Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Tuesday, February 23, 2010: 100th Day of School

Today was the 100th day of school! We did lots of activities having to do with 100. One activity was to write 100 words that we know. We discussed strategies to use. Word association was one idea. If we think of a flag that might make us think of stars or stripes or red, white, or blue. Another strategy was to think of words in groups like names, family members, or colors. Thinking of spelling or sight words was another idea. Some people finished. Other children are still working on writing 100 words.

We discovered that 100 seconds is the same as 1 minute and 40 seconds. We had a name writing contest to see who could write their name the most times in 100 seconds and then we graphed our results. More children wrote their name 16-20 times than any other group. Dylan wrote her name more times (32) than anyone else!
Ms. Stern read us a story called 100th Day Worries. It was about a girl named Jessica who worries about everything. She has to bring in a 100 collection. On the day that it was due, her family helped her to find groups of 10 objects. In all, she had 9 groups which meant only 90 objects. But during lunch time, Jessica reads a note from her mom that was signed with 10 kisses (x’s). Finally, 10 groups of 10…100 in all!

Next, we started working on writing 100 things that we have learned in first grade so far. We came up with 10 different groups. Together, we created a list of 10 things that we learned in P.E. Then each table chose another group from the list and everyone at the four tables needed to come up with 10 different things that they’ve learned for that group. So far, we have 50 things that we’ve learned! Another way that we used 100 was to work with a partner to find the date 100 days from now. We also had to figure out what we think the temperature will be like then and draw a picture of ourselves doing something that might happen then. Lots and lots of people came really close and came up with June 6th as the date. Actually, June 4th will be the date in 100 days.

We got a really great math challenge…100 addition problems to try to complete in 10 minutes. Everyone was free to do it in the best way for them: some skipped around on the page, some people went across the rows, and some children worked best in columns. Ms. Stern told us that she wanted us to try our best, use all of our time, be positive, and focus only on your own work. Doing your best is better than doing more problems carelessly! Everyone worked really hard and really well during the 10 minutes…in fact, everyone was so positive about it that we earned a marble! We are going to be working on this same task every week for the rest of the year. Ms. Stern is looking to see that everyone works to improve their personal best score, no matter what it is. When children get a 95 or higher on addition they move to subtraction. If someone gets 95 or higher on subtraction, they will try addition (and then subtraction) in 5 minutes. Two children blew Ms. Stern out of the water by completing 95 or more on the very first try!

We had to do some creative thinking. Ms. Stern gave each of us a 1 and two 0’s (100). We had to use those numbers to make a picture. There were lots of neat and unusual ideas. Some of our ideas were: snowmen, headphones, butterflies, cars, angels, ice cream cones, and even a ring toss! Dylan A. thought that was the best 100th day project ever!
During gym today we played Wheel of Torture. Anthony D. was the winner. He paid careful attention and didn’t get hit by the rope! Then we did the chicken dance. Next we did the limbo. We are getting ready for the dance festival (which will be on March 4th).

Some children worked on a coloring and counting activity at the end of the day. We had to color the objects and then count how many there were of each. Meaghan thought the easy part was coloring but the challenging part was counting how many!

Our final 100th day challenge was to see who could stand on 1 foot for 100 seconds. Putting your foot down, falling or talking meant that you had to sit down. At the end of 100 seconds, 6 students were still standing! Way to go Amanda, Meaghan, Nancy, Sarah, Hunter, and Adam!
100 days have now passed. 80 more to go!

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