The First Few Days

Well, we have survived the first few days of first grade! And first, we just want to say… Wow! Air-conditioning makes all the difference in the world! It was one of the smoothest starts we have had and the fact that the little ones were not melting from the heat definitely helped them to settle in quickly!

We spent the first three days on routines, routines, and more routines! In between all of the routines we filled in the time with several of the wonderful activities from Abby’s Fun with Firsties back to school packet. While all of the activities were great, Jitter Juice was definitely the most popular! The kids LOVED it! To go along with the idea of first day jitters, we also read The Teacher from the Black Lagoon. After reading, we let the kids on a secret: teachers get nervous too! So we wrote our first class book in which the teacher is nervously waiting for her students and imagines all of them as monsters. The students wrote their name in the sentence frame “_____is a monster” and then drew a picture of themselves as a monster. They loved imagining what they could look like as a creature from the black lagoon. It also helped those quiet, shy ones realize that it was okay to be nervous because their teacher was nervous too!

On Friday, we kicked off our hallway book tree project with reading the David books. We discussed being a peacemaker vs. peacebreaker and then each student made their own David to hang on the tree. They turned out so cute! However, we can’t take credit for the idea. We got it from Cara at The First Grade Parade, who got the idea here.

Now it’s a new week and while we are still drilling those routines, we have also kicked off our friendship unit with Elephant and Piggie! Those loveable characters from Mo Willems are already a hit with the students! More from that unit to come soon!

Word Collection Boxes

Another vocabulary building, reading project-inspired idea is “Word Collection Boxes”.  This also comes from The Cafe Book by "the sisters", Gail Boushey and Joan Moser.  For each theme or unit, we will choose a few important vocabulary words and post them on our “Word Station” (leftover from our days of Four Blocks and Word Walls but works with our travel/adventure theme).  As we finish the unit, we will decide, as a class which few words are most important and we want to remember.  We will add those to our Word Collection.

At first, we will do this as a class.  But eventually we hope that students will choose which words are most important to them and record them in their own word collections.

Wonderful Words

Over the summer, we took a class called Kentucky Reading Project.  What a great two weeks!  The class was so informative and gave us so many awesome and practical ideas.  A part of the class was writing a Literacy Action Plan based on our school’s test scores.  We’ll meet with our cohort a couple times throughout the year and share our projects with teachers from throughout the state in March.

Our plan was all about building vocabulary.  We already teach a systematic phonics program, and we are working on writing.  But our kids seem to struggle with vocabulary.  One project that we are hoping will help build their word banks is our “Wonderful Words!” wall.  The bulletin board is in the first grade hallway, and we are hoping to get all seven first grade teachers involved.  A couple times each week, we will decide on a theme (i.e. school supply words, animal words, sports words, anything goes!).  Each teacher will wear a word on her back on a certain day.  For example, if the theme is school supplies, we will each wear a word like pencil, scissors, eraser, etc.  Of course, many of these words are already posted in our rooms.  Initially, we want the students to practice reading our own rooms and transferring that information to other places.  Later, we’ll get into various themes and content areas.  The idea is that when we study animals, for example, students might be able to read and define “bird” but not cardinal, robin or blue jay.  Then the first student, whether from our own classroom or not, to correctly read and define the word will be able to illustrate it.  Then we will collect all the words, pass them from room to room and eventually display them on the wall.

We are still brainstorming ideas for reviewing and properly practicing the words after they are posted . . .

Update: Here are the first two sets of words.  So far, the students are really into "Wonderful Words Wednesday" and they work hard to read as many teachers' words as possible!

Climb into a Good Book

Last Christmas, our classes created a literature tree.  We read several of Tomie dePaola’s Strega Nona books.  Then the students decorated simple ornaments with drawings of symbols from the books and dried pasta.  This year we are hoping to take the idea of a literature tree to the next level.  Every few weeks or so, we are hoping to complete a new book/author/character study and decorate our trees accordingly.  The best part is, that all seven first grade teachers are on board for this activity.  We will each have a tree, and the plan is to share the books with the other classes as we complete each project.

Our first tree project will be all about David Shannon’s troublemaker, David! 

The Before Photos

When we walked in after a long, restful summer, this is what we found.  Not too bad, especially with the newly installed AC unit!  After working the past two years on the second floor in the middle of the city without air conditioning, we feel like we can tackle just about anything now that we're cool!

Here are some before photos:

Now boarding . . .

After hours and hours of reading and borrowing from many inspiring teacher blogs, we are so excited to kick off our own!  We are first grade teachers about to start our third year together in an inner-city, public school that is constantly changing and working to find its way.  We might not have a ton of resources, but we have high hopes and expectations for our students.  We are hoping that, through our blog, we can share strategies and ideas, as well as document our collaborative efforts.

Both of us have a love of world travel and culture.  Around February of our first year teaching together, we taught a huge and very fun unit that started with map skills and turned into a trip around the world!  We explored each continent, incorporating lessons about penguins in Antarctica, landmarks and landforms in the Americas, animals in Africa and fairy tales in Asia to name a few.  We had a blast teaching the material that we loved, and the students ate it up!  The following year we expanded our idea and adopted the year-long theme of world travel.  Like all teachers, we are forever tweaking things to best fit our students, teaching styles and now the Common Core State Standards.  This year our theme is “Adventure”, and we will use this blog to share it with you!