Adjectives, Descriptive Writing, and Classroom Posters/Charts

This post is going to be a big huge jumble of things we've done recently in the classroom! We have worked on adjectives recently, and to help the students understand what an adjective is, we read an old classic... Corduroy. :) I loved this book as a child, and still love it as an adult! Afterwards, the students told me words that described Corduroy.

We also worked on descriptive writing this week, and wrote about how we felt when we ate Pop Rocks! :) I got this super fun writing idea from The Inspired Apple, another first grade blog. We began by eating the Pop Rocks and then brainstorming words that described them. (I'm a dummy and forgot to take a picture of that.)They came up with some great words! Afterwards the students did a 4 square writing activity using three words from the brainstorming web, and then formed that into a paragraph. Here are a few examples of their descriptive writing.

Pop rocks are crunchy and colorful and shocky (haha!). Eating Pop Rocks made me feel scared because they shock me.

When they get wet they will pop. They are sweet. Sometimes they hurt.

Recently we have also discussed characters, setting, and plot. Some students were having a hard time figuring out the difference between characters and setting, so I created these posters for them to look at to help them remember which is which.

We've also been learning about plot, so to help the students understand that plot is what happens in the beginning, middle, and end of the story we used this Plot Train to help the students visualize it.

And here's a little picture that made me smile recently.. isn't this shirt funny?