The last few days of January and the first few days of February provided First Graders with many reasons to celebrate. Warm temperatures tied a 128 year old record. This was a two day recess treat. On Thursday the First Graders celebrated the Year of the Dragon in a parade for the school carrying their own hand made dragons. Friday the students hosted breakfast for their dads or other special guests. Yummy donuts and juice were a super way to start this special day. This was followed by math games in the classroom. First Graders taught guests some of their favorite games such as Top It, Rolling for 50, Penny Plate, and a Place Value Trading game. Next week the long awaited celebration of 100 days in school will take place on Monday.

Students practiced the kn- spelling for the Noisy Nose card and read the story The Knight Who Did Not Know. First Graders began reading stories in the Open Court Second Reader. First they enjoyed The Plane Trip and then The Special Day. Each child brought home copies of these stories to share with someone at home.

In math students continue to work on their number scrolls. They are finding the work challenging and are determined to get to 1,000! The sequence of digits that make up three digit numbers beyond 100 are less familiar and require careful thinking about how the digits zero through nine build and start over again, as well as how they impact the digit in the next column after reaching nine.

First Graders also continue to work with greater than and less then symbols to determine relationships between two values sometimes as a number and sometimes as a number sentence. Students are accurately reading the symbols “is greater than” or “is less than”.

Students are revisiting an earlier concept in math as they use a visual diagram called, “Parts- Parts- Total”.  They are familiar with this way of organizing what is known in a number story in order to find out what is unknown. Now they are using a paper plate divided into three sections in order to use place value blocks that represent two digit numbers that are being added together to find a sum. To date the students’ addition facts have included only one digit numbers for example 6 + 4 = 10.

Using place value blocks students can make 24 + 13= 37 by placing two ten sticks with four cubes on one section of the plate and one ten stick with 3 cubes on another section. By first combining the cubes, or ones they know they have 7 in the ones place. Combining the ten sticks shows 3 in the tens place. This is a concrete way for young students to begin to add with two digit numbers. They can see how the values combine before the traditional vertical two digit equation is introduced later.

Laura Jacobsmeyer
First Grade Teacher