The Primary Years: September 2016

Reading Buddy Fun!

September 30, 2016

Today was a day my firsties have been waiting for since the first week of school - Reading Buddies!! Finally we got to meet our 4th grade reading buddies! Both the 4th graders & 1st graders have been begging to meet their buddies so it was a happy day for all.

In the past, my first graders meet with their reading buddies every other week. However, this year schedules were hard so we are meeting once a month.

If you have never done reading buddies before I would HIGHLY encourage you to reach out to another teacher at your school!! Not only do reading buddies promote a love for reading & practice read aloud skills, it also fosters an amazing community and helps bring the students of all grade levels, and school as a whole together! In fact, today one of my firsties was a little sad because his reading buddy from Kinder was in the class and he didn't get paired with him. When he realized that he could still go up to his old buddy and say "Hi, it is nice to see you! How are you?" AND he could now get the opportunity to meet another person - he was so excited! Learning the social skill of being able to interact with people who you may not have seen in a while is so important!

Today for our 1st reading buddies day, we made miniature versions of ourselves. Since I have only taught 1st I was a little nervous that the 4th graders would finish super quickly or not be into the activity - they were SO excited! It even worked out perfectly because some of them had to make 2 (more 1st graders than 4th graders = some 4th graders having 2 buddies) in the (something that both the 1st graders & 4th graders really enjoyed!!). Thank goodness ;)

If you're looking for something to do with your reading buddies you can find the template for the people here.

First Grade Short I Activity

September 24, 2016

It's a raining day here so I thought I would light a few of my absolute FAVORITE fall candles and write a little bit about what we did in phonics this week.

If you have not ever had these candles before, you MUST try them!! The pumpkin spice scent is my absolute favorite!! It just smells like Fall!

This week my first graders spent learning about the short I phonics sound. We ended the week by creating these short I mittens. The students LOVED this activity! As I was prepping the next step of the craft I overheard one little boy saying "oh, I think we are going to be able to wear these mittens! Cool!!" They were SO engaged which meant that they really were on the look for the phonics aspect of the craft (because that allowed them to then make the mitten). I would definitely recommend integrating phonics visuals into your phonics curriculum if you do not already do them - they first graders look forward to them, enjoy them, and form a connection to refer to when thinking about the phonics lessons.

Applicious Place Value

September 23, 2016

Whew, what a busy week! I cannot believe that we have already been in school for about 4 weeks - the school year has just been flying by.

This week we began learning all about place value. We talked about the different ways to make the same number - expanded notation, base 10 blocks, writing the number, tally marks, tens and ones, etc. To end the week, my first graders did this fun apple based activity - no matter what way you cut it, it is still an apple and no matter what way you write a certain number, it is still the same amount!

My first graders really enjoyed this activity, it allowed for differentiation because the students were able to pick their own number, and they enjoyed the challenge of putting the apple back together after they cut it into 5 pieces.

First Grade Science Interactive Notebooks

September 22, 2016

This year I have started implementing science interactive notebooks in my classroom. Let me tell you it is LOVEEEEE!!

During the first week of school, we did a science journal entry about what science is.

Last week, we learned all about our senses. We did two journal pages. One about what the senses are and another day we did one with a popcorn science experiment. We used our senses to describe popcorn.

Today for the first day of Fall, we illustrated a picture of what a tree looks like in Fall and drew some of the symbols of Fall.

Happy First Day of Fall Y'all!

Falling in Love With Place Value

September 21, 2016

Finally - I have been itching to put some fall decor into our classroom but have contained myself until this week.

Place value is so challenging so we dive into learning about place value very slowly.

We started the week by learning about representing numbers with 10s and 1s. The big goal is things are grouped by 10s or 1s.

I wanted to make some fall decor and these scarecrows were PERFECT!

on the back...

You can get this freebie here.

#allthehearteyes

We Are Family...

September 20, 2016

...I've got my sister, mom, dad, and me!

Not the right lyrics? Well, they work for this post ;)

Today we learned about families.

We started out by reading this precious book...

Then we talked about what a relative is and what families are. We discovered that a family is a group of people that come together because of a common bond and family is made up of people who love and care for you.

The students then shared with each other what their family looks like. This was such a fun activity! We loved seeing all the different families - some with just immediate families, some including cousins, adopted families, etc!

When my teammate did this, she had the students write "_____'s family" rather than "my family." I am definitely going to do that next year.

Classroom Helpers

September 19, 2016

Today was the day my group of firsties have been waiting for! Class Jobs day! We spent the day filling out applications to see if we can get "approved" for these jobs. The room let out cheers when we were all approved to help with our class jobs.

You can get the free printable by clicking on the picture above! Enjoy :)

Hey, ShortE!

September 17, 2016

I love, love, LOVE our First Grade phonics activities! The students are always so engaged with the stories, the activities, and love the craftivities that accompany the units!!

This week we were learning all about the Eggsellent Short E sound. We read about Ted's Egg Adventure, hunted for colored eggs that were hidden in the hallways of our school, sorted the eggs between "good eggs" and "bad eggs" (good eggs had a short e word inside, bad eggs had a word with no short e), and made Short E Egg Vests to remind us of our fun adventures learning about the short E sound!

The Egg Vest consists of a short E word hunt (glued on the back). They then chose some of these short E words that they found, wrote those words on the eggs, drew an illustration, and then assembled!

You can get templates for the vest and other short E activities here.

Hey, Can I have your digits?

September 16, 2016

This week, we've been learning all about digits.

We started by learning about digits vs numbers. We filled out a venn diagram and connected this to how letters form words & some letters are words (a, I) - digits are numbers too!

We then spent each day working on forming two of the digits correctly. We really worked on starting from the TOP and not making backwards digits.

We did a couple of quick practice sheets to practice recognizing digits and different digit numbers (2 digit, 3 digit, etc).

In the end, we each got to pick a digit and added our personal touch to help us remember the digits.

Click on any of the above pictures to get the craftivities and printables!

ABC...It's as easy as 123...

September 13, 2016

...and as cute as can be!

I thought I would spend some time this evening writing about one of my FAVORITE things in my classroom...

Not only do I LOVE the aesthetics of this and that it creates a child friendly feel right when you look at the front of the classroom...

There are SO MANY academic benefits (which makes it even more heavenly!!)

This activity accompanies my ABC order lessons which is perfect because any time the students are working on something related to ABC order OR something that they need a reminder of letter-sound relationships, they immediately think to look at our classroom alphabet. I noticed this year (the first year I added this to my classroom) that the amount of students who use this tool has really increased.

I also teach this when teaching my math unit of Sorting & Organizing to connect how things in our world can be organized (ABC order).

Sorting It All Out

September 10, 2016

Finally!

Do you ever feel like there is that one topic that you just can't seem to figure out?? How can I make this topic really fun (but not have to spend hours prepping?!) Now, don't get me wrong I often spend hours planning and prepping but for some reason whenever it came to teaching about sorting and organizing I had the hardest time getting excited about my lessons...until now!!!

I think I have finally "Sorted It All Out!!" and boy, could I not be more excited to finally have landed on this lesson!

Here are some of the sorting and organizing activities we did this week...

Guess My Sort: I started out by randomly choosing a couple of students to come up in the front of the classroom. Then I told the class: I chose these students to come up here because I sorted them by something that they all have in similarity. When a person sorts things, that means they group items together after finding something that all of the items have in common. Then the students guessed how I sorted this group of students (the color of their shirt). Then I did the same thing with another group (by type - all girls). Finally, a third group (all similar height - this was the hardest one!)

Students found so many sorts which was great because I said "yes! You are right that is a sort, but that is not what my brain was thinking when I sorted them), and finally I told the students to make a shape, any shape with their hands, and then I brought the kids up based on that (shape).

Lucky Charms: Each child got a scoop of lucky charms and was told them to sort them. Then we discussed the sorts we found. Then they had to sort them a 2nd way. Again, we shared. This was absolutely a class favorite (and a favorite for me since it required very little prep!!)!!

One other thing I loved about this activity was that it allowed us to talk about what we can learn from our sorts. For example: we discovered that there is more cereal than marshmallows and why that may be significant information to know.

3 Little Firefighters: While they ate their Lucky Charms, we read this sorting story and talked about the sorts/created an anchor chart while reading.

Phonics Phun!

September 09, 2016

"Get those littles to read!"

Phonics is such an important foundational skill that students need. Phonics allows children to be able to read and the ability to read then allows them to take even more ownership of their learning.

A strong foundation of the phonemic sounds is imperative!!

Phonics is a big focus in my classroom. We do many different activities to constantly reinforce the skills the students have learned.

Each week we learn a new phonics sound. To introduce the phonics sounds, I share with the students a story. For example, the story of Nat the alligator who LOVES apples!

After that story, we add our new phonics sound to our phonics board.

Then we come up with a phonics chant that incorporates movement (something we as a class come up with to help us remember the sound) and words to help us remember the sound. We also create an anchor chart with words that we can think of that have that vowel sound.

Then each morning for the remaining days of the week, the students walk in and begin working on their Phonics Interactive Notebooks.

You can get the short A Phonics Notebook freebie here.

During the week, typically during literacy stations/Daily 5, the students hunt for words in their books and/or around the classroom. They need to find 10 words throughout the week. Depending on the week, this is sometimes a fast finishers activity. I love these word hunts because they begin to see the sounds in their world around them and the hunts are also super easy to differentiate.

During literacy stations/Daily 5, students also have an opportunity to complete games and puzzles based on the the phonics sound of that week AND the previous phonics sounds we have learned.

At the end of the week, each student creates a phonics visual that was connected to the story that we had read at the beginning of the week and incorporates their word hunt.