I feel like its been SO incredibly long since I've blogged about the world of First Grade! Honestly, it was tough getting back into the groove after an amazing Spring Break hanging out in the sun and with great people! :)
With that being said, let me attempt to catch you up! (I will do a WHOLE post just for non-fiction next!)
We have begun learning about maps and how to read them. We began with learning street directions and how to read them. We learned cardinal directions and used Google Earth to zoom in and find ourselves on the map! The children were amazed.
I then had them write the street address of our school and illustrate.
Now this week, we expanded our understanding of maps and learned more about our wonderful city! We watched Brainpop and I even had a student bring in a map of good ole' St. Augustine. We dissected it together and then the students drew a larger picture than the one above of our city.
Before they drew, we talked about adding details to pictures and they decided that having at least 5 details would make a drawing acceptable! Needless to say, most of them drew more than 5 after that fun talk!
Next week we will move on to our state and then our country. We will conclude with our continent and planet. We plan on piling each picture from largest to smallest and attaching with a ribbon in the top left hand corner! This will make a very useful flip book that can be used to help understand mapping concepts.
In Readers Workshop we have spent much of the past week focusing on the author's lesson in the story. We now know that successful readers always try to look for something in the text that can help them learn and grow personally.
After reading this amazing book, The Big Orange Splot, the students came up with several lessons we can learn! We discussed everything from following your dreams to allowing others to be different and appreciating them for it!
In the book the main character breaks the mold and designs his once cookie cutter house to match his dreams. I let the students create their own dream covered house and then write to explain! They were pretty creative if I may say so myself. :) 
In honor of the current April fog, I also threw in a bit of handwriting practice with our poem of the week. It's always good to refresh their little memories on things like this!
Put against fun scrapbook paper, it works out great!
Well, that's all for now. I'm on to writing about our Non-Fiction book writing process! Have a great night !:)
-Mrs. Hunter
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