Firsties in Fall

First grade is busy! It seems like there is never down time and someone always has a story to tell.
We've covered so much since my last update! I'm not really sure where to begin, but here are a few highlights.

In math, we explored time to the hour using this fun Time Roll activity.

During Science, we investigated chemical changes by applying heat to butter (they loved this one!) and we also made some delicious applesauce!

On Thursday, we read riddles and located word referents that good author's use in their writing. Each child brought a small stuffed animal to school and then created their own riddles to build suspense.

And on a a more personal note, my regional group leader (at church) celebrated her birthday last weekend. I hosted a party at my place to celebrate and here are a few shots below!

Empowering Writers and Readers

Our first unit in English Language Arts is called Exchanging Ideas and Messages. Students are learning to ask literal questions, make predictions, and retell stories using folktales and fairy tales. We are also recognizing rhythm and rhyme in poetry and exploring the difference between narrative and expository text. My little writers also began using circle maps to brainstorm ideas for writing.

I love when we learn about rhyming words. The kids always do a great job with it and we have a lot of fun. I started off this unit by using a bridge map. We thought up rhyming words together and we discussed how rhyming words are usually part of the same word family, so they are spelled the same. After we did a class bridge map the students got to make their own. They did a fantastic job and I let them be little creative with their coloring.

On day two, we played one of my favorite rhyming games. This one is by Kagan Cooperative Learning Strategies. You can get the book by clicking here. With this game each student gets a yes card and a no card. On the board or projector you show a rhyming word card with 2 pictures (shown on the left) then students raise their card to display their answer. It is always a big hit and super easy to reuse every year.

                                       

We've covered a LOT during our reading block and even though I don't have any pictures of student work for this one I do have a lovely Reading Content Wall going on for this unit. We used the 5 Ws and an H to help us learn about questions and we also used the 5 Finger Retell to summarize our folktales and fairy tales.

 

My district follows the Empowering Writers curriculum for writing. I have really started to love it this year as my students go deeper into the writing process. The first week of school we learned the difference between a narrative and an expository text. As you can see below, we created 2 simple anchor charts that we will continue to use all year to reiterate the difference between the two types of genre. We also learned a cute song called "Discover the Cover" to help us remember to check the cover for hints.

After we learned the 2 types of genre the students got a chance to come up with their own narrative and expository cover. Each child created 2 book covers. The first cover was a narrative cover of any story they would like. On the inside, students wrote what the text was about, the problem and solution and what the author's purpose was. On day two, they created an expository cover that mirrored their narrative story.

The next week we begin exploring prompts and making circle maps. Here is my modeled circle map below and a few student examples. I encourage students to write as many words as possible in their circle maps, but for those who need the extra support I also allow them to draw pictures and label. 

                                          

After a week of practicing circle maps together I now have my students creating their own circle maps in centers. They have done really well with them and I'm excited to see what stories they create later!!! 

Looking back we have done a lot in the first 3 1/2 weeks of school! We still have much to learn, but I feel confident that these students will be more than ready for 2nd grade (yes, I'm already thinking about them moving on! Begin with the end in mind).

Fast and Furious in First Grade!

I can't believe it is already the second week of school!!! It is amazing how fast time flies when you are having fun.

It was a very busy first week and unfortunately I didn't get to take as many pictures as I would have liked, but I'll share the ones I have and what we are learning (mostly math related for now... ELA to come).

The first week of school was filled with LOTS of routine practice. We learned our Whole Brain Teaching classroom rules and we practiced teaching our partners. We also talked about what it means to have P.A.W Pride and how we can show Pride in the hallways, during class, in the cafeteria and on the playground.

The real fun got started in math when we discussed tally marks and how to take a survey. Below are pictures of the Firsties asking their survey question and recording data in their math notebooks.

Later in the week we used a t-chart to make a picture graph.

I am also working on transitioning into Guided Math. I'll have more updates on that in the next few weeks, but for now I have a picture of my students working in the Content station, practicing creating bar graphs from picture graphs. 

This week we also had a few celebrations! Each child in the school gets to pick a House color (sort of like Harry Potter and the houses of Hogwarts). We did a grade level drawing and each child found out what house they will be earning points for this year! There were many happy faces!!! 

And as the week concluded, my husband took me and some friends to the Ranger game to celebrate a great week! The Rangers won and we saw an awesome firework show!

Home Again Home Again!

We all love Summer, but those of you who have ever talked to me for more than 5 minutes know that I LOVE SCHOOL!!!! So you can imagine that I had a blast setting up my room for the upcoming school year (ahhh!!! It is only like 11 days away!)

My school is going through a few changes this year. We will be adding 5th grade to our campus and losing our CARE program. It will be an adjustment, but we are very excited to have a whole new 5th grade team join our awesome Wolf pack.

That being said, I had to move all my stuff to another classroom at the end of last school year. It was bittersweet leaving my little classroom, but I'm glad to be joining my 1st grade team on the 1st grade hallway (I was with the second grade team last year).

Here are a few before pictures of my room. Pretty big, white and boring, but it has tons of potential!

I'm not going to bore you with all the details of how it came together, but instead fill your screen with what you really came here for!

All the book boxes and cubbies are labeled with the numbers I created. I'm loving the number system so far it has made it really easy to get everything labeled.

The desk are also labeled with the Kagan Cooperative Learning cards I made. I will also use this with my Whole Brain Teaching activities to help them remember who will go first during "teach" time.

My district is very fond of Content Walls so I divided the room into all 5 subject areas using boarder. This way my students will know where to look to find the topics we have discussed in class. Last year I did not have them clearly defined and when my fellow teachers did some walk throughs they wrote that down as something I could fix about my classroom. :)

Here are my Whole Brain Teaching rules and Super Improver Wall. I've also added a classroom vision statement under the rules for us to recite everyday. This is an idea I got from Closing the Attitude Gap by Baruti Kafele.

My Reading centers,  my calendar, Guided Reading area, Word Wall and a few miscellaneous pictures so you can get all the angles.

 

And just so you can really feel like you were there a quick video of the whole shebang! Now, it feels like home.

I hope all my teacher friends are having a restful end to the Summer and are excited to empower some new students this Fall. And as Chris Biffle reminds all his Wibitters (teachers who use Whole Brain Teaching) let's ROLL UP OUR SLEEVES and start changing some lives!!