!  

Yesterday's blog was about the chapter book we're currently reading, Matilda.  You can see some snapshots of the blog and responses below.  You can see the entire blog here.

We worked very hard this week!  

First, we started our unit on money.  We've been practicing working with coins all year during calendar, so we were ready to dive right in.  We played some whole group games and worked in collaborative partners to review identifying coin names and values.  Next week we'll work on counting mixed amounts of coins during guided math groups.  After we've worked with that, we'll move on to a very fun project - turning our classroom into a shopping mall!  Stay tuned for more exciting mall updates!  You can play money games on our Magnificent Mathematicians! page.

Second, we reviewed the steps of the writing process and published our first hamburger paragraphs.  I am very excited to move on to our next writing project now that we are familiar with the steps of the writing process.  See our Wonderful Writers! page for more information.  

I am so excited for all of the fun to come over the next few weeks!