Welcome to First Grade in Queen Anne Elementary's Tree house! Ms. Meck and her 26 amazing students are now settling into their classroom ready to begin the incredible journey that is first grade! We hope you check in often!
The stage is set for our first Reader's Theater today. We will be performing four classic Fairy Tales: The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Three Little Pigs, Rumplestiltskin, and Little Red Riding Hood. Break A Leg First Graders!
Our Non Fiction work is ready for Young Author's Day!
There's a new problem in our neighborhood. How are we going to spread the news?
We started our non fiction book clubs today. There are 6 groups - we are learning about snakes, dolphins, penguins, horses, space and the Titanic.
A "I Wonder" chart by the Dolphin group
|
Scarlett is learning about the Titanic.
|
March 1st - Our One Hundredth Day of School
100 legos, 100 marbles
|
Scarlett's Collection
|
Seashells from Florida
|
We learned that Abraham Lincoln used to carry important papers in his hat. So we put our facts about the famous president in ours as well. Don't we look smart?
|
Feeding day so we got to measure Cornelius again. He is about 16 inches long
|
Graham was our snake charmer. Thanks GRAHAM
|
Another Unity Point Party and today we are celebrating with our favorite stuffed animals!
Scarlett's bear "Reads to Self" while the kids are in the art room.
The stuffies are here!
|
Charlie and Emilia explore their non fiction books
|
What a mess!
We have three rules at QAE - Be Kind, Be Fair and Be Safe. In room 204 we've added one more: Don't Litter.
Just starting to fill up our bags with trash.
|
They really took their jobs seriously. Thanks Room 204.
|
Hot off the Presses!
Our first Writer's Celebration is tomorrow morning. The kids have picked their favorite small moment story to share with friends and family. Hope to see you there!
Our first Writer's Celebration is tomorrow morning. The kids have picked their favorite small moment story to share with friends and family. Hope to see you there!
We read Oliver Button is not a Sissy together this week. Here are some of the connections and mental images that we made.
What amazing thinking!
|
Thanks for sharing Gray!
|
Thanks Dominique!
|
Hydson drew his favorite part of the story in his reading journal
|
Our Neighborhoood - Families moving in soon
Our neighborhood mural!
Roots of Empathy -
Today was just our second visit with Baby Mary but we welcomed her with much fanfare! Television news camera's accompanied the founder of Roots of Empathy, Mary Gordon, as she visited our classroom. It was so much fun to see the kids connect with Baby Mary and her mom.
|
The star of the show!
|
Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!
We made Pilgrim hats for our First Grade Feast!
|
Read to Partner on the last day before Thanksgiving Break
|
What we know and want to know about Thanksgiving. Jake posts his question on our KWL chart.
|
Talia knows that even the pilgrims had to work on making friends just like we do in first grade!
|
Thank you's from the HEART......
 |
 |
 |
 |
Seattle Firefighters from Ladder 6 visit QAE first graders today......
|
 The firefighters told us right up front that firefighting is loud! No kidding. |
 |
 We watched as one firefighter rode the ladder onto our roof. Wow! |
My joggers did an amazing job at last week's Jog-A-Thon! We all participated and we all turned in pledges to raise money for our school! Way to go Dragonflies!
 |
 |
Tomorrow is the Jog-a-Thon. Time for a Sundance!
 |
 |
 Scientists use tools to measure their work.We are now working as meteorologists as we study the weather and how it impacts our lives. We are using tools like thermometers and wind flags to measure temperature and wind speed.
|
 First grade meteorologists are measuring wind speed with their wind flags  We decided that Monday was a 1 on our windscale . |
Queen Anne Explorers
Today we took the first steps towards learning more about the community where we live and go to school. Here we are on the steps of QAE before going on our first neighborhood walk. It was a great beginning. Thank you to all my parent volunteers who led the way!
It's Feeding Day Today!
 |
 |
Evan is working while Markus keeps the tally.
How many Oreo cookies can you stack without making it tumble? Today the first graders at QAE participated in the Oreo Online Project. We will find out how we stack up against other first graders all around the country. Each of us got two attempts at stacking oreo cookies. Our partner kept track of our stack using tally marks and numbers. Our goal was to find the average length stacked in our classroom. Our smallest stacks were 12 cookies high and our longest were 32 cookies high. And when we looked at the data we found the average stack in Room 204 was fifteen cookies high!
 |
 |
Pictures inspried by James and the Giant Peach.
For the last 19 days we have been coming in after lunch and reading Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. We have laughed and talked as a class about each chapter and I think we were all a bit sad to see the book end today. In fact someone asked, "Ms. Meck is there a part two?" Like all good readers we all make different pictures in our minds as the story unfolds - today we got to put our favorite parts of the story on paper. And I'm so impressed with the results.
 |
 Mr. Elliott and Cornelius |
 As readers we are still working on our stamina. But for two days in a row we were able to "read to self" for 14 minutes! |
 Our read a loud is Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. So Fiona created her own peach out of pattern blocks! |
Cornelius was the winner!
Look at these incredible faces!
"Snake Day" was an amazing success. After three days the snake finally was taken out of the terrarium for his first meal. Gray was our "snake charmer" and the job will rotate from week-to-week, but the kids couldn't be happier to have a new friend in the room. All day we learned about snakes. We read new books, we documented our learning and we wrote a book filled with fun facts. We learned to slither and we talked and talked and talked about snakes. In Math, we measured our snake (he's aproximately 11 inches long) and because we learned in our reading that the longest documented snake in the United States was 9 feet long - we got out rulers and unifix cubes to figure out what 9 feet looks like.
Kohana and Charlie share a book about snakes.
 New Learning! |
 |
 Gray was the snake charmer today. |
 |
He's been sleeping all week but when I got to school this morning our snake was finally moving! And not a moment to soon....Today is Snake day. We are finally going to get him out of the terrarium so that we can learn to care for him. We are all super excited!
Malachi writes about our snake's first day in school.
If you look closely you will see the corn snake that is now making it's home in our classroom. One of my students really wanted us to have a pet so he came up with a couple of ideas. As a class we decided our pet had to be friendly and require little care. We knew it would be spending weekends alone and would have to go for a couple of days without food. After a lot of disussion we decided as a class that a corn snake was perfect. So Gray and his mom delivered our snake this morning. He slept most of the day and we are letting him get used to his new environment before taking him out on Thursday. More to come......
Our Reader's and Writer's Workshops are underway...Today kids brainstormed why it's important for readers to practice each and every day. We came up with three main ideas: It will help us become better readers, we will learn more, and we will have fun!
|
 |
During our math exploration, Kohana made a dragonfly on her geoboard using what she knows about shapes.
And soon we had a whole lot of dragonflys in our classroom. Each one unique!
Once we break this ribbon there is no going back!
First day of school and already we look like readers!
This is our Cafe Board. CAFE is an acronym for Comprehension, Fluency and Expand vocabulary. During the year we will fill this board with all the strategies we need to become voracious readers!
