Astronauts and Animals

  People, there are like 10 days of school left! Can you believe it? I can't.

In some ways, I feel like this year has flown by. But, when I look at my kiddos, I feel like I've been their teacher since the beginning of time... do you know what I mean? I'm sure gonna' miss them, I know that.

We've done two activities the last few weeks that I wanted to share.

We spent a whole week on outer space. The kids loved it! They were so interested in astronauts and the planets. We did a bunch of fun activities... but, I've been l-a-z-y about taking pictures lately. One thing we did do, though, was write about a trip to outer space. The kids used their writing flow maps to write paragraphs. Then, they made paper plate astronauts that I found on Pinterest.

 I kind of love them.

Here are some close-ups of their writing...

This next thing came from Pinterest, too. It's basically a way to start a new unit. I saw this way back in November and I tried it out with the third and fourth graders I tutor after school. They LOVED it and it was great way to start our unit on the arctic.

I've been dying to try it with my littles and this week seemed like just as good as any. And, since the news came in that I'm moving to third, I thought I better get my shot! But, honestly, I can't wait to do this with the third graders next year. My kids did a great job, but I think it's probably geared more for the upper grades.

Anyways...

I got five books from the library about animals and five big pieces of butcher paper. I put each book on a piece of paper and spread them throughout the room. I gave every kid a marker. I played some fun music and they basically walked around to each poster and wrote something they knew or a question about each animal. They all wamted to chat at first but then they got really into it!

This was suuuuch a fun way to build schema!

This is pretty much what they looked like when we were done.

After about 10-15 minutes, I had them stop at the poster they were at. Then, I had them open the books and read them as a team. I tried to choose easy books for them to read... but, some were a little long. They loved looking at the pictures, though, and all the teams had good enough readers that it all worked out fine. I told them they could add some interesting facts to their charts from the book.

To wrap up, I gave them all a circle map to complete about their animal. I didn't get any pictures of completed maps... but here are a few mid-way through.

Did my kiddos learn any ground-breaking information? No way.

Would I test them over something like this that they basically did themselves? Of course not.

But, I feel like this was a great way to introduce a new topic! I'm totally going to be doing this activity again and again. The kids were engaged, working together and they were searching all throughout those books to find new information! Imagine doing this before a unit on space or dinosaurs to build schema. I can't think of a better way to get the kids excited! To whoever came up with this, I salute you. Slow clap.

Up, Up and Away and Leprechauns at Play

Well, it was a busy week in first grade. We had lots of stuff to cover. Plus, I had my final unannounced observation for the year (soooo glad that's over with!) and was sick. So, I haven't had much time for blogging. But, I wanted to share a few of the fun things we did this week.

Every spring, we do a mini-unit on kites and balloons. We usually compare/contrast them and then the kids write about how they are alike and different. Last year, we pretty much scrapped the whole comparison thing and just wrote adjectives on kites because we ran out of time. But, this year, we decided to bring back the kites and balloons. Since one of our standards is writing opinion pieces, this proved to be a great topic to debate :)

We started off making an anchor chart about both kites and balloons.

After we wrote the information about kites, the kids went back to their seats and filled out a Circle Map about kites. I know this isn't exactly how Circle Maps are supposed to be used... but, I had the kids write things they liked about kites inside the circle and things they didn't like about kites outside the circle. This was a great way to seperate their thinking.

We did the same thing on the back of the same sheet with balloons.

Then, I had the kids decide whether they would rather have a kite or balloon. Then, I broke them up into the kite group and the balloon group and had them discuss why they would rather have a kite or balloon. I was shocked at how serious they were and how passionate they were about their choices. I thought I was going to have to break up a few debaters! HA.

Next, they used our flow maps to write a paragraph to share their opinions. I told them they had to state their opinion in the opening sentence, provide three reasons in the middle and ask a question as the closing sentence. Here are some of their flow maps...

They turned their flow maps into paragraphs and then I just stapeled them to scrapbook paper. We added some little kites and balloons, too.

On a random but somewhat related note, I totally forgot to show you the little project we made for Read Me Week. These hung at the front of the school in the lobby during the week of Dr. Suess' birthday. When I got them back, I taped them to my door for an extra little burst of color :)

I folded his face down so you can't see it. The balloons say "The more you read, the more places you'll go!" And, I took pictures of the kids holding a sign saying where reading takes them.

Friday, we had a visit in our room from a little friend.

He made a huge mess!

(And, for real, my leprechaun made this mess... not me. I told him he could mess it up, but not "really" mess it up. I can't handle the mess, ha.)

When my kids came back from PE and saw this message on the board and the big mess:

They. Went. Ballistic.

I've never seen them get so worked up. They were searching for clues and they just had so much fun. Then, our mischievous leprechaun popped into the room. And, if they weren't nuts before, they certainly were now!!!

Special thanks to Mr. Hedgepath, our Title 1 coordinator, who dressed up like a leprechaun for us two years in a row! I'd say the accent was even better this year. And, as a side note, I'm getting dang good at making homemade leprechaun beards, just sayin.

After he left and we were all threatened to calm ourselves down we made some cute little leprechauns and wrote about our experience.

Well, that's all I have to share tonight.

Thanks for reading!

The Power of Retelling

Buckle up, people.This one is going to be all over the place!

1. Did you notice my new blog design? I have serious blog ADD. (And, regular ADD. But that's irrelevant.) I just get tired of the way my blog looks and never really truly loved my last design. So, when I saw this design at Shabby Creations, I was sold! It was dang cheap, too. Since my blog is not only about school (because, I do NOT want to keep up with multiple blogs), I wanted it to be not too "schoolish." Mission accomplished.

2. Today was Book Character day at our school. I don't think I've ever seen so much cuteness in one place! I'd say my favorite was a little boy in another first grade class who dressed up like Lebron James. Because, you know, we all love that book. Ha!

3. Last week, we learned all about inventors and scientists. This is a unit in our Treasures series. We used Cara Carroll's activites the last two years and I LOVE them! You can find all her awesome ideas here. We made the light bulb anchor charts, we filled out the inventor booklets and we even made our own inventions. Here are a few of their cute little creations:

4. Here are some updated pictures of our teeth writing that I wrote about yesterday. You can find that post here. We used a flow map to write paragraphs about losing a tooth.

5. We spent a lot of time this week focusing on retelling. In years past, I'll admit this was a difficult skill for me because I could never figure out a way to get my kids to tell enough. And, forget about them putting it all in order. Enter this book:



It is amazing!

It's such a great resource for teaching comprehension. One of the main things we use out of this book is the GO chart. This chart is used before reading a story. Here's a sample of what a GO chart looks like:

We do these all the time with our basal stories. We discuss the vocabulary and then the kids predict words that will be in the story. Then, they make predictions about the story. After we read, we use the third column to do some kind of comprehension: usually whatever skill we are working on that week.

The other great thing we use from this book is the retelling chart. This is the one I made last year and still use:

It's basically a triangle, square and a circle. The triangle is the beginning and the three points are characters, setting and problem. The square is the middle and provides the events of the story. Each corner is first, next, then and last. The circle is the end and is where you share the solution to the problem.

We read Henny Penny this week and together we put post-its on the charts to retell the story. And, I used the gradual release model to practice. I retold the story by myself, we retold it together, they retold it in groups with character cards they created themselves, they retold it to a partner and then I had them write it. We did all this over the course of two days. It took a while.

We made a little graphic organizer to go with the chart.

This is the front. It's just a little flip book.

Here's the inside. If you get past the spelling and lack of punctuation, you can see that the kiddos actually did a pretty good job of retelling the story of Henny Penny! And, I know when I assess them orally next week, they will do even better. They still don't have as much stamina in their writing as they do talking :)

Here are a few more:

Then, we read the story Little Rabbit out of our basal. It's very similar to Henny Penny... it just has different characters. We did all of the retelling we did with Henny Penny (minus the character retelling cards... we ran out of time!) But, instead of using the graphic organizer, I decided to give them the flow maps we used in the tooth writing. I wanted to make the connection that we had been retelling stories AND we had been retelling when we wrote about how our teeth came out.

Here is their retelling of Little Rabbit:

If you want some great retelling and comprehension ideas, I TOTALLY recommend The Power of Retelling.

Okay, I think that's all.

See, I told you I had ADD.

Enjoy the weekend!