The Week of Jan 21

*Written by the students in 1S (with a little help from Mrs. Surrette)

Beaver

We have a beaver in our classroom now, but it is stuffed. It was alive at one point. We don't know how it died, but we do know that it was not hunted. It came from Elm Brook Park. Ms. Nichols had it in her room and now we get to have it. 

We are learning that beavers build dens and in the winter they can go into their space and can get sticks under the water. Sophia and Cassidy made signs so people will only look at it instead of touching it. The beaver has a split toe. We are curious to know what it is used for. Please help us discover why beavers have a split toe. We will come back to school next week and share our thoughts.

Library

Last week you read about our class learning the difference between fiction and nonfiction stories. This week, in library, we continued that discussion with Musical Books and nonfiction I Can Read books.  

In the library there is a whole section for the I Can Read books. These are great for 1st graders because there are a lot of words we can read. There are fiction and nonfiction books. To become more familiar with these stories we played musical books. This is like musical chairs except on the chairs there are books and when the music stops, you find a seat and read the book that is sitting on the chair. As the chairs get taken away, students have to squeeze onto a chair with a friend and buddy read. It was fun, but Mrs. Surrette forgot to take a picture. We'll play again in our classroom and take pictures this time. 

Scholastic News

Check out our Scholastic News this week. Every year In China they make an ice city with ice slides, ice restaurants and ice castles. This celebration is called the Ice Festival. We made paintings of our own ice castles. Nolan and Malcolm created an ice roller coaster in their paintings!

Did you notice this issue talks about a glossary? This is another part of nonfiction books! We learned that a glossary is where you look up key words in a book. A glossary tells you what the words means and how you pronounce it.

Check out next week's blog post! Here are some topics we'll be writing about:

Pop to Win

Chp 5 Test: Shapes & Patterns

Olive came to school on Tuesday

WIN