Five for Friday {October 6-10}

1. I am one tired teacher! There is just something about a field trip that just takes energy out of you.

We went on a field trip today! We went to the Orlando Repertory Theatre to see the play Click, Clack, Boo! A trick treat1 It was such a fun play to see. We had a nice picnic under some trees before seeing the play. It was a great trip, enjoyed by my kids.

2. Speaking of Halloween, we got Booed this week. This is a neighborhood treat basket that goes around during October. We got a treat basket on our porch with these two signs. We put the “We’ve been booed!” sign on our front door so the neighbors know not to give us a basket. Then I made baskets for two of our neighbors to pass on the fun. I loved, loved, loved the baskets I made for our neighbors but forgot to take a picture. L I realized the minute we got back to our house from dropping them off that I didn’t take a picture. My husband said just go back and take a picture…um weird on someone’s front porch when you’re trying to be sneaky. Anyways we have a great time getting ready for Halloween with this neighborhood activity.

3. I got the MOST adorable pumpkin for my front door! This makes me so happy! I’m loving the burlap bow and chevron. I got this from Etsy.

4 .This week in reading we worked on main ideas and supporting details. My co-worker made this beautiful anchor charts to support learning. My class made this anchor chart about bats after reading several bat books. The main idea was bats and the facts and examples from the book were supporting details. I made this sample and then in the writing center they made they own bubble map.

5. Boosterthon Fun Run started this week. The theme this year is Rockin’ Town Live. We had our pep rally and they made these cut outs of our admin team. Our principal is Elvis. SO FUNNY! We also came up with a band name for our class: “Fabulous 1^st Graders.”

I’m off to watch a movie in my PJ’s and get some rest! Have a wonderful weekend! 

5 for Friday {October}

Happy Fall Y’all!  I can’t believe it is October already! We’ve had another busy week in first grade.

1. We focused on understanding characters in reading this week. The kids worked on these reading responses to better understand the character in our story.

2. We focused on doubles and doubles plus one in math this week. Have you listened to this amazingly fun doubles rap:

Doubles, doubles, I can add doubles! It stays in my head all day. I hope it stays in my kid’s heads all week.

3. In science we finished up our space unit and are starting on Earth’s resources. I plan to use this resource along with my science fusion curriculum. I know the kids’ are going to “dig” this science unit!

4. In other news we started collected even more data for meeting each week. We are progress monitoring on the comprehension strategy and math skill taught for each week. We have mini assessments each week that are 4/5 questions long. This doesn’t include our other weekly tests. Do you ever feel like your school might be testing too much? I know it is all to get more information to drive our instruction and prepare them for the end of the year exams. It feels like a bit much for six year olds though.

I saw this on Pinterest and laughed. It made me think of the data meetings we have each week.

5. It was picture day this week! Gotta love taking those cheesy individual pictures that show up on your name tag. The kids are always super excited about picture day. There is just something about being slightly off schedule that sets them into a frenzy.

Look how cute my star of the week wall turned out! J I love how it highlights our star of the week and shows the character trait on the month that they portrayed. My students and parent volunteers love to see the display. Well I'm off to have a fabulous weekend. Here is how it is starting.

Currently {October}

I’m listening to New Girl on Netflix. Season 3 just came out so I’m kinda binge watching after school before my hubs gets home.

I am currently love that tomorrow is Friday! I need a relaxing weekend so bad! Last weekend we went out of town to my high school reunion. I really need to catch up on laundry, organizing my closet, and cleaning my house. Everything with my house has taken the back burner this week and I need to get it organized. This goes with what I want…a magically fairy to come do this all for me. Haha!

I am currently thinking I have too much on my to do list. This pin kinda explains it:

I am needed to finish my lesson plans for next week. I need to add science plans in there and send them out to my team.

Trick: My trick for you is to always set a visual timer in your room. That way the kids will know how much time they have to complete the activity. Instead of saying ten minutes they can see the numbers decreasing and know to keep working. You can also use a sand timer for younger kids that don’t understand time yet. I use timer tools from Kagan but there are several apps out there you can use for free. 

Signing off so I can go get all this work done!

Five for Friday {September 19}

I’m so happy it is FRIDAY FINALLY! I honestly didn’t know if I’d ever make it to Friday. I had Open House this week, progress reports due, data meetings, and all the “regular stuff” we have to do. I’m still feeling super exhausted and wondering if I’ll ever catch up on everything. 

This sums it up right?

I had Open House on Monday night. I had 14 out of 18 parents come and I would say it was an overall success. You can read more about my Open House here.

I taught text features this week. You know good ole’ common core standard R.I.1.5. This was completely new to my students. They learn the text features and graphics this week through non-fiction texts. I had a beautiful anchor chart…but forgot to take a picture. It was interactive and the students’ all took part in labeling a text feature. Oooh labeling is a text feature...they were just learning so much! I focused on labels, captions, heading, title page, maps, and keywords for the text features. Those were the ones that were in our guided reading science books, guided reading books, and our text for the week. 

You can see the kids labeling the parts of the book here in guided reading. 

You can also see them labeling the different parts that were in our text with the interactive notebook.

We used a new Kagan structure this week called Quiz, Quiz Trade. I had the students’ quiz each other on their subtraction facts. The kids stand up find a partner, ask their subtraction fact and the other student responds. Then the other student asks their subtraction fact and the first student responds. They high five each other if they got the answer right or coach each other to get the correct answer. Then they switch cards and find a new partner. I did this for five minutes the first time. They love asking and answer, talking to their partners, coaching each other, and moving around. Today we played the game for eight minutes. They really enjoy playing this game and there was no prep for me. I just had to model my expectations. I wish you could see the expression on their faces. They are joyfully learning. The boy in front is teaching the other by subtracting with his fingers. 

This week our team was told how we need to group our kids in literacy centers. We were also told that each center has to have an accountability piece. I’ve always had a choice and freedom in my centers. I have chosen to ability group my students in the past. I have done mixed grouping before but found it was easy to differentiate with ability grouping. Now after I’ve practiced, planned, modeled, explicit taught, and managed my students’ literacy centers, I need to change it. Boo. I will roll with it though and have started to put all my kids in mixed ability groups. I’m started on Monday and hope the kids will see little change since the centers will be mostly be the same. Any help/ideas on mixed ability grouping and differentiating within those groups would be helpful. My hope is these folders will help me to differentiate each group’s word work. I put a different word work game on each groups level in each folder the the kids. I have their names slapped up their on post it notes but I will make it cute this weekend.

This week we voted for teacher of the year. I felt so honored to even be nominated. We have such amazing teachers at my school. We’ll find out next week who is our teacher of the year. It makes me feel proud that my colleagues notice my hard word and dedication to our students. It also makes me think I must be doing something right. I'm thankful for colleagues who lift me up and are positive. 

Hope you all have a great weekend! I’ll be found grading paper on the couch watching football.