Plants

For the past week, my students have been learning about plants.  It has taken all of my energy to get my very ready for Spring Break to start first graders on board to learn.  Our Spring Break will start on Friday, two more days!

We have done a lot of reading and illustrating about plants.  I'm going to share a couple of the books that we read, I've created them and have them listed in my TeachersPayTeachers store.

Last week, we read a a book that I created that goes over the process of how you plant a seed.  My students really enjoyed this book.  This was a great sequencing book that led into our center writing for the week, in which they wrote about how they would plant a garden and what they would plant in their garden.  Here is the link for our steps to plant a garden reader Planting a Garden Reader

 This week, we are working on the lifecyle of a plant.  This book was a little more challenging for my first graders.  For this book, I used vocabulary like photosynthesis, chlorophyll, and embryo (these were words that they struggled with).  My students had fun reading this book and were able to understand how something as small as a tiny seed could end up as a big plant that could then make new seeds.  Tomorrow, we will be working on one of the comprehension pages that I created for this book.  Here is the link for our Lifecycle reader: Plant Lifecycle Reader

The rest of this week is going to be crazy.  Tomorrow looks like it will be another indoor recess day because of all the rain that fell today.  Thursday is Field Day, my students will be able to be outside participating in the games in the morning.  It is always fun trying to get them to focus and do anything in the afternoon and it might be a little more of a challenge since Spring Break will start on Friday.

Amber

Habitat Study

We have started our last LDC (Literacy Design Collaboration) for the year.  This is the third one that my students have done and the third one that I've created.  I feel really confident about writing a LDC now after I have been receiving a lot of positive feedback from my trainer and others from my county.  For this LDC, we will be learning about the different habitats and creating a book about their favorite animal and the habitat that it lives in.  Right now, each class is visiting a habitat for two days.  Next week, our first graders will choose their favorite habitat that they would like to visit to learn more about.  My habitat is the savanna, yes I have the best habitat of them all.  The other habitats are the woodlands, the arctic, the ocean, the wetlands, and the rainforest.

During the two day habitat visit, I have been teaching them about some of the characteristics of the savanna and about the animals that live there.  At the end of each day, the students have to write in their habitat journals.  On day 1, they write three facts that they learned about the habitat.  On day 2, they write about three more things that they would like to learn about or questions that they have. Here is the link to our habitat journal that we are using during our habitat visits.  It is a freebie in my TeachersPayTeachers store.  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/A-Look-At-the-Habitats-1148748  

We will be starting our animal/habitat focus when we return from Spring Break.  I will have lots of information to share and will post the link to the journal that we will be using to write our notes down for our animal books!  I have spent a lot of time getting this LDC module ready, I actually started back in November, I created a DonorsChoose project requesting books that our students will be using to help them with their project.  I was able to get almost $1000 worth of nonfiction books that many of my students can read independently.  After my students have finished their animal books, they are going to be able to create and print a 3D model of their animal with our 3D printer.  We are really excited for this!  I really love DonorsChoose, I have gotten so many needed resources for my classroom.  It is also a good feeling to help other teachers get the materials that they need for their classroom.  DonorsChoose is amazing and if you have checked it out, you really need to and if you have any questions, I'll be happy to help!

Enjoy your weekend,

Amber

Field Trip!

Today was a very busy, tiring day.  We had our first field trip today to a farm located down the road.  My first graders really enjoyed it.  They got to see many farm animals, go on a tractor ride, and see an animal/puppet show.  Sadly, I can't do many of these activities with my students because of my crazy allergies, I'm pretty much allergic to everything that we saw.  I have been there many times in the past, as this is a common place to go for a field trip, we haven't been there in about 3 years but they still remember me as the one that is allergic to everything!

To make it easier to spot each other on our field trip, each classroom tie dyed shirts in their own colors!  Of course my shirts had to be teal, hot pink, and orange (if you ever saw pictures of my classroom, you would see why I had to have these colors)!  

Coming back from a field trip and still having almost three hours of school left is a real challenge, especially since you can't go outside because the students in grades 3-5 are taking a benchmark test.  We really picked a good day for our field trip, on testing days we have no resources and can only leave our classrooms to go to lunch.  We spent the remaining part of our day doing fun math and literacy centers that we never get to do.  One of our centers, is our Farm Animals Roll and Write activity that I created.  This game is really cute and fun!  Each student rolls a dice and then they match the number on their dice to the animal on the sheet.  They have to write a story about the animal that they rolled, perfect activity to do this afternoon.  You can grab this freebie from my TeachersPayTeachers store.  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/On-The-Farm-Roll-and-Write-1184445

Tomorrow is Wednesday, that means I have 7 more school days until Spring Break!  Yes, I have not had a Spring Break yet and have been envious of those that have already had theirs.


Amber