Five for Friday {October 13-17th}

This week was another fabulous week in first grade.   

 We have our Boosterthon Fun Run this week. This is a fundraiser we do every year at our school. I like it because it builds character and gets the kids outside to run laps. The kids get donations for laps, just like an adult 5k. So if you pledge to donate a $1 a lap and the student runs 35 laps, you will donate $35. The track is small so most of the kids do run 35 laps or more! They have fun laps for kids like skip a lap, walk with a friend, march a lap, etc. The teachers mark the students shirts to count their laps. The parents/PTA make sure the kids get enough water at the water station tent. It is one of the most fun events of year! It is so well organized and the kids LOVE it! Teachers also love it because it builds character and raises money for our school. We are buying new technology with money raise.

    We worked on writing acrostic poem this week. This is our shared writing from Tuesday. My kids had to help me write an acrostic poem using my name. Hehe! I love my kids! This was the poem:
Joyful
Exciting
Silly
Smart
Interesting
Caring
Awesome

I had my informal observation this week. I’m not sure how this works in other schools, districts, and states. At my school, anyone from the admin team can just pops in your room to observe you for about fifteen minutes. They are required to do two informal observations a year and one formal (planned) observation for most teachers. If you are a new teacher, you have four informal observations and two formal observations. I had one of our instructional coaches observe me for around fifteen minutes in my whole group reading block. We read our morning message, worked on phonemic awareness, phonics, sight words, and reading with fluency. I used my Smart Board that had interactive games and video clips. The observation went really well and my kids all behaved. I already received feedback on the observation too. Before she left the room she actually left me a nice note on a sticky with a piece of candy. Talk about thoughtful and encouraging after an observation. I think other administrators/observers need to take note. It can be super stressful to be observed!! I think observers needs to sandwich comments like we do for report cards (positive, what to work on, positive.) I’m so happy this one informal is done! One done….two more to go…probably more!

  

 I’m so excited to have a mini fall break next week! We are only working 3 days next week! I have to finish report cards before I leave on Wednesday. I get four-day weekend though and I’m going to the beach! We are going to Jupiter/Palm Beach for the weekend to see family and friends. I’m going to our cousin’s baby shower and I get to see a friend who is newly pregnant! I’m so happy for these ladies that will be wonderful mommies!

Now I'm off to a movie date with my man. We're going to see Gone Girl. I've read the book and can't wait to see the movie.

Fall Writing

Hey there bloggers! Happy hump day! I sure hope you are having a great week.We have being doing some fall writing in first grade and I wanted to share with you.

First up we wrote about the season fall and what you can wear, see, and pick in fall. We made a bubble map together the first day. Next the kids took the words from their bubble map and put them in a tree map. Then they took the information from their tree map and wrote sentences in their “Authors at Work” journal or writing journals. I made corrections in their journals. Finally they wrote their final copy on this adorable paper Anna Brantley and made this craft from All Student’s Can Shine.

This week we’ve been working on acrostic poem writing. The first day we discussed poems, watched a brain pop video, and I showed them a sample of an acrostic poem. Then yesterday and today we wrote acrostic poems. The first poem was all about fall. The poems today were with our names. I thought the kids did a great job! I forgot to snap a picture of the acrostic poem with my name that we wrote together. It was humorous and will have to go on blog this Friday! 

Charlie put he is cool, handsome, awesome, regretful (he explained he regrets when he gets in trouble and moves his clip), lazy (he said it not me!), interesting, and exciting. I thought it was a great! He illustrated a picture of himself outside with an airplane. 

Next up we have the fall poems. In case you can't read them this is your translations. Fall is falling leaves off trees, apples red and green, little pumpkins ready to be picked, and leaves crumbling on the floor. Then we have Fall is falling leaves, apples start to fall down, live animals, and little pumpkins in the patch. This next one is a little bonus from a cutie who wrote during work on writing in centers. 

        

He wrote school: soaring (our mascot is eagles and we soar!), caring, happy, organized, amazing (which begins with an o for him), and learning. I love how he feels about school!

Have a great rest of your week. Tomorrow we are participating in the Fun Run! I’m going to be one tired teacher!

'

Easter Eggs

Hope you had a wonderful Monday. Mine started out with a training. I have a busy week full of gator/habitats activities! First grade is going to Gatorland on Friday for our big field trip of the year! My students and chaperones (all 9 of them...there was no limit this time) are geared up and ready to go. It will be fun for all!

I just wanted to post quickly about some beautiful Easter writing I did last week with my kiddos. They each wrote about how they celebrate Easter with their families. Then they cut eggs out of large white paper and painted their own designs with watercolors. I think they came out beautiful and each on is unique in size, shape, color, and design just like the little ones that painted them.

We had a great Friday on Good Friday even though some of our classmates were not there. We took our morning serious and took 3 tests...yes I know it sounds awful but we always have a spelling and reading comprehension test on Friday and it just so happened our math test fell on that day too. Don't worry they all did fabulous on their tests! I had time to grade them because we watch Peter Cottontail. We also had a super fun egg hunt set up by my wonderful parents on the playground.

Easter weekend really couldn't have been any nicer. The weather was perfect and we spent time with friends that are like family to us hanging out by the pool and lake watching the Master's and grilling out. Our Easter service was inspirational and I even got a book about renewing my faith. I hope your Easter was just as blessed as mine.

*Also can anyone tell me why blogger wants me to upgrade to a new look and what it's all about? Thanks in advance!*

President's Day Flashback!

I know President's Day was so last month...but I haven't had time to do anything more than quick posts here and there so I wanted to share with you my student's writing.

It is very adorable! We read a lot of books about being president and talked about how hard a of job it would be and what we would like to change in the good old U.S.A. Then my kids wrote about what they would do if they were president. They are so creative and came up with so many great ideas! Some of their ideas were to have better security, safer roads, and homes for everyone. Such sweeties thinking of others!

We also compared and contrast Abe Lincoln and George Washington after reading a few biography on each president and watching Brain Pop Jr. videos on them. The kids did a super job on this and created a George and Abe craft!

Before I have to run to do a million other things check out this adorable hallway decor my neighbor had! This is the only Seussy picture I have! I totally forgot to take pictures of all the cutesy stuff we did. Bummer! But most of it was found from Pinterest anyways so it is technically saved!  

Enjoy your night! We're halfway through the week! 

MLK Day

Monday...Oh no wait it's Tuesday! I kept thinking it was Monday morning until I looked at my calendar and saw we had library today. Here are some cute things we did today:

MLK anchor chart: 

We did this together as a class after reading Martin's Big Words. My students thoughts just melted my heart! They are so sweet! They just could not believe that segregation would every happen. They interrupted me during the Rosa Park part of the story and said "Wait that's not fair who cares if that man wanted to sit there she was first!" I had to re- explained that she was black and the man was white. The students still thought it was unfair, which it totally is. I also told them that if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn't change the way things were they would only be 6 of my students in my class. My kids were shocked. They couldn't believe it! I had many kids from Hispanic background says hey I have lighter skin why wouldn't I be and I had to explain that because they are from a different heritage they would not be going to school either. They would have to go to a different school with only kids from that background. I love my students innocence and they asked some very deep questions. The one that stick out the most was "Dr. King was a peacemaker and nice to everyone but was he still nice to the people that arrested him and bombed his house?" I told my students yes because that is what he stood for peace and love. My students said he was the nicest man they have ever heard of. Aww first graders! 

Moving on we studying contractions today and I made this anchor chart with my students. Tomorrow we are going to make contraction kids like Babbling Abbey. I'm so excited for this activity and have been waiting for this short week to come around so we had the time to do this! (We only have 3 days with the students this week. Friday is a teacher work-day for report cards.) 

Anyways I hope you had a great day back and are enjoying teaching about Dr. Martin Luther King! 

My Fantastic Friday

Yes, I know it's very late Friday but I just couldn't get it all in before my out of town guests came. So here is a little recap from today!

First of all my Friday was wonderful! One of my little sweeties came in with a big smile on her face and held up a a beautiful drawing for me with Sour Patch Kids too! Aww my favorite! She said it was just so I had a happy Friday! Gotta love sweet, thoughtful parents and students!

In writing we read Click Clack Moo Cows that type to talk about different ways people write. We made a anchor chart of all the ways we could write. Then to get ideas flowing in those ever growing brains I modeled how to make a heart map. I put a section on my family, friends, etc. As I am modeling one my my cuties called out "Ms. B you love us and we're in your heart so you'll put us in their too right?" Of course I had to make a section for school, learning, and reading! They melt my heart sometimes!

As I'm walking around monitoring them making their own heart maps one student said "I'm going to put Ms. B in my heart map. What color eyes does she have again?" Student 2 says "Basil eyes and she like going shipping on the weekend too." I almost burst out with laughter! I corrected student 2 by saying " I have hazel eyes and what is shipping?" I just had to know. Student 1 said "You know you drew a ship in the ocean....you like to go shipping." Me: "Oh yes, I like to go boating on the weekends not shipping." Oh man my kids crack me up!

 

We also spent time getting to know our new 4th grade buddies today. This is the sheet we used to get to know our reading buddies. If you don't use reading buddies in your school you should! It is so awesome to have older kids mentor little kids. Both classes really enjoy the experience. It's great to see the older kids take more responsible and take care of the younger kids and it's interesting to see how the younger kids react and look up to the older kids. I'm going to make this into a class book and will read it next time we get together with our reading buddies.



Click here to get the reading buddy sheet! 

Just one more exciting thing about our Friday...WE GOT MAIL! Yes! We got our first letter from our letter exchange. Our letter was from Texas and it was the letter "M". My kids loved it so much! They can't wait to get more mail and see where other letters come from. We mapped Allen, Texas and put our letter M up around our Reading Takes Us Places board.

It's official I LOVE school and my students! Have a fabulous three day weekend! Ahh...can't wait to share something really exciting tomorrow! Check back!

What I'm Loving Wednesday

1. I am LOVING the fact that my kids are into writing workshop! My students wrote for 6 minutes today on their own. One student even said she wrote two stories. :) We are going to making heart maps for the front of our journals tomorrow!

2. I am LOVING that my students are really getting into our routine and know what to expect each day. They know to write down their homework, get out their binders, and pick new books if they finish. It is becoming so much easier everyday!

3. I am LOVING J. Meacham's Writier's Workshop Mini Lessons! My team was just talking about how we needed something to guide us more in writing and then I came across this! I love the literature she uses too!

4. I am LOVING that our principal let us leave with the kids today on a early day! Early day is every Wednesday and students get out an hour earlier. Most of the time we have faculty meetings or professional development but today we got to go! Our principal will say on the morning announcements that she is seeing stars- which means we can leave early. Not that I actually left on time...but I still got home at 3:30 which is a record early for this school year!

5. I am LOVING Blake Shelton's song God Gave Me You. It reminds me of all the really important people in my life that help me get through my ups and downs. It makes me smile to realize I have so many wonderful people that I love and are here for me!

6. I am LOVING Pinterest! I got these two ideas from there and I think they came out really cute!

This is a little different than other people's bulletin boards but it is the same idea! 

This is a magnet for parents to put their child's work up on the fridge. The sign the children are holding up I got from Pinterest it says "I am a first grader!" The poem says: I made this special magnet on the very first day so that my first grade work will always be on display! 

Hope your having a great week and happy Wednesday!

Work on Writing

I am falling more in love with my class each day. Every time I ask them to do something new they rise to the occasion and exceeds my expectations. They are just so great...I hope this honeymoon period does NOT end! This week we started Work on Writing and they jumped right into it. I explained that was just like Read to Self time expect for writing.

Day 1: I introduced Work on Writing and we made our anchor chart. We talked about what it looked like, sounded like, and how we would try to build stamina. I taught them to underline words they weren't sure they spelling correctly and to phonemically spell their words out. I modeled for them so they understood. I have them a topic so they wouldn't spend time thinking about it when I wanted them writing. The topic was "What I did this weekend". The student's took off with their writing and wrote for 3 minutes. I stopped them even though they were still writing because some people started to whisper to each other and I wanted them to know no talking was aloud during Work on Writing. My students were excited exclaiming " I wrote 3 sentences!" and "Wait, I need to put a period or I'm not finished!" Those words are like music to my ears. I had my student sit at their desks for the first day so they can just get used to writing. I'm just impressed that they are listening to my directions and trying their best. :)

BTW I love blogging because it is a wonderful reflection on my day's events. I hope you enjoying reading as much as I do writing.