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”.