The Primary Years

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!

You can get this spider here.

All About Me! {presentations that is!}

October 24, 2016

Building a sense of community is one of the most important things to do in the classroom. It is such a focal point at the beginning of the year and I feel like it needs to continue through the rest of the year too.

Letting students share about themselves and learn about others is one of the best ways to do this!

Each Wednesday morning after the announcements (starting about the 3rd week of school) we have an All About Me presentation. I remember having All About Me presentations growing up and loving them so I wanted to make sure to incorporate them into my classroom as a teacher.

Each child has a week assigned to them. The students LOVE this time! The presentation lasts about 5-15 minutes and during this time the student's family members come and watch the student tell the class about themselves - from what their favorite food it to what their favorite color is to their favorite sports team to introducing the class to their family members, etc. The student creates a poster at home with all of these favorites on them and the students use this poster to guide his/her presentation.

After this presentation, the class creates a book for the student. The book consists of a page (or more) from each classmate about what he/she learned about the week's presenter. The students love writing all about their classmate!

It is also great because it is a time the students are often using common words like "like," "favorite," "color," "is," & "has."

After we finish the book, I read it to the class.

You can grab this freebie here.

October Craftivities

October 23, 2016

October is such a fun month because of the unlimited amounts of festive craftivities that are possible!

After reading Stellaluna, we talked about the beginning, middle, and end of the story. We then made the cute visual above.

During our study of S blends, we made these S blend spiders.

Timelines

October 13, 2016

We have been spending this week talking all about timelines and chronological order.

I've been searching for what feels like forever for a good timeline activity that my first graders could do and I have finally found the perfect one!

After talking about past, present, & future and sequencing Columbus' voyage, we created our own timelines.

How cute are these?! Perfect for first graders!!

Syllable Shenanigans

October 11, 2016

Today we started learning all about syllables. It is an important topic when teaching what sounds "y" can make.

I teach them to put their hand under their chin and every time their chin moves down when they are saying a word = ones syllable. So in butterfly their chin/hand moves down 3 times when saying that word which means butterfly has 3 syllables.

We then practiced this strategy for counting syllables by doing a whole group syllable sort. I showed them many pictures and then as a class they should me with their fingers how many syllables was in the word.

Tomorrow is game day - we are going to start practicing the syllables by playing different games and hands-on activities! First, each child will complete the syllable zoo activity. After they finish that activity, they will race each other.

Weekend News!

October 09, 2016

Happy Sunday!

Is it just me or do these weekends FLY by??

Every Monday my First Graders always come in with so much that they want to tell me about theiir weekend! Between students wanting to share and parents telling me things about heweek, I often found Monday mornings a bit overwhelming.

I wanted to be sure to have a chance to listen to what my first graders had to tell me in a way where there wasn't a line first thing Monday morning...

This is my FAVORITE way to kick off the week with my group of Firsties...

I just love this time when my students practice writing about what they did over the weekend and my first graders love being able to share after writing what it is that they did.

Here is how it works: when the students come in on Monday morning, they spend the first 15-20 minutes (with morning announcements at some point during that time) writing in their "Weekend News Journal" all about their weekend! Then, all of the students come to the carpet and we take turns sharing what they each did during the weekend.

Tip: I have the students write the date at the top of the paper to help with organization.

Here's to a great week!