Persuasive Writing

We read the book, I Wanna New Room by Karen Kaufman Orloff. In this story a little boy and his dad write letters back and forth as the boy truss to convince his dad that he needs his own room.

We were inspired to write letters to our parents to convince them that we should have a later bedtime. Check out these two, I literally laughed out loud.

Eggstrodinary Week!

Today we did the first candling of our duck eggs.  Our eggs have been incubating for 8 days now.

Our incubator hard at work, keeping our duck eggs at 99 degrees Fahrenheit.

This is what the inside of the duck egg looks like at day 8.

When we candled the eggs today we were looking for veins and possibly some slight movement of the developing duck.  If we didn't see any veins then we knew that the egg was not fertilized and there would be no duck.  

Based upon our observations, we predicted the following

Egg 1:  no veins, no duck

Egg 2: veins, duck!

Egg 3: veins, duck!

Egg 4: no veins, no duck

Egg 5: veins, duck!

Egg 6, veins, duck!

Egg 7: no veins, no duck

Egg 8: veins, movement, duck!

Egg 9: no veins, no duck

Egg 10: no veins, no duck

Below is a YouTube video of a duck egg candling at Day 7.    She gives lots of good information about candling.

We have also been hard at working learning all we can about ducks.

My attempt at humor.

We have been reading articles about duck.  Then, we have to answer questions about ducks and find evidence from the text that supports our answers.  

One question was, Could a duck survive in Antarctica?  We said no, and because we looked back in the article we were able to support our answer by adding... because ducks are found all over the world except in very cold places.  Some ducks even migrate during winter.

This is the article about ducks that we read.  Notice how we highlighted key pieces of information!

Click on the picture for the link to the TPT store A Year of Many Firsts.  This close reading packet has it all! 

This is the fun fraction activity we did with ducks!

Five For Friday!

 This week I had a lot of fun with my students.  All of my 5 "things" from this week are not academic...which I do feel bad about. However, I assure you we had lots of learning taking place. 

April showers bring May flowers!

Got to love a little camera fun!

We were lean mean roping machines! 

We had fun learning to use a lasso as we wrapped up our Tall Tales unit. We had to try and also a cow, a goat, and a tornado.  If we lassoed the cow, we had to write a "noo" word. (That was my attempt at humor.)  If we lassoed the old goat, we had to write an old word.  Lastly, if we lassoed the tricky tornado, we had to write a trick word. 

I scream you scream, we ALL scream for ice cream!

I treated all my students to ice cream since I think they are GOLDEN event though the judges didn't select our class for the Golden Apple.

Sing, sing a song...

I was so proud of all the first graders on Tuesday when they sang for 1st Congressional Church.

Who's going to second grade?

We are going to start a persuasive writing next week! 

Students will plan and write a persuasive essay/speech about why they should go to second grade.  After they have written their essay, they will take it home for fine tuning and to practice giving their speech. On a given day, TBA, each child will give their argument to the judge, that's me!  I will decide if I believe their argument.  ;)  

This should be a lot of fun! I am going to wear my black graduation robe so I can look the part of a judge.

Today was the photo shoot.  These pictures will be attached to each child's completed essay and hung in the hallway.