A Little Bit of Easter

Because it was the week before Easter, we read a few books about bunnies... my absolute favorite being KNUFFLE BUNNY! I LOVE this story! (Another one you can find on Bookflix!) We watched Knuffle Bunny on Bookflix and then we read Knuffle Bunny Too, the sequel! Afterwards we made Knuffle Bunny puppets, which turned out really cute!

Here's a close up!

I got inspired by the illustrations in the Knuffle Bunny books to complete an art project! I printed off a black and white picture for each student, and they colored and cut out a picture of themself to place inside the black and white picture, just like in Knuffle Bunny! Then they had to write about what was going on inside the picture. It turned out pretty cool!

While Savannah is waiting for the bus, she was standing still. Then the bus arrives. She gets on the bus. It is fun.

If Hannah was inside a church she would say a prayer because she is at her old church! :)

If Mackenzie rode a tractor...she would be happy. She would be there all day!



Along with Knuffle Bunny we also read Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter... only it was a pop-up book version and the students were in AWE. I have never seen them so into a book before! Mental note to totally bring more pop-up books to school! 

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?



More Classroom Behavior

I know I've already posted about Classroom Behavior Management before, but I thought I would share some more of the things we do in our class--because I have recently changed a few things and I love it! I used to use the traffic light for individual behavior, and you guys know how it works.. if a student misbehaved, they moved to yellow light and then to red light. If a student stayed on their best behavior throughout the whole day they just got the satisfaction of staying on green light all day... big whoop. One of the other first grade teachers started using a clip chart and said she liked it and so I thought I'd try it out as well and guys... I love this! The best part of it is that when a student is following the rules, they get rewarded by clipping up instead of just staying on green!

The highest thing a student can clip up to is Fabulous First Grader. While looking up the whole clip chart thing online, I saw one teacher that gave each student a rhinestone sticker each time they reached Fabulous First Grader, so I thought I would do that too! When a student gets five rhinestones or "sparkles" they join the Sparkly Clip Club and get their picture taken! Sparkle students get to be the Teacher's Helper with everything... for one whole day!

This little guy is named The Tattle Tiger. :) As his name suggests, he LOVES listening to tattles. Mrs. Newberry? Not so much. If a student needs to tell a tattle, they simply go and whisper it to The Tattle Tiger. (I make sure to explain to the students what the difference between a tattle and an EMERGENCY is!)

Dr. Seuss Week :)

WOW! We had tons of fun during Read Across America Week! We read several Dr. Seuss books during the course of the week, and completed so many fun activities!

We read the book My Many Colored Days by Dr. Seuss. I love this book because it's very different than Dr. Seuss's other books, and it's very easy for first graders to read. We read the book and then did this writing project afterwards.

Today was a pink day because I got green light and played outside in PE and we read Fox in Socks today. :)

Today was a red day because I'm happy playing in PE.

Today was an orange day because it's a happy color because I have all of my favorite friends here.

How sweet!

This was the display of our writing out in our hallway!

We also read my absolute favorite Dr. Seuss story The Sneetches! If you've never read this story, you are missing out. I love the message of it, so we wrote about that story too after making our own Sneetches!

He teaches us that it doesn't matter what you look like on the outside, it matters what's on the inside.

BINGO!

Lastly, we read the Lorax and did a few Lorax activities to end the week! One of the main characters in the book is named The Onceler. While reading the book, you never see the Onceler's face.. all you see are his green gloves. I didn't get to see the movie in theaters, but from what I understand, you get to see him! We did an art activity where the students showed me what they thought the Onceler would look like behind the gloves!

It cracks me up to look at what their little minds think he looked like!

Our very last activity was a Lorax mask!

What a fun week of school!

Clock Charades

One of the activities we completed to practice telling time was something I like to call Clock Charades. I put the students in pairs and had one pair come up to the carpet at a time while the other students were at their seat. The pair drew a piece of paper out of a cup just like charades, but instead of the paper having words on it, it had a time on it that they had to create with their bodies.

3:00

12:00

Once they acted out the time, the students in their seats used white boards to show what they thought the time was.

I loved this activity because my students are all very kinesthetic learners--they learn best when they are up and moving around!

Inflected Endings/Long e: /ea/

Our story this week was The Dot, which my class already loved even before we read it in our textbook! This story is on Bookflix, a website that our school has a subscription for, and if you don't know about it.. check it out! It's AWESOME! Anyway, The Dot is all about creating art, so in our Word Work station this week we did a word sort that I created that had an art theme. The students had to reach inside a bag and pull out a paint chip. Each paint chip had a word on it that either had an inflected ending or the long e sound spelled with ea. They had to choose which skill the word was showing and write the word on the correct side of thier artist pallete.

Valentines Day Fun

Valentines Day was so much fun with my students! These are just a few activities that we did to celebrate. I didn't take a picture of their Valentines bags or them eating their treats for our party (What was I thinking?) but I managed to get a few snapshots of them completing Candy Hearts Graphing. The students took their hearts out of their box and sorted them by color. Then they took the data they collected and put it on a bar graph.

 Love this face below! :) Someone was excited about some candy!

 To throw a little critical thinking in there, I put three sentences on the board. The students had to choose one of them and copy it at the top of their graph--and fill in the appropriate information according to their graph information.

At the end of the day we had our Valentines Party! Here was my gift to the students.. a Pinterest find! :)

All I did was break up crayons, and put them in a heart shaped baking pan and baked them in the oven! They all thought this was SO cool!

I just love seeing these little smiling faces!

Fact Family Game

This is a game I came up with to see if my students were comprehending Fact Families. I split the students into two teams, and sent one student from each team up to the board where they grabbed a marker and then turned their back to the board. I typed in three numbers in the same fact family at the top of the screen and then dinged my bell. The students turned around and wrote all four equations of the fact family as fast as they could. The first person to finish correctly won a point for their team and then got to tell the class all four of their equations! They had a good time with this game, and it was a great way for me to see who really understood fact families.

Sight Word SLAP!

This is a fun game that I like to use to practice sight words. I take the sight words from each week and put them each week's words on a powerpoint slide. The class is split up into two teams, and one person from each team comes up to the board with a flyswatter in hand. The game is pretty simple.. I call out a word, and the first team to slap it gets a point!

You can also change it up a little bit by asking the students phonics questions, for example, "Which word ends with the spelling chunk -ing?" or "Which word begins with the /sh/ sound?"

The students love this game!