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

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