Problem Based Learning with Hurricane Harvey

September 04, 2017
My absolute favorite thing from last week was our problem based learning activity that occurred in my classroom.
First thing Monday morning, one of my first graders walked in the door and said to me "I have an idea." She then shared with me how she wanted to collect stuffed animals so give to kids in Houston and the Texas coast who lost theirs due to flooding from Hurricane Harvey.  #bless

I was so on-board with making this 6 year old's sweet idea come to fruition. After she shared her idea with the class & told them what had happened in those areas last weekend, all of the students wanted to do something - even expanding her original idea to include food, clothes, & other necessities! 

 I was truly amazed by what I was seeing naturally unfold before my eyes. As I stood there I watched twenty 6 year olds hear about a problem, talk with each other about how they can help, come up with quick questions they had for me, and then jump to the next step of what to do to help. During the whole project I was simply the scriber for the class. 

 Here is how the project unfolded:

 A student shared her idea & what had happened in parts of Texas and other students said they wanted to help too.
The students commented that they didn't know anyone specifically in Houston.
I shared with them that there are some organizations like the Red Cross, Salvation Army, etc. that help raise money & donations for people in need.  As a class we researched the different sites to see what kind of items they accepted. 

 We talked about needs vs wants. Which is why certain organizations ask for certain types of items.
The students came up with this list of things they would need to do (totally on their own! - I can't get over how impressed I am!!)

The class wrote an e-mail asking for permission to do this type of project.
Behind the scenes: I found out some logistical things to make this happen. There was already a project that had been started by our PTA to collect the necessities for Hurricane Harvey flood victims for the week so I asked if we could partner with them. Then I kept calling groups to see who could benefit from stuffed animals since it was a unique item that most organizations don't accept. 
Side note: One of my family friends was helping me in calling organizations. When she called the Red Cross & told them about the project my students had come up the Red Cross volunteer said she was so sorry she couldn't take the items but wanted to help the students so she proceeded to pray on the phone that the idea the sweet students had would come to fruition to help comfort those children in need. So incredibly kind.
They got a letter back (I cannot tell you how exciting this was for them!)

To partner with our PTA, the students spoke on the morning announcements telling the campus about the collection each morning this week.
Some more behind the scenes happenings: I found out the stuffed animals had to be new. I didn't want to burden parents with having to go do "another errand" or feeling like they had to do something at all. So I wrote an e-mail to the parents telling them about this project & how it came to be. The responses I received were amazing! The parents loved this and really wanted to help make it happen. So I told them that if they wanted their child to participate, we could all do a trip to the local toy store and purchase some stuffed animals. They were so generous & all wanted to participate. 
While the students were purchasing their stuffed animals, they had to decide if they wanted to buy several smaller ones to help comfort more kids or one bigger one, they learned about "change" and why they get money back after making a purchase, they commented about how "warm & fuzzy" they felt after buying the animal & putting it in a bag for animals to give to children. As a class, they collected FIFTY animals give help comfort other children! 
While my end goal was for the children to take a trip to a shelter to  help pass out the stuffed animals, I learned that the shelters prefer to not have a ton of random people showing up with stuff and that it is actually more helpful to give items to a specific organization to sort everything & deliver. I'm so thankful that Austin Disaster Relief was able to take the stuffed animals and pass them out to children at the shelters to comfort them.  


 It was such an amazing project and I cannot get over how impressed I am with this class! What sweet first graders to come up with these ideas totally on their own, think of what needs to happen for their idea to occur, and then work to make it happen! 

 With this group of first graders as our future, I know we are in good hands!

Andrea Sign

Fifth Day of First Grade Favorites

August 28, 2017
My sister surprised me & came to visit! 

Ahead of the Hurricane Harvey my sister decided to leave and come home. So she surprised me at my school! This was such a fun surprise & I am so happy she came!! Every year she makes a point to stop by, meet my group of firsties, & pretend she is the teacher for a minute by reading them a story. 


My other favorite was reading more of our Forever Books. On the first day of school, I share my forever book with my students and then they are given homework to bring theirs. The students then share why it's their favorite and we read it to the class. I also love it because I always learn about new books that the kids bring in.
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On the 4th day of First Grade...

August 28, 2017

one of my sweet firsties called out "does anyone know how to help me get syrup from breakfast out of my hair?" #bless

Also today, we explored math pattern blocks and practiced our counting my completing these adorable math pattern block pictures.

Other pictures students made were: emojis, sailboats, flowers, spaceships, houses. 

Then we continued our ABC order phonics unit by learning how to put words into ABC order. We started by simply putting the ABCs in ABC order. Then we learned how to sort words into ABC order by sorting some class words. 



THEN we practiced sorting words on our own and the rest of the week the students were able to complete this type of work independently.  YAY for independence!! 
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Three for the Third Day of School!

August 28, 2017
Just Like Me!
During our morning meeting this morning, I LOVED our morning meeting activity. Some background: Yesterday, we made mini-versions of ourselves and learned that no 2 people are alike and that our differences make each of us special! So this morning during our meeting, I had the students go around in a circle and share something that made them special. For example: I have 1 sister. Then everyone who that statement was true for too would sit up, point to themselves, & say "Just Like Me!" Literally, such a sweet way to start the morning! 

              


 My next favorite were these scientists we made. I always wish my science lessons had a craft to go with it to work on those fine motor skills.  Well after reading about sweet Ada Twist, we talked about what a scientist does. The students then made themselves as scientists and wrote a wondering they have. 

DISASTER MASTER
So after lunch, the students came into the classroom to a HUGE disaster. Tables were flipped over, books were knocked out everywhere, papers were just thrown about, all of our math materials were dumped over, etc. We soon discovered that our class mascot Stripes, had had some fun while we were at lunch.


We decided we needed to make some classroom agreements so that everyone would know what the expectations were and we wouldn't have this happen again.  The students were more than happy to do this as they did not want to pick up another mess left by Stripes, or anyone else for that matter. They even signed their names at the bottom of the agreement to make sure of it ;)  

Bonus: At some point today, one of my firsties raised his hand several times & asked several questions in a row. After asking them he commented loudly to himself "I sure ask a lot of questions." #selfawareness #bless
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Two for Tuesday

August 28, 2017
Favorite From Today #1
So last night, I had a spur of the moment "IDEA." My beginning of year lessons are so much "read book then do craft." I love this because the books all emphasize some type of life skill (persevering, working as a team) as so the students really get the foundation for starting the year but I just wanted something a little more exciting for our 2nd day. 


So, right after recess we headed to our campus IDEA lab (aka Makerspace lab)! Now, I typically do these types of lessons in my classroom but this space offers students the opportunity to use a green scree, drimel saw, 3-D printer, & more. So it is definitely a place we visit several times during the year and it's important they are introduced to the place. 



We began our lesson by reading this adorable book! It is absolutely PERFECT for these types of lessons! It talks about the entire process of creating a physical version of what you can imagine. After we came up with agreements about how people should behave in the idea lab, the students began to use materials such as paper towel rolls, tape, cups, pom-poms, etc. to make "The Most Magnificent Thing" they could think of!

I was SO IMPRESSED with their creativity & problem solving skills!! They made pom-pom bracelets, purses, baskets, pencil holders, binoculars, ships, and more! Just by trial and error, students learned that putting glue on one side of tape does not make tape stick to stuff but that rolling the tape allows both sides to be sticky! It was such a special day & definitely one of my favorites! Made me excited to go to teach that day! The students LOVED this too - the next day they all said "do we get to go back there today?!"

Favorite From Today #2

We also started our phonics unit by refreshing our knowledge of the alphabet. The students created this classroom alphabet - one of my favorite things to have up in my classroom! 



Andrea Sign

First Day Favorites

August 24, 2017
This might be one of my favorite years so far. I have LOVED how this school year has started and am super excited about the year to come!! 

Having such a great start to the year is definitely a group effort. A well prepared teacher, grateful parents, and responsive students are the keys to a spectacular year! Having such wonderful parents & students to engage with every day really makes me so even more thankful & excited to get to work with them for the next year! 

Starting this year with such a grateful heart makes me want to reflect on my favorite things from each day. 

My mom sending me flowers. This is a sweet tradition she does every year and every year I get so excited knowing they will come! 

Having one of my amazing teammates tell me about this adorable book at lunch and then reading it to my students right before we went to go look at the eclipse. Of course, we talked about what the eclipse really is & the students totally understood it - they were even able to show off to their parents what the words "umbra" & "punumbra" mean. What was adorable was when they all looked at the solar eclipse with their glasses on, they all said "Wow! It does look like something ate it!!" Is that the cutest thing or what?! 

Oh & having one of my sweet new firsties comment that he definitely did not think he was responsible enough to be able to be trusted to wear the glasses on his own. This was after he heard what can happen if the glasses were not worn correctly. Sweet thing. Having a student understand the idea of risk/reward on the first day of school makes me a grateful teacher! 

Having the students work on these puzzles. It really allowed for the 1st day to be very chill and let them have something sweet to take home at the end of the day to remember their 1st day by. 

Here's to 4 more posts this weekend because I just came up with the daily favorites idea...

Andrea Sign

A Classroom In The Making

August 16, 2017
It's that time of year again!! Back to School! 

I've been up at school for about 2 weeks now. It's so nice to actually get in the classroom before our work week actually starts so that I can spend that time re-moving into my classroom & organizing it/focus on the aesthetics. 

I like to spend a week to set up my classroom & work on a new project. It's too much to do everything all at once & I like to spend each year adding something new to my classroom. 

Honestly, the first 3 years, I didn't have too much energy to devote to the creative side of how my classroom should look. I was just focused on the logistical aspect and making sure I had amazing lessons/activities to do with my students...because after all, it is about what they are doing all day, not how pretty/cute their classroom actually looks.

My first 2 years, I changed the layout of my classroom a TON. It got to the point where a student finally asked "why do you keep moving things around?" Making sure that the space was used in the most purposeful way was {and still is} so important to me! 

The main decorative things that have remained basically same since are...

This sign on my classroom door! I made it my 1st year & absolutely LOVE it!! First, I put each students name on each crayon. Now I think it's way cuter {& easier to maintain ;)} to simply have blank crayons.

This back carpet area. 


My small group area and my teacher materials.

My calendar. 
I used to use the calendar pieces that came with the calendar set I bought. I wanted to make my calendar time more purposeful though so I made my own calendar pieces. 



Last year, my project was painting the walls blue - which I am obsessed with. 

I went to Michaels and picked out different scrapbook paper & made a template to create the pennant. I hot glued the pieces to the curling ribbon. I absolutely love it!! 

I also made the headings for each of my subject areas. Under these headings, I put anchor charts. 

AND 
adding a cute nook for students to work at. 

AND

redo-ing my classroom library...which is still a work in progress... I'm working on getting all the correctly colored bins and making sure everything is labeled.

THIS year, I updated my hallway bulletin board...and I am OBSESSED!  
I just LOVE it!

A big thank you to The Happy Teacher's Palette & Jennifer at The Craft Patch for the tutorials & templates for these flowers!! They are absolutely perfect!! And I am so appreciative to one of my co-workers for the grass idea, I think it just really tops it off!

Here's to a great year!! 
Andrea Sign