Printing in 3D!

It has been forever since I have found time to post.  And yes, I know that I still have a winter theme but it has seemed like winter in NC.  School has been extremely busy.  It seems like I have been living at school most days.  Hopefully this changes soon.  My goal is to start posting twice a week.

This week, our MakerBot 3D printer arrived!  I was able to receive this fabulous item from a grant on DonorsChoose.  To check out some of the grants that I have posted and funded on DonorsChoose, feel free to visit my teacher page: http://www.donorschoose.org/ottman.  They are even having a Friends and Family Contest going on right now, for every $20 donation that a teacher receives, they will get a DonorsChoose gift card that they will be able to use to help their own classroom or others.  I will have to do a post someday on DonorsChoose.

It took several hours for me to get our printer functioning but we had fun yesterday printing our first objects in 3D!  I was surprised to find out that our MakerBot Replicator 2 does not have to be hooked up to a computer.  It has an SD card with some preloaded graphics.  So far we have made a chain and a shark.  Sadly the shark broke when I was trying to get it off of the glass plate.  Now I know why the recommend putting down blue painters tape before you start your printing job.  It evens comes with a couple of the blue painters tape sheets, I have never seen such a thing before but I will be ordering more off of Amazon soon.

We are going to be using our 3D printer in the upcoming months while we are completing our habitat unit.  All of first grader is going to be learning about one of the following six habitats (the rain forest, the ocean, the wetlands, the arctic, the savanna, or the woodlands).  Our students will be completing a book about their favorite animal from their habitat.  This is going to be a lot of work and I will make time to share our journey with all of you.

It is Wednesday, that is normally a good thing but this week we have to go to school on Saturday to make up a snow day.

Amber

Jingle's Wild Week in Review

Kind of frustrated that my wi-fi is not working on my tablets. I have taken some cute pictures to go with this post but I cannot get them off of my tablet! I have been trying for the past couple of hours without any luck, it is sad that it tells you that it can't connect because of a weak signal strength but it shows that it has a strong connection strength.  I'm hoping that this issue is because of the very gloomy day that we are having today and not my brand new router. I will be adding the pictures as soon as my wi-fi wants to work again.  Anyways, back to my post. **Update** I finally have access to my pictures, enjoy!

Our elf, Jingle, had a crazy, fun week this week. He went fishing for our beta fish, Millie, he build a cup tower with our sight word cups, he brought in and decorated a little tree for our classroom, and he was sitting in our awesome chair reading Rudolph! I have had quite a few students asking if I am the one that is moving Jingle and I always respond "No, I'm not moving him, he was there when I got here in the morning." Jingle has a few more surprises in store for the last 10 days of school before Winter Break. Wow, I can't believe that we are down to the last two weeks of school!

We also started working on our parent gifts this week. I'm sure that you have seen the cute little snowmen that are made out of a battery operated tea light. Since I could not find little hats to put on the snowmen, I am having my students make them out of Model Magic. We are going to let our snowmen sit and dry as long as possible before we begin to wrap them. They are really cute, rather inexpensive, and my students we able to make them in about 10 minutes. They are already asking when they can take them home! The only thing that I have left to do to them is to either glue on a ribbon to make it an ornament. My students are also making a picture ornament, I had bought a kit years ago, that I found this year, and our PTA gave us a set. So, it seems like my students' parents will be receiving 3 ornaments this year.

I can't wait to see these all finished!

Now to start planning for the upcoming school week. This week, we are going to be working on double addition facts, long i vowel sound, adjectives, and starting our Winter Holidays Around the World, I get to teach about Germany.

December and the Return of Jingle Peppermint Bell!

It was really hard getting up for school today.  I really enjoyed my 5 day break, I was good and only did school work yesterday!  I have forgotten how good it feels to take time for myself and not constantly work on school things.

Last year, I started Elf on the Shelf with my class.  They loved our elf Jingle Peppermint Bell, yes our elf has a full name.  My students would bring in candy canes for Jingle to eat, in his first letter he talked about how he loved to eat candy canes.  Jingle ate many candy canes last year, he would eat parts of them when we were at resources or at lunch, he is such a sneaky elf!

Today was Jingle's first day with our class.  Jingle wasn't very creative today in his hiding place, he was just sitting on the top of our SmartBoard.  Jingle is ready to play some tricks with my students this year!  Tomorrow he is making a tower using paper cups!  He is also planning on having another glow-stick party with our "quiet critter", class turtles, and our fish, going fishing for Millie (our beta fish), making a snowman, bringing in and decorating a small Christmas tree, and wrapping up our desks with wrapping paper for our last day before break!

My fingers and toes are crossed that having Jingle in our class will help with some of the behavior issues that we are having.  I have a group of first graders that love to talk, they also love to tattle on each other and are too concerned with what everyone else is doing to pay attention to our lessons.  I'm hoping that these issues stop soon!

My teacherspayteachers store is on sale for the next day, be sure to check it out!  Don't forget to use CYBER during checkout to save even more.

Amber

Student-Parent-Teacher Conferences and Our New LDC

I wish I knew what has happened to time, it seems like it was the middle of October and now it is the middle of November.  I've been super busy lately dealing with my ever increasing food allergies, creating a new LDC, and getting ready for Student-Parent-Teacher Conferences.

Our school district does not set aside a day to have conferences, our conferences had to be done on multiple nights after school.  Tonight was my last night of conferences.  Conferences went well, it is always good to hear that the parents' of my students are already seeing improvement in their reading!  Those comments make me feel appreciated, I don't get that feeling much at my school.

The past month, I have been busy creating and teaching the rest of my first grade team about LDC.  I have previously shared with you what my class was doing with the LDC on Citizenship.  I wanted to do this again with this one, but it seemed like I was living at school and had no time to blog.  This LDC is on The First Thanksgiving.  Today was day 6, we have 1 week left.  Like the Citizenship LDC, we have had a word of the day.  So far, my students have written about Thanksgiving, the Mayflower, Pilgrims, Native Americans, harvest, and feast.  Our last 2 vocab words are giving thanks and tradition.  My students, and the rest of the students in first grade have really enjoyed this unit!  They have been learning and remembering what they have learned about on previous days.  This is truly a great feeling!  On Friday, my students will begin their final writing project.  For the LDC, my students are going to write a report (1 paragraph this time) about how they would celebrate Thanksgiving, like the Pilgrims & Native Americans, or like we currently do today.  They are going to be required to give three reasons why, along with an opening and closing sentence.  This report will include at least 5 sentences.  Completing this type of writing with a group of 19 1st graders takes a lot of time and energy.  Our goal is to have our reports finished by Tuesday afternoon in hopes that some of my students will be able to share their reports with the class.

Our Journal Writing From The Past Week!

Like last time, I created a journal for my students and I have posted it FREE in my TeachersPayTeachers store.  Here is the link. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/My-Thanksgiving-Journal-961549

Amber

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