A Crazy, Late Week of School

Last week was a very busy week for me and I could not find time to blog, was pretty bummed with myself, I was getting so good at blogging a couple of times a week.  Last week was filled with meetings and our Fall Festival was on Friday.  This week I am promising myself that I will not stay at school, except on Thursday when I have a quick meeting.  Thursday is my birthday and I really am not too happy about having our meeting switched til then but as long as it is over with in a half hour, I'll survive.

This week my students are working on the following r blends, gr, tr, and pr.  I made a super cute R blends sort that is free in my teacherspayteachers store.  I created this center because I want my students to be able to identify the beginning sound (r blend) for each picture instead of matching words to the correct beginning letters.  My students started using this center today.  I'll have to take pictures this week to show you guys.  We are also working on pronouns, bats, forces and motion, and reviewing our math concepts for our 3 day math benchmark next week.  Yes, I teach 1st grade and yes my students have to take benchmarks.  It may only be 10 questions each day but it will take at least an hour for my students to complete it.  Then I get to score their benchmarks and fill in a bubble sheet.

I'm also pleased to announce that my students are finished writing their citizenship reports!  They did such a good job on them.  Sometime this week, they are going to be able to read their report to a group of second graders.

Here is the link to my R Blend Picture Sort.  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/R-Blends-Picture-Sort-gr-pr-tr-blends-941642

Amber

My Literacy Centers For The Week

I don't know why, but it seems like I have been waiting until Sunday to start getting ready for the next week.  I really need to spend a little bit of time throughout the week to start my planning so I can enjoy my weekend.  I am currently printing off the materials that I will be using for my literacy centers for this week, now to start laminating them.  

This week, our literacy theme is pumpkins.  We are also going to be working on identifying nouns and working with the following beginning blends (br, cr, dr, fr).  These themes are going to be carried out in my writing and word work centers.  

My teacher center, after I finish progress monitoring for the week, will be working with sight words (for my low group), my other groups will be reading books that are on level.  We will also be working on written responses to questions for the books that we will be reading.  This skill is something that my first graders from last year struggled with a lot so I'm trying to work on this skill as often as I can.

My writing centers for the week will involve pumpkins.  For Monday and Tuesday, my students will be completing a center called Pumpkin Punctuation & Sentence Fluency.  For this center, students will be given a baggie with words in it and different types of punctuation.  They will have to arrange the words to make a complete sentence.  I have done centers like this before when I taught Kindergarten and may have to dig out my sentence bags for my lower level students.  I found this center on TeachersPayTeachers.   http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pumpkin-Punctuation-Sentence-Fluency-333468.  My center for Wednesday and Thursday will be Pumpkin Writing.  My students will choose 3-4 pumpkin cards and write a sentence describing each pumpkin.  This is a great center to work on descriptive writing.  Again, I found this activity on TeachersPayTeachers.  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pumpkin-Sentences-FREEBIE-919105

My word work center will focus on the beginning blends and on nouns.  On Monday and Tuesday, my students will practice sorting picture cards that begin with the four blends that we will be working on this week.  I found my picture cards on http://carlscorner.us.com/Blends.htm   Each student will be required to write at least one sentence for each word blend.  On Wednesday and Thursday, my students will be sorting noun picture cards by person, place or thing.  I found this super cute noun sort called " Nouns on the Funny Farm" on TeachersPayTeachers.  Now this activity does not fit with my pumpkin theme for the week but it is so cute and pumpkins come from farms.  You can pick up your copy here.  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Nouns-on-the-Funny-Farm-541170

My students will also go to a silent reading center, a listening center, finish writing our citizenship reports on the computer, and work on the tablets.  

Time to get back to printing my centers so that I can start to laminate.  I also need to try and finish making my new hall passes, I still can't believe that my students destroyed or lost 4 out of the 5 that I made in less than 2 months.  At least I have my lesson plans, my homework packets, and our at home science experiment finished for this week.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Amber

Wrapping Up Our Week

Friday was a pretty good day for my students.  I was pleasantly surprised by this, especially after the notes that I received from my sub early this week.  My students enjoyed our math centers, which included our tablet center with a focus on addition/subtraction game (at least that is what they were suppose to be working on), addition facts practice, equal equations (true/false), and I worked with students on word problems.  It is funny how whenever I try and take a picture, there is always 1 student who has to turn and smile at the camera, if you look at our science picture for today some how he managed to get into a picture!

We finished up our ramp experiment today and also completed an experiment on friction.  My students had fun with this experiment.  The only problem with this experiment is that the majority of them were too short to do the experiment correctly.  They had to hold both ends of a shoelace and release a spindle from the top to see how long it would take it to get to the bottom of the shoelace.  They were surprised as to how fast it went on just one shoelace.  We then proceeded to send the spindle down two shoelaces.  To get the spindle to move, we had to give the shoelaces a shake, this is where we had difficulty because of our height.  We tried three shoelaces but could not get the spindle to move at all!

There is my photo bomber student in the bottom picture!

Our Friday ended with a PBIS Dance.  The majority of my students were able to attend.  There is nothing like ending the day in the gym with loud music and 40-50 1st graders running around.  I was so happy when the music stopped and the dance was over.

I have my first observation of the year on Thursday.  The rest of this weekend will be spent making sure that I have an amazing lesson plan for my math lesson.  This is going to be a challenge because this is a review week.  I have a feeling, that my plans are going to be a lot center work.  Off to find some amazing resources on addition/subtraction, word problems, shapes, and equal equations.

Enjoy you weekend!

Amber

Smokey The Bear & Science Experiments

This afternoon was crazy.  We had a visit from Smokey the Bear.  Only my class would ask Smokey if he had any kids.  They also asked constantly if he was fake.  At the end of the presentation, my class took a group picture with Smokey the Bear!

This week, we have been studying about Forces & Motion.  Well, at least that is what they were suppose to be covering with the substitute teacher.  Today, we began our experiment.  I wrote a grant on DonorsChoose, requesting a Forces & Motion Activity Kit and some nonfiction books.  We started an experiment using the ramp and objects that could roll down the ramps.  Today we watched as a toy car and a marble rolled down the ramps.  My students the wrote about their findings.  Tomorrow, we are going to continue our experiment using bouncy balls and whatever else I can find tonight that will roll down a ramp.  

Tomorrow is Friday!!  Our plans for tomorrow include spelling tests, hoping to get a few more students finished writing their citizenship reports (fingers crossed), math review on equal equations, addition/subtraction and word problems), and more science fun.  Time to start planning for next week, lots and lots of pumpkins!!

Amber

Writing, Typing, and Sub Plans

Today and tomorrow I will be sitting through more LDC training, trying to perfect our module on citizenship.  We made some changes to the order that our module should be taught.  It was a relief to find out that the majority of our students all struggled with knowing what a community is.  One more day of training and then it will be time to get everything ready to present to the staff at my school.

Yesterday, technology was not my friend.  My flash drive that I have been saving my students' citizenship reports on vanished!  It was difficult to tell some of my students that they were going to have to start over with their writing but we will make it work!  This morning I find out that the SmartNotebook files I made for my sub did not save on the flash drive that I left for my sub.  Nothing like finding out as you are about to leave.  I made a new one for tomorrow and emailed it to a co-worker.  This file is not going to be lost!!

My students are still working on typing their reports for our LDC module.  I now have only 2 or 3 students that still need to work on their rough draft!  I decided to have the 2 students of mine that are finished to help 2 students with their writing.  One, of them was writing what a student wrote on her paper but I couldn't figure out what in the world she wrote.  All I saw was a lot of letters and no spaces!  My other student was to help bounce ideas off of a student who wasn't doing much writing, I can tell that he doesn't like to write and appears to be putting off writing his report.  

Hoping for no technology issues tomorrow!!  I almost forgot, I finally found time to fix the mistake in the citizenship journal I made for my students.  You can pick up this freebie here!  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/My-Citizenship-Journal-927515

Amber

Our Week in Review

I wanted to blog sooner about our week but I have not been feeling well.  It is a combination of bad allergies and the flu.  Needless to say, I spent the majority of my weekend in bed.

This week, we have been working a lot on our LDC reports.  I now have 2 students that are finished!!  The majority of my students are typing/waiting for a computer.  It is sad that I cannot have access to enough computers for my class of 17.  I only have about 5 that are still writing.  I'm hoping that my students will finish their reports this week so that we can have an author's celebration on Friday.  This week, I have two more days of LDC training.  I am in the process of fixing changing some things on my LDC so that I can share it with you.  I also have two minor changes before I can share the journal that I created for our project.  I'm thinking that this will be a freebie in my teacherspayteachers store.

Two of our finished reports!  I promise that all I did was fix the spelling.

Last week in Math, we were working on shapes.  My students were busy composing and decomposing shapes.  We also spent some time comparing shapes.  Trying to get my first graders to use the words angles, edges, and vertice instead of corners and sides was a challenge.  At least they are not saying points and lines anymore.  Yes, there is a teacher that considers points & lines math terms.

What better way to compose shapes that by using pattern blocks.

The local fire station came to our school on Friday.  My students had fun looking at all of the things that they brought with.  Yes, my students were allowed to work the fire hose.

This week, we will be learning about Columbus, spiders, balancing equations, and forces of motion.  Time to finish writing my sub plans for Tuesday and Wednesday.

Amber

Writing Our Reports!

We have spent the entire week writing our LDC Citizenship Reports.  Some of my students will be finished tomorrow, I was hoping that almost all of my students would be finished but this is not going to happen.  I currently have 4 students that are typing their reports.  One of my students actually finished typing his report today.  I read his report to him and we fixed some spelling errors.  The only things that I am fixing for them are spelling errors and making sure that each sentence starts with a capital letter, it is a little hard for them to remember how to make a capital letter when they type.  I don't want to fix everything because I want their reports to look like they wrote them.  Tomorrow, I will be meeting with small groups of students during literacy centers to help them with their writing.  I've noticed that I'm going to have to write for some students as they dictate to me their report.  It looks like I am going to be having some students finishing writing/typing their reports next week during our literacy centers.

Tomorrow, we will be releasing our butterflies.  I am proud to announce that all of our caterpillars transformed into beautiful butterflies!!  

This weekend is going to be crazy, I have to get everything fixed from my LDC module and get my examples ready to bring to my training on October 15th & 16th.  I'm a little bit nervous about sharing what I did with my class.  I guess I shouldn't be since I've been sharing my module here!!  I also have to get a presentation ready for November 4th.  I have to present my LDC module during our staff meeting, I am the only one that has to share that day.  I guess I more nervous about that meeting since the other teachers that have been going through the training get to go on other days and not the only one.  Time to start planning for next week.  Next week, we will be working on spiders, forces & motion, and math review (balancing equations, fact families, & place value).  I'm hoping to blog again over the weekend about the materials that I will be using next week.

Amber

Butterflies And The Start of Our Writing Project

When I arrived at school yesterday, I was greeted by butterflies!!  About half of our 30 chrysalis hatched over the weekend.  By the end of the day, we had 24 or so butterflies and 6 left to hatch.  Currently, we have 3 that we are waiting on.  It is amazing that something the size of an eyelash can grow and change into something as beautiful as a butterfly.  One of my students even saw one of the butterflies hatch!  I will admit, I was jealous of this.  This student waited to tell anyone until after it happened and I was standing right there, we did get to see a newly hatched butterfly.  I was lucky enough to see one hatch while my students were in P.E. I wanted to try and record it or get pictures of it but it was too fast.  Today, one of my students noticed that one of our butterflies has only one antennae.  It is very strange, it does not seem to move very much, it was in the same general area of the habitat all day.  I've tried taking a picture of it but the netting gets in the way.  We have had fun learning and watching our caterpillars transform over the past 3 weeks.  It will be a sad day when we release them later this week, hoping that these rain clouds go away and the temperature gets a little warmer by Friday.

This is what our caterpillars looked like when they first arrived.

This is how big the caterpillars were after only 2 days!

Waiting for our butterflies!

Butterflies!!

We started writing our reports for our big LDC project on Citizenship and how it affects our community.  This has taken a lot of time.  I am trying to get my students not to write sentences using the words "I" or "my".  This has been a challenge.  Most of my students are still working on writing their introduction.  For this, I am trying to have them write a sentence on either good citizenship or bad citizenship and what it does to the community.  Here is a sentence that one of my students wrote "Good citizenship makes the world a better place."  This is a great opening sentence! Sadly we get stuck after this sentence, they want to start using "I' or "my" or they are writing examples.  The next sentence is suppose to have 3 of the citizenship words that we have been learning about.  The last sentence in the paragraph is to get the reader ready for our report.  I have been doing a lot of editing and conferencing with my students.  I want them to do a good job on their report and I feel like I have to give them a lot of time and attention so that they are doing their best work.  I do have a few students that have finished their introduction and are starting to write the rest of their report.  They are currently writing a paragraph, at least 3 sentences, for each of the 3 citizenship words that they included in their introduction.  I'm hoping that tomorrow will be the last day for writing our introduction paragraphs.  I should have some pictures of our reports to share by the end of the week.  This is going to be a long process but will be worth it when we are able to share our end result.  If anyone has ever tried to teach elementary students how to write a report, I would love to hear what you have done.

Amber

The Final Days Of Learning About Citizenship

I'm trying to make a schedule to remind myself to blog, we will see how that goes.  I'm impressed that this is my second blog post for the week!  The past two days we were working on finishing the reading/informational part of our LDC module.  Next week, my students will begin working on their reports.  This is kind of scary to thing about, we have been in school for 29 days and we are going to attempt to write and possibly type a report!  Thinking positive, happy thoughts!!

On Thursday, I had my students complete one more activity for Random Acts of Kindness.  When they arrived at school, I had 2 post-it notes waiting for them on their desks.  They were to write two different random acts of kindness that they could perform.  There were many cute ideas posted to our chart!  We are also going to keep a chart "Our Random Acts of Kindness!" in our classroom.  Each time a student does a random act of kindness, they will get to write their name and what their random act of kindness was and post it on our chart.  We are up to two random acts of kindness, hoping to get a few more each week!

Our word of the day for Thursday was good listener.  This is a citizenship trait that my students selected.  This is something that a handful of my students have a hard time doing.  This year, I have a very chatty bunch of students. We had a long discussion on ways that we can show that we can be a good listener.  It is amazing that they can recite all of things that they are suppose to be doing at school but have difficulty actually doing it!

On Friday, we completed the last two words in our citizenship journal.  I was suppose to start explaining and having my students start the writing process but knew that this was going to be difficult to do on a Friday.  Plus, I didn't want to have to reteach the same writing lesson on Monday, I could already hear them saying "What are we suppose to do?".  Our first word of the day was loyalty.  I have found many amazing citizenship books at the local library, this has made it much easier to explain each word of the day to my students.  The main idea that my students understood about loyalty was that you care for your friends and family when they need you.  Since this was our last day of journal writing, I decided to get all of them in a picture!  

Our final citizenship word was fairness.  To help my students understand about fairness, I gave two of my students tootsie rolls.  One of my students only received 1 tootsie roll, the other student received 5.  I had my students discuss if this was fair or not fair and why.  They all thought that it was not fair and that the student who had 5 tootsie rolls had to give back 4 of them.  We then proceeded to write in our journals for the last time.

I am a little scared about starting such a big writing piece with them next week.  I feel that they will have a great start to writing an excellent report based on the pages that they completed in their journals!  I think that I have finally made up my mind as to how I'm going to have my students write their reports.  I am going to start them out writing about why they think that good citizenship is important to their community.  Then they will have to pick out between 3-5 words and write a paragraph about each word.  I'm thinking that our paragraphs are only going to be 3 sentences, which is something that the majority of my students can do.  Then we will work on our closing paragraph.  This process is going to take a lot of time and effort from both my students and myself.  I cannot wait to share this writing experience and my reflection of this entire module with you!  

Have a great rest of your weekend!
Amber

The Continuation of Our LDC Project

This week has been crazy busy for me but then again every week since we started school has been this way.  I meant to do a post on Tuesday describing the beginning of our week completing our LDC project but something terrible happened and I was too hurt and angry to concentrate on anything.  So on to our LDC project.

On Monday, our word of the day was on respect.  My students did an amazing job writing about respect in their journals.  Today was the day that I described our final project, our report to my students.  I told them that their report is going to have to inform others about why and how good citizenship can affect our community.  We also went on an informational poster walk through the school.  They had so much fun finding all of the informational posters that are all around the school, when they saw something that could be an informational poster they would have to raise their hand.  I even had them take pictures of the posters that we saw!  This will hopefully help them when it comes time to start our report writing and illustration next week.  My plan is to have all of my students type their report and then we will bind them all into a classroom book.  We will see how this plan goes!!

On Tuesday, our word of the day was kindness.  My students are really starting to get the hang of their journal writing!!  They have been taking great pride in their work, especially now that I have figured out how to add amazing graphics to the collages and they all want to get their picture taken with their work now, I only choose the top 3 or 4 for each topic.  We talked about how we feel when others show us kindness.  This lesson worked well and was a great starting point for our talk about Random Acts of Kindness!!

On Wednesday, our word of the day was caring.  This was a word that my students came up with for our journals!  Our writing for today was very similar to our writing from Tuesday because of how similar our words were but at least they know what our word means.  This is also my favorite day of our LDC project so far!  Our entire day was around the them Spreading Random Acts of Kindness!  We found a book SPRAK! on www.readinga-z.com that is an amazing story!  After each "chapter", I had my students tell me the random act of kindness that was featured in it.  I have had many amazing donors to my projects on www.donorschoose.org.  Many of the donations to my projects have been random acts of kindness, I have never met these donors but yet they believe in my projects and want to help my students succeed!  This is an amazing organization, so I had the idea that as a class, we would spread our own random act of kindness to one of the projects on DonorsChoose!  It was so cute to see my students as we tried to pick a project!!  If you have ever done a project on DonorsChoose, it is true that your profile picture and you quick 1 sentence write-up on what your students need is very important.  My students were so quick to say "NO" based on the picture or that write-up.  I guess I'll have to have my students screen my upcoming projects before I submit them.

Next week our project takes a turn and we start to focus on our end result, a report describing how being a good citizen will affect your community.  I've never done a report before with first graders so I know that next week is going to be an adventure!  Also we will get to see our butterflies!

 Tomorrow is Friday!!

Amber