Our First Grade Journey

Cicada Crew Families , This week has been the perfect time for us to transition from our study of insects to our study of weather. We had an entomologist come and speak to us on Thursday, and an e-learning day due to the weather on Friday- what timing!  I am amazed by the excitement of the kids to share their learning, to continue asking questions, and to strive to learn more and more each day. They are excited to learn, and that makes me feel so grateful to be their teacher!  Because I have a lot of announcements and reminders, this blog will be kept fairly short.  As scientists, we had a visit from an entomologist. We learned what it looked like to ask questions, and when our guest came in, the students were eager to ask questions and to learn more. I was so proud of them for the way that they were excellent audience members, engaged and curious, and for the way that they even taught the entomologist some new facts! They are growing as scientists each and every day....

Day by day I learn something new alongside these students. I am grateful to be at a school where questions are embraced, curiosity is engaged, and every voice is heard. Throughout this week, we engaged in reflection as a class about the things that we wanted to share our families in our classroom. From heart words, to our bug wall, to our ten frames and tallies, your students were excited and proud of their growth and learning so far. They are truly taking ownership of their learning, and they are building confidence in how far they’ve come, and how far we know we will go. Also, please enjoy our Cicada Family Tree. We are a family! As writers, we continued to grow in letter formation as well as letter recognition. We used our moveable alphabet cards to help us make words using the sounds that we hear. We practiced by first pounding and tapping, and then naming the letters that we heard. We also practiced listening for the initial sounds in words using our mystery alphabet box. Each...

 Cicada Crew Families,  These students are truly the piece that completes the puzzle at CFI. They bring wonderful ideas, fearless questions, and caring hearts to our CFI community, and I know each of them are right where they need to be! We are all growing, and I know I am a better teacher because of your students.  As writers , we have continued to grow in our understanding of letters and the sounds that they make. We are encouraging students to say the word that they want to write, then write out the sounds that they hear. As kindergarteners, we are heavily focusing on writing the sounds that we hear; it is okay if it is not spelled perfectly right now. This is how we begin to understand letters and their sounds! Every author started first by understanding sounds and relationships between letters in words, and this is where we are growing as well! We have also been noticing heart words all throughout the books that we read. Heart words are words that we know by heart,...