Tag Necklaces

Ojibwa students are awarded specially designed tags for a variety of achievements as well as for participation in special school events and teams. In first grade, our children work to earn tags for Accelerated Reader points and certifications. They can also earn tags for sight word memorization. This is my son's tag necklace. He started earning them in kindergarten. He still proudly displays his tag necklace in his room!

Accelerated Reader

Star testing to determine reading group placement is now complete and students who I feel are reading well enough independently have started the Accelerated Reader program. Students have been assigned a 'best fit' reading level. The students read their AR book for homework, record their reading on the monthly log and then take a computer test the next day. Logging in and getting to the correct test has proved to be challenging and so have the test questions! The children who are testing are slowly getting the hang of AR! The entire class will eventually participate in AR testing.

Getting to Know You Activity

During the first week of school, the children were asked to think of something they like that begins with the same sound as the beginning letter of their first name. This is the predictable chart we wrote to help us to learn each other's names and to get to know a little bit about our classmates. Students can refer to this chart to fill out bucket filler forms or to have a reference for writing about their friends.

Read to Self

The children have learned all of the expected behaviors and have 'built stamina' for our Daily Five Read to Self. This week we learned the expected behaviors and expectations for Work on Writing.Students are able to choose the order of their Daily Five rotations. To encourage fairness, avoid rushing and to help to get started right away, the children pass off Turn-Taking Teddy to their friends who have their materials ready for Daily Five.

PEN Night

The Parent Education Network offers parent and child workshops at our school every fall. Many of our families attended this wonderful evening filled with fun activities and left with loads of free study materials and game pieces for use at home!

We Give a Hoot!

First Graders signed their owl pledge to follow our three Hoots for Success: Look Whooo's Safe, Look Whooo's Respectful and Look Whooo's Responsible. This is our display in the shared pod area and our own Hoot poster in the classroom.

Calendar Math on the Smartboard

These are two of the interactive lessons that are part of our morning calendar math routine. We work on a variety of math skills daily including place value, counting coins, patterning, writing tally marks, graphing,addition, subtraction, writing numbers and skip counting.