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 :)

Andrea Sign

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.

Andrea Sign

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!
Andrea Sign

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).



Andrea Sign

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.  

Andrea Sign

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. 
Andrea Sign

Meet the Teacher & Open House

August 21, 2016
Back to school season is literally flying by! Last week was so busy I ran out of time to take pictures of all the fun things we were doing.

Since I kept a lot of what I was doing the same as last year, I thought I would share that post...


First Up...


As I greet the parents at the door, they come in and find a file folder that has their child's name on in it. 

*I write the fill in the child's first & last name and then my name for my class.  I left the editable example here.

While the parents are waiting for everyone to make it to the classroom, they begin filling out the information within the file folder (it has the student's first & last name). 




Once everyone has entered the classroom, I get their attention and share with the parents about myself (experience, etc), about our daily classroom routine, more specifics about homework, highlight what the papers are in the file folder, etc.



Before I start speaking, I mention to the parents about the various sign up sheets that we have (volunteers, All About Me presentations, etc).  I then pass those sign ups around while I speak.  I have noticed that when I end by having parents visit different sign up stations, people tend to get caught up in other stuff & forget to sign up! 

At the end, I mention a class wish list as another way to support out class. 








Next...



This is literally my FAVORITE day before school "officially" starts.  I always have the same sentiment as I did during sorority recruitment of the moments right before opening the doors and excitedly shouting "WE'RE SO GLAD YOU'RE FINALLY HERE!!!!" 

During this morning, I greet the students at the door and hand them a checklist of fun things to do with their guardian during this time.


For the bedtime reading, I hand them a letter about myself with letters from my previous Firsties about what First Grade is like stapled behind. They absolutely LOVE it!

You can get all my Meet The Teacher materials here and my freebie letter template here.

Andrea Sign