Author Studies

Once again, we find ourselves marveling at how fast time is going!  How did it get to be mid-December already?!  We have spent the last three weeks in first grade focusing on two different authors - Laura Numeroff and Tomie dePaola.  And while these are two of our favorite units, we don't have a ton of student work samples to post.  I guess that's because we use these two units to really hone in on important concepts that can be applied across the board to comprehension.  The discussions we have had in the past three weeks about cause and effect, problem and solution, and especially characters have allowed us to really see our students' growth as readers and writers.  And I must say, we are impressed!

So, Laura Numeroff . . . Who doesn't love her stories about those cute animals and the helpful, kind kids who serve their every whim?!  Of course, we kicked off the week with If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, and students worked in s Smart Center (Book Smart) to sequence the events of the story.  As we read each of the books, including If You Give a Pig a Pancake, If You Give a Cat a Cupcake, and If You Give a Dog a Donut, we really focused on cause and effect relationships.  This great unit called "Cause and Effect Detectives" helped us introduce the concept and helped our students understand how to apply the strategy outside of Laura Numeroff's books.  We also created anchor charts like the one below. 

Here are some examples of our Reading Response Journals for the end of our Laura Numeroff study.  We read If You Take a Mouse to the Movies, and the students wrote about what they would ask for at the movies. 

If you take me to the movies, I will ask for a toy.

If you take me to the movies, I will ask for 3D glasses.  (Sorry this one is sideways - don't know how that happened!)

If you take me to the movies, I would ask for a dollar.

We spent two weeks with our second author, Tomie dePaola, focusing on his series about Strega Nona.  For these two weeks, we worked with story elements, focusing mostly on characters.  Our first anchor chart shows how we mapped our chracters, setting problem and solution for the first few stories we read, including Strega Nona and Strega Nona's Magic Lessons.

One big reason we did this Strega Nona unit is because we have to include an opinion piece in our students' first grade writing portfolios.  Ms. Shivers adopted a graphic organizer she found over at First Grade Fanatic so that we could do a little practice with our students.  First the students wrote about thier favorite foods, then their favorite books.  Our version of the graphic organizer has the students writing a topic sentence (by the star) then three reasons supporting their opinion.  Here we made sure students we using those transitional words like "first", "next" and "most importantly".  Finally, the heart section is where students restate their opinion, giving a personal feeling about their topic.  Here are some examples of their writing. 
(PHOTOS - coming soon!)
For the actual portfolio piece, students have to choose a character and site specific reasons from the book why they like that character.  We read Strega Nona, her Story and Big Anthony, his Story.  We really wanted our students to analyze both internal and external characteristics of the characters.  We talked about what the characters look like, but also how they solve problems and what that tells us about the characters.  Here are the anchor charts we used to analyze characters. 

Once we had plenty of information about the characters, our students - at this point very comfortable with the process of writing opinions - chose a character to write about.  Here are some examples of their work.  The graphic organizer served as a rough draft.  A final, edited piece will be in book form and go in their portfolios.  Coming up this week, we will talk about self-assessment and do some peer editing.  Gotta hit all those Common Core Writing Standards!  But more importantly, our students are really learning them!
(PHOTOS - coming soon!)
I wanted to include some great center work that our students did along with the Strega Nona unit. We used a few activities from this Strega Nona unit, including the one where students create their own kind of magical pot.  Here are some examples of a magical candy pot and a magical cupcake pot.

In Math we happened to have been studying measurement using both standard and non-standard units.  Ms. Arbogast created this activity where the students had to measure objects found in our classroom using different types of pasta.

Our book tree project was all about Strega Nona this month.  The students made ornaments they decorated with dried pasta that featured important characters or symbols from the books.  My favorite is the three kisses!
(PHOTO - coming soon!)
Finally, here are our Reading Response Journals.  The students wrote an alternative way to stop Strega Nona's magical pasta pot from boiling (instead of three kisses).  Their imaginations were certainly in full force here - One writing that she would put a cat in the pot.  Yikes!

I would put a cat in it.

I will make the pot stop by putting in a tear drop.

Wild Things and Thanksgiving!

November has been incredibly busy in first grade! I can't believe it's almost over and that December is just around the corner!

We got off to a wild start in November with a week long study of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. This is one of our favorite books and the students loved it as well! We did a lot of activities out of this unit! During Reading we practiced using our context clues to figure out the meaning of unknown words and the students loved learning words such as mischief, rumpus, gnashed, tumbled, and private. During Writing we did a descriptive writing project in which the students used torn paper to create their own wild things and then they wrote descriptions of their creatures.

For our reading response journals the students wrote about a time they acted like a wild thing and got into mischief. They also practiced writing apology letters for that mischief!

After all of this wild fun, we moved into talking about Thanksgiving! We practiced making inferences while we read several fun Thanksgiving stories. After reading Gracias the Thanksgiving Turkey we did our reading response for book tree. The students wrote what they were thankful for and made their own turkeys.

We also practiced skip counting using turkey feathers!

One of the students' favorite projects was using cut paper to disguise a turkey and then practicing their how to writing to describe the process. We used this awesome how to writing packet for the writing templates!
One of the students' favorite turkeys was created by one of my sweet ESL students who turned his turkey into Scooby Doo!

Finally, we celebrated Thanksgiving with a special treat! Ms. Arbogast's class had a little feast like the one in Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving and Ms. Shivers's class made no bake pumpkin pies! We are grateful to all of the families that donated items for these celebrations!

Now comes my favorite time of year! Check back soon for posts about our Laura Numeroff author study, Strega Nona character study and of course, all of the Christmas fun that will be happening soon!

Things in the Sky

Wow, it’s been a while since we visited the blogosphere.  Maybe we were just waiting until we left the atmosphere in our space unit?  Or maybe we have just been super busy . . .   Anyway, we’re back and here to tell you about what’s been going on in our classrooms for the past month.

After our family unit, we studied communities and did a lot with community helpers.  Then we took our first “trip” of the year.  We called the unit “Things in the Sky”, and we studied weather, seasons and clouds.  We got busy (Isn’t it crazy how busy October gets?!) and didn’t blog about that part of our unit.  But we did want to include an anchor chart and great way to attack a difficult strategy.  During our study of weather and clouds, we focused on the asking questions strategy.  This is definitely a tough one for students, especially first graders.  So we made anchor charts that showed different types of questions.  The Café Book by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser suggests trouble-shooting strategies.  They recommend using plans for questioning laid out by Taffy Raphael.  If you Google her name, lots of information about the four types of questions come up.  We used those for our teaching.  We also used the “Into the Book” website (http://reading.ecb.org/index.html).  It has some great activities and videos that show kids how to use the questioning strategy.

With each read aloud, we planned questions of each type.  Then we wrote them on sticky notes and put them in the book.  As we got to each questions, we read them aloud and the students had to identify which type of question it was before answering it.  Here is an anchor chart just about the weather questions from the books we read in the unit.

Here is an anchor chart that just has the strategies on it.  This has proven very effective.  Our kids are still referencing it and identifying questions as one of the four.  We hope that as they become even more comfortable, they more regularly ask the different types of questions on their own.

We changed our literature tree with the change of units.  We read several of Cynthia Rylant's Henry and Mudge books - the ones about seasons like Puddle Trouble and Sparkle Days.  The students each made a Mudge then wrote their names and their favorite season (i.e. "___ and Mudge's favorite season is summer.") and added a seasonal decoration.

After the weeks on weather we blasted off to outer space!  During the week that we studied space, we read lots of non-fiction books and really worked on main idea and details.  We spent one day each on the sun, the moon, the stars and the planets.  Here is an anchor chart that shows how we explored space and identified main ideas and details in the books we read.

We also read a book (And I can't for the life of me remember what tht title was, but as soon as I can think of it, I'll add it!) about building a rocket out of shapes.  Then the kids created their own rockets and labeled them.  They also wrote descriptive paragraphs in the style of the book about their rockets.

 

In one of the Smart Centers, the students used stars and different sized circles that we punched out of construction paper to create a solar system.

Our Reading Response Journals are a favorite Friday afternoon activity, and they are turning out so cute!  At the end of our Space unit, we read Poor Pluto written by the third grade students at Tokay Colony Elementary School in Lodi, California.  It’s a great story, and our students loved that kids not much older than them wrote their own book!  In the response journals, they students wrote whether or not they think Pluto should be a planet.  (Trying to get them started on opinion writing.  Gotta get those Common Core Standards covered!)  Then they glued a circle into their journals and added either a happy or sad face, depending on their opinion.  Here’s what they came up with (clockwise from top left): Pluto should be a planet because it is a part of a family.  Pluto should be a planet because it has been a planet.  Pluto should be a planet because is it part of the Solar System.  Pluto should be a planet because it belong up out of space.

We are Family!

Since the beginning of the school year, we have been working hard to create school families in our first grade classrooms.  But for the past two weeks, we shifted our learning to our own unique families.  It was an easy transition to make – The students still get to talk all about themselves (Their favorite topic!) and we continue to teach important concepts through familiar content.

During the first week we started a new anchor chart about families.  We added a column to our standard “can/have/are” chart because we talk so much about what families “like to” do.  The students loved sharing what they like to do with their families, and we loved hearing about all their adventures!  One of my favorite responses was that families are “important” and “different”.  I love how deep these first graders are thinking already!  Towards the end of the week, the students made their own anchor charts during our writing block.  It was a great way to explore a new purpose for writing.

Throughout the two weeks, we created a word collection of family words.  Each morning, we brainstormed words starting with each letter of the alphabet to add to our boxes.  The students came up with some great words, and we let them add them to our collection as long as they could justify it being a “family word”.  We really loved what they said for m, n and o.   They said we should write “no” for n because moms always say no.  Then we needed to add “maybe” to m because moms sometimes say that too.  Finally, they said we needed to write “ok” in o because every once in a while moms do say ok. 

We read one of our favorite books about families – The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant.  We loved reading about all the fun the extended family had together.  The students could definitely relate!  They made text-to-self connections in one of their “Smart Centers” (We’ll post about these later, but in the meantime check out April DeCesare’s site about “Smart Schools".)  We called this one “Book Smart”.

In another Smart Center, Family Smart, the students responded to Loreen Leedy’s Who’s Who in My Family? by creating their own family trees.  The photos make it hard to see, but they wrote names of family members on each apple.

One of our favorite homework assignments of the school year happens during this family unit.  At the beginning of the unit, we send home a plain piece of white construction paper with some simple instructions – Have each family member trace his/her hand on the paper and sign his/her name.  The students then get to share with the class hat makes their families unique and special.

By the second week of our family study, we started talking about the roles of specific family members.  During our interactive read alouds where we review as well as introduce new CAFÉ strategies, we read books like What Aunts Do Best and What Uncles Do Best by Laura Numeroff, 31 Uses for a Mom and 33 Uses for a Dad by Harriet Ziefert and The Ultimate Guide to Grandmas and Grandpas by Sally Lloyd-Jones.  In the Family Smart center this week, students decorated a house with the chores or jobs that individual family members have.

In Ms. Arbogast’s room, we had to take a little time-out during the second week of our study to review some classroom procedures.  Maybe the honeymoon came to an end, maybe it was the low barometric pressure, but we had some  . . . let’s just say interesting behavior going on.  So, we read another great book about families, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, and designated a sort of cool down spot in our classroom.  The spot is located in our classroom library, out of view of the other students but in plain view of me, and is appropriately called “Australia”.  After setting some ground rules, it is my hope that students can use this spot to remove themselves from the action, calm down quickly and join the rest of the class refocused and ready to go.  (And that it doesn’t see too much action!)

We continued to work on Reading Response Journals on Friday afternoons.  We read The Napping House by Audrey Wood, and the students wrote about what they take to bed with them.  These say “I sleep with 2 dolls and 1 elephant.” and “I sleep with my dog."

This past Friday, we read A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams.  The students pasted a jar and used thumbprints to represent the coins.  Then they wrote about what they would do with money they saved.  These say “I would use my coins to buy [a] house.” and “I would use my coins to buy a big bed.”  Thank you again, First Grade Parade for the great ideas for Reader’s Response!

Fabulous Friday

It has been a busy week in first grade! Since it was the first week of September, we kicked off our monthly home reading programs. Each child was given a reading log to take home to record what they read and how long they read each night. At the end of the month, we will total the number of minutes they read and for every 60 minutes read they will earn either a ticket (Ms. Arbogast's class) or a bead (Ms. Shivers's class). These tickets and beads will be on display in the classroom (see below) and will be a fun way of tracking reading progress throughout the year. Students will also be able to earn tickets or beads for meeting different reading challenges in class, such as moving up a reading level. We got the idea here and adapted it to fit our own classrooms!

Ms. Shivers's board is the one on the left. The beads will be collected on the students' luggage tags. Ms. Arbogast's board is on the right and the students' tickets will be added to their ring of tickets.


We have also continued practicing routines and procedures, and we introduced two new journal routines this week, reading response journals and math journals.

Every Friday we will choose one of the books we have read during the week to respond to in our journals. We got the idea here and are so excited to start this routine in our classes this year. The journals will be a wonderful way to show growth throughout the year and will make a great first grade keepsake! This journal offers the students a great opportunity to practice several writing and reading skills...capitalizing the words in a title, capitalizing the author's name, underlining the title, neat handwriting, finger spaces, etc. It also allows the students to have a chance to make a personal connection to their reading. Today we read Officer Buckle and Gloria.  The students always begin by writing the title, author, and date. We modeled this first on the ENO board and then the students copy it into their journals. Then the students chose their favorite safety tip from the book, wrote it on a star cut out and glued it into their journal. Here is a peek into a few of their journals:

 


From top left, clockwise: " Don't walk in the street.", "Stay away from guns.", "Never sit on a thumbtack.", "Don't smoke cigarettes."  There were so many cute ones, it was hard to choose just a few to share! :)

Finally, we also started our math journal routine today. Our math journals are going to be a place where we really extend our thinking. Besides solving the problem, the students will be asked to explain how they solved it and what strategies they used.  Today we just started with a simple number story. The students copied the problem, solved it, wrote an answer, and then wrote a sentence telling which strategy they used. In the future, we will probably give the students the problems already typed to glue into their journals to make it easier on everyone! They did great, though, for the first day and it will be exciting to see how these journals help them go deeper in their thinking throughout the year! Here are a few from today (I love the invented spelling in the second one! We will be working on that "dr" blend this year!):

Wow! We did so much this week, there just isn't room to share it all! Next week we will be beginning our "Family" unit! Have a great weekend!

Elephant and Piggie

An important goal of ours is to create a true classroom community.  That’s why we spend a few weeks at the beginning of our year focusing on friendship.  We kicked off our friendship unit this year with lots of books and activities based on Mo Willems’ Elephant and Piggie books.  The students think the books are hilarious, and we have so much fun reading them! 

The speech bubbles have been a great way to introduce point of view.  We even did our own shared writing with speech bubbles.  After reading Watch Me Throw the Ball, we asked the students what they can do.  The students answered, “Watch me . . .”

Then we read I Am Going, and the students shared places they like to go. 

Throughout the week, we practiced reading in a sort of call-and-response form, all the while tracking as we read.  It has been great practice and a fun way for the students to share with the class about themselves - their favorite topic, of course!

We also used Elephant and Piggie to do our first character study.  We got some great ideas from this packet from “What’s the Buzz in First” on TpT.  We created an anchor chart for the characters.  The students came up with lots of great characteristics that describe Elephant and Piggie.

We also made paper plate Geralds and Piggies.  The students loved using their paper plate puppets to act out and retell their favorite stories.  (I wish I had save some of theirs for a photo.  They did such a great job!  But I sent them home, so you’ll have to see what mine look like.)

Coming up, we are going to focus on the character traits of good friends using more of these wonderful books.  We got some great ideas from “The World of Elephant and Piggie”.