Five for Friday...a day late

I am joining Five for Friday for the first time. I know it's a day late...but I can procrastinate, can't I?

We had some great and fun activities on this week back from Spring Break.

We had planted our seeds the week before spring break and they hadn't done much of anything. So I gave them a generous water and left them for the ten days. This is what we came back to. We measured them as part of our Math study. When I glanced over this was my view so I just had to snap a picture.

 

I picked up these little plastic boxes at Dollar Tree (4 for a $1). We decorated them to use as our Wonder Boxes (from Debbie Miller's Reading With Meaning book). We've been talking about how we need to s..l..o...w  down when reading and think, wonder, question. These boxes are going to house our questions.

And of course, we began writing our questions on index cards and adding them to the boxes.

We were studying the /ou/ow/ sounds so it was perfect for writing our Ouch stories. I made a movie maker project using the song by Katherine Dines "Itchy, itchy, owie, owie, boo-boo". PRECIOUS! 

And the best...SPRING finally arrived. I didn't get a picture of us being able to PLAY on the playground but we did. For more than one day in a while. Consecutive days. Without jackets!

Spring Themed Freebie

Whew! Spring break is over. Back to the early morning wake-up call from my cell phone. Mr. Spouse says to change the song. It currently is Let it Snow (could be hoping for snow days from school). Any suggestions for a new song?

This week we will be learning all about Insects. I have lots of ideas from a FREE TPT set you can find here: Insect Gone Buggy.   

Lots of great ideas and center stations for my firsties to use. I am going to be reviewing fiction and non-fiction. I plan on giving each small group a tub of books and have them sort them into the correct category. Since I have lots of both fiction and non-fiction about insects I feel this will be a great hands-on activity for tomorrow. Then we can place the fiction in one book rack and the non-fiction in the other one.

I made a little partner activity to do on Tuesday. 

Fiction and Non Fiction Sentences 

I hope that your first day back from Spring break goes well.

Common Core Research

With the beginning of Common Core in our district there was a huge change in the writing curriculum. I LOVE the differences! GASP, but I am so glad to get away from the small moment-personal narrative that I was stuck in. Of course, at the beginning I felt like I was transformed into the Wizard of Oz. Just click my heels and away I went.

This quarter of our writing samples that go in each child's Reading folders was the research section. We seem to have worked on this for several weeks. The kids LOVE it! We always knew that when they pick up an information book about an animal they just can't wait to share--with you or a friend--just can't wait to share an amazing fact!

We began by doing a whole class theme on Owls. We used this as a tool to review the non-fictional text features. Following that we moved to choosing an animal to work with a small group (with support from others part of the Common Core standard).

I placed seven stations around the room with the animal choices (sharks, snakes, dogs, cats, apes, rabbits, bats). I let them browse the room and then called them back to the floor. Using our tub of student number sticks, I pulled a number and that child took a sticky note and placed their name on their choice. I limited each group to four students. 

Then began the fun part--reading, reading, and talking, sharing. 

Pebblego has also been a fantastic source. 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/All-About-Book-A-research-based-informative-writing-project

We've been writing. I purchased a set from TPT.

 I hope to get them finished and published next week. The All About Book--A Research Based Informative Writing Project has given us the structure for this Common Core Standard.

Basal toss!

My district has always had a basal in my lifetime as a first grade teacher. This is reading adoption year for the state of Tennessee. I am serving on the adoption committee. We listened to the sales pitches of several companies. They fed hundreds of teachers a buffet light dinner, gave their "my company is the one company that is truly Common Core". The state allows the companies to send out a small sample of certain grade levels--no more letting us see every grade's materials. Throughout the process, I became more and more confused. I became convinced of my choice. It was another basal--but one that I felt had the closest ties to meeting Common Core standards.

Then...the committee met to hear the last sales pitches. Each of the top three companies (these were narrowed down in a previous meeting) were allowed to present their final --you need this--- presentations. We asked a few questions. Then..we talked. We viewed our positives and negatives. And...we went with a non-basal company--Benchmark Literacy. It is a very different type of reading program.

The positive is that we will be not tied to a basal in our district. We will use Reader's and Writer's Workshop. Due to this I feel FREE! Free to go back to using RW and WW. 

I jumped in this week. I took an idea from a blog: I put four questions on poster paper and let the kids travel to all four--answering questions about what we have talked about in our shortened RW meetings.

These questions have become my teaching points this week. I also kicked this change in MY teaching by beginning a chapter read-aloud of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. The first day I told the kids that reading is such a marvelous journey and read the first chapter. They listened. But not much of an eye opening for them.

Day 2--I pulled out their chart of "where do you read"? We have talked about this back in August. They had some good thoughts and a variety of places. Then I read Chapter 2 of Edward Tulane. This time they were "into" it. So much so that they groaned when I finished it. I knew I had made a step into taking this journey. 

I have gotten help and inspiration from this blog: Once Upon a Reader's Workshop on Teachers Pay Teachers. "Bookmuncher" has since retired from teaching. But I refer to her posts when I need a push!

I have about 12 weeks of school left. I am determined that these kids will leave with an idea of how wonderful books can be. After all--MY blog is Booky4first!

Help for Sure!

I haven't posted in a while. With the cold Winter blues it hasn't inspired me.It's been a while since I can settle into a five day school week--actually the middle of December!  With our ice, floods, snow days (along with MLK day and sickness) I haven't had a five day school week until last week. That's right--two months of playing catch up with three and four day weeks. We have missed five days for weather related "stuff", two early dismissals, and one delayed opening.

So, that's my excuses!

But...Common Core doesn't seem to have weather related days off. And SAT 10 will be administered the end of April. AND...my state uses test scores as 35% of our evaluations. So, on to the race...to...cram teach as much as possible in a short amount of time.

I actually like Common Core. (gasp). I like the fact that there aren't  956 standards (I just estimated on that one) to teach. 

The help I have gotten came from a  talented lady. She made some great, fantastic, true common core activities. Most of them are for reading responses and close reading. Reading a "cold text" and looking for evidence or comprehension skills.

            

Sarah Paul has created these and it is so strong in helping first graders understand and use the skills that we are teaching.

I do hope that she comes up with a "spring" one soon! I am ready for Spring.

And a little look at some of our latest happenings:

Valentine compound words.

First grade program: An opera of the Three Little Pigs. (no, we aren't pigs in real life!)

And I moustache you a question....