Critical thinking
Should I stay or go?
As the final learning activity in our Social Studies unit, students had to decide whether they would travel back in time or stay in the year 2015. They each weighed the pros and cons and then made their choices. Take a look at their thinking!
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Chances are…
Losing a tooth is an important event in first grade and in Room 123 we celebrate each time it happens!
We also keep track of how many teeth are lost each month.
This data often leads to questions for students to consider, and they offer evidence for their predictions.
Students will return to this question later this month to update their evidence and, possibly, change their thinking. Check back in a week or so!
What in the world?
Scientists in Room 123 began investigating a mystery this week–take a look!
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Students will continue their investigation over the next few weeks.
Analyzing nonfiction learning
As we continue our unit on animal classification, readers used their notes to analyze how mammals and reptiles are similar and how they are different. This step helps learners more deeply understand and remember important information. At the same time, students are learning a key thinking strategy: comparing and contrasting.
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A horse is a horse…
But is a horse a mammal? A student raised that question as we were reading a nonfiction text about mammals. A lively discussion followed, but the class still wasn’t sure.
So, later that day, I pulled copies of a nonfiction text about foals for students to read. While this text does not describe horses as mammals, readers were able to use what they had learned about mammals as well as new information from Foals to infer an answer. Take a look!
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More than just the facts
Young learners are often described as sponges, as they eagerly soak up information on new topics. But simply learning facts is not the goal of reading. To truly understand, readers must think about those facts.
This month, first grade readers are learning about animal classification. While listening to nonfiction texts on different types of animals, they note key facts and details. To better remember this new information, they reread and sort their notes into categories. The specific categories they identify are not as important as the process itself, which you can see below.
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Who said that?
A recent read-aloud–The Trouble with Chickens–is an exciting mystery. It comes with an extra challenge, though: readers have to figure out who is narrating each chapter.
Is it retired search and rescue dog, J.J. Tully?
Or is it scary Vince the Funnel?
The clues are in the text, and readers in Room 123 loved picking up on them!
From reading to writing
Over the last few weeks, students in Room 123 read biographies of famous Americans. In doing so, they both learned about American history and practiced nonfiction comprehension strategies.
At the same time, they also learned about the genre: what a biography is, how it is organized, and what text features authors include to help the reader understand more. These features include chapter titles, detailed drawings, maps, time lines, and captions.
Last week, students used what they learned to write a biography of our principal, Mr. Tenorio. You can see the process here and scroll down to the next post to see the completed work.
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