The Primary Years: fiction

Turkey Tuesday!

November 14, 2017

One of my favorite things is all of the turkey fun that happens during the days before Thanksgiving.

They remind me of the turkeys that are around in the Texas Hill Country during Thanksgiving, where I often celebrated Thanksgiving growing up.

Above is a #throwback turkey activity that I put on my classroom door my first year that I taught. The students thought about something they were thankful for and wrote it on a feather.

My 2nd or 3rd year teaching, a sweet student of mine introduced me to Albuquerque Turkey (the book). Everyone in the classroom fell in love with the song and we've been singing it in room 111 all turkey season long!

We also had some fun hearing and sharing our own Turkey themed jokes throughout the day.

Here are some fun Turkey projects we did this year...

These thankful turkeys were a great google search and are super cute.

We read some wonderful turkey themed books!

After reading some of our favorite books, we decided to disguise the turkeys so they wouldn't be eaten! Note to self: since I can never remember where I get the templates...This year I got the template here. Last year I got the template here.

This one is one of my favorite kid writing pieces from the year! It has made me laugh all day!

The first graders made text-to-text connections.

We did these ADORABLE turkey directed drawings!
Side notes: I was super bummed when something fell on the artwork right in the middle of the turkey body :/

Finally, one of my favorite activities that my first graders make are these turkey place mats. They turn out so great each year. In the past, I've always used painted handprints but think these are super cute & less messy too!

The Importance Of Design Thinking

November 05, 2017

Ever since I started teaching, I have wanted to add some type of “Maker Space” into my classroom. This year, I finally figured out a way to make it happen! I thought it would be helpful to share what I have learned from incorporating this type of area into my classroom and lessons.

1. Organization and easy access are key. First, I put my "Maker Space" in a cabinet. It was too hard for my students to get to the materials and for me to keep up organizing them, etc. Having "user friendly" organization also allows your students to take ownership of the entire space.

2. There are certain simple skills that are helpful to teach to young students (in addition to the exploration time that they have with the materials).

3. Design thinking lessons are vital to adding purpose to lessons that incorporate a "Maker Space."

4. These types of designing lessons can be incorporated with any subject area!

Below are some examples of lessons my students have done.

Reading: My students read "The Most Magnificent Thing" and then had to come up with a problem in their life to solve, just like the main character did. Then they designed something to solve the problem.
Math: When learning about Even & Odd, my students designed and create their own "Even Monster" and "Odd Monster" using items and technology available to them.
Science & Social Studies: When learning about Properties of Solids & Fire Safety, my students thought about the properties of different solids and used those properties to make the tallest ladder they could.

You can also find some other makerspace activities we love to do here.

Hopefully this helps you in your journey to incorporate new and exciting ways to add purpose to what your students are learning!

Oh, and if you try out a new makerspace activity in your classroom, I recommend taking this course so that you can earn Professional Development credit for trying out the lesson!

Happy Teaching!

Making Reading Come Alive!

October 29, 2017

It's the Roll Away Pumpkin!

After reading this book, I told the students that I noticed a pumpkin note sitting on my desk and I was thinking that maybe the Roll-Away pumpkin was rolling through our school! They were so excited to go hunt for the pumpkin!

The hunt led us back to our classroom where I we found some fun science experiment materials!

The students were so excited and loved using these materials to make a volcanic pumpkin!

The next day, we re-read the story. I reminded the students about how great it is to re-read stories because each time we read it, we notice new things. This time, the students noticed that this story is similar to the gingerbread man story.

After reading, we incorporated brought the story to life by using STEAM and creating pumpkin mazes.

They had so much fun creating these mazes and were so proud with how they turned out! I could barely get them to stop playing the mazes as they walked out of school that day - they were obsessed!

Two Peas In A Pod

November 07, 2016

Today we read a class favorite and as we were reading we were reminded of our own likes & dislikes.

After reading, we talked about how Little Pea doesn't like to eat candy. We then shared one thing we do not like.

We also thought about what Little Pea does like and what we like.

Rocktober & More

October 29, 2016

Is it just me or does this little ghosty crack you up? I adore him!

We spent the month of October learning all about rocks!

We spent the last few days of our unit exploring all about caves - from how caves form to the parts of a cave to cave formations to animals that live in caves. We then wrapped up our rocktober fun by taking a field trip to the Inner Space Caverns. If there is a cavern near you - I would definitely suggest taking a trip there. The students LOVED it! And totally connected it with their learning - a few things I heard during the field trip...

"Are we in the twilight zone?"

"Oh, look! We are entering the mouth of the cave!"

"I hope we see some bats!"

"Oh cool! A stalagmite, a stalagmite, a column!"

It was so fun to see their learning being connected to a real life experience!!

We did some fun cave activities (which of course I did not take pictures of...whomp, whomp...)

Here a some fun bat/cave activities we did

Top left: Text to Self Connection. We read a bat book and on the back of that craftivity we included our text to self connection written response.

Top right: We began our unit on addition by creating a visual, a math sentence, and a word sentence to show the addition that was happening.

Bottom left: After learning all about bats, we wrote about what it would be like if we were a bat. Then we drew 3 pictures of different things that we wrote about.

Bottom right: BME activity after reading Stellaluna.

We then spent the remaining few days of October learning about the history of Halloween, themes of Halloweens - including pumpkins, and completing some "spooky" Halloween projects!