Reading & Writing

Here's a look at some of the mini-lessons we have had so far in reading and writing. Pinterest has been such a wonderful resource. I end up finding excellent resources as well as blogs from fellow lower elementary school teachers who are incredibly inspiring.

The class brainstormed this list of what readers read. This anchor chart was borrowed from The First Grade Parade blog.



Here's another list the class created. This chart inspired by The Teacher Wife blog.

We started Daily 5, the structure we use for our reading workshop. The students have learned how to shop for books from our classroom library. They have also learned how to care for our books and how to keep their individual book bins neat and orderly. Currently we are working on building our reading stamina and completing reading responses that require students to write about a book's beginning, middle, and end.

Here's a quick look at how we remembered and honored the heroes of 9/11. Thank you, parents for completing the at-home activity with your children.

One month of school!

I can't believe that school has been in session for one month now! We have learned so much already, but it's only the tip of the iceberg. We have so much more to learn and only 161 days of school left to squeeze it all in (not that I'm counting *wink*). It seems that each school year goes by faster than the last. Wish there was a way I could slow things down!

Here are some of the fun things we have been doing over the past month.

These are several self-portraits that we displayed during Back-to-School Open House. The kids really enjoyed doing these. For any teachers out there wanting to do this in their own classrooms CLICK HERE to get free printables for this project.

In Bible class we are currently studying about the first family God created on Earth. The kids made drawings of Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden. This one made me smile. Clearly, Adam and Eve's belly buttons are the best part, but then it made me wonder whether or not they even had any!

During the first full week of school, the class had a great time creating their first glyphs during Math class. Some of you are probably scratching your heads wondering what a glyph is. (My husband did!) A glyph is a pictoral form of data collection. In these glyphs, a pair of pants or a dress represents the gender of a child. The number of buttons represents a child's age. The color of shoes tells whether or not a child likes school. Fortunately for me, a resounding majority of my class enjoys school. Phew! For a free copy of this activity CLICK HERE.

Right now we are in the middle of our "Getting Fit & Eating Healthy" science unit. This week the class has been learning about healthy vs. unhealthy foods. We did a food sort today. Disclaimer: for the vegetarian/vegan families in our classroom, please know that we did discuss non-meat options and substitutes for the Protein and Dairy groups. :o) Next week will be the "getting fit" part of our unit. Parents, your children will probably be sleeping very well next week! Resources for the food sort are from this wonderful unit that's available for purchase CLICK HERE.

And finally, a super cute photo of Coco our class mascot at church this past Sabbath beside one of our classroom friends that he was spending the weekend with. Coco has already spent three weekends with three different families, and the class has really loves hearing about his adventures.

What's in a name?

I wanted to share a writing activity that the kids and I really enjoyed last week. I got this idea from one of my favorite teaching blogs, The Inspired Apple. This teacher makes the most creative anchor charts. I bought myself a whole new set of Mr. Sketch markers, I was so inspired!

For this activity, I wrote my name quite fancily and then made a graphic organizer of all the things that I love and make me, well, me! The kids did such a wonderful job writing and illustrating their own names and the things that they love and enjoy. I was really proud of them for working so hard. Their finished pieces will go into their writing binders. All the things that they drew and wrote about themselves will be  topics for them to write about during writers workshop.

On another note, our classroom has been coming together slowly but surely. This part of our room makes me happy . . . all our classroom supplies organized and labeled in these wonderful Iris drawers that I purchased during Office Max's back to school Buy One, Get One sale last month!

This part of the room is our math corner. For a number of students, this is a favorite spot because they LOVE doing Calendar time. We do quite a bit of learning during Calendar time. Basic numeracy, skip counting, money, time, place value, weather, patterns, tallies, bar graphs, and math vocabulary. We'll be adding temperature, estimation, and more. This is where we also work on our 100 Books in which we do an in-depth study of the number of the day. We also sing our math songs "Days of the Week", "Months of the Year", and "The Money Song" in this corner.

Have a great week!