Anchor Charts

Hello friends,

I feel like I have not blogged in a long time! But I have pictures and I am ready to share now. First off, the Lilly project promised in the last post! We made this to show character traits (and what better character than Lilly?!). I am rather proud to say that I drew Lilly free-hand! And the kiddos colored her in  

“Lilly makes lots of noises.” “Lilly is good.” “Lilly is fun!” “Lilly is mean.” “Lilly is funny".”

“Lilly likes school.” “Lilly is mad!” “Lilly is sad and angry!” Lilly is a drama queen!”

Can you tell we were also practicing using exclamation marks??

 

We have been making lots of anchor charts. The more the kids get to help the better, I think. So here are our Character and Setting charts.

 

We have also been doing a Mo Willems author study which has prompted a genre anchor chart and a Characters by Mo Willems chart.

 

This is old, but here are our number/word/ten frame labels for Math in Focus!

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Some “I can…” statements for last week.

 

Lastly- my Daily 5 rotation banner!! Mrs. Kirby totally upgraded this in her room with velcro names instead of pins… Jealous. But, its still super cute and the firsties LOVE making their choices!

 

Hope you are having a great fall!

Hilarity

Do you ever laugh so hard you cry? I do. I rarely ever just cry hysterically. That’s just not me. But, sometimes I laugh so hard I can’t breathe and I start crying! And I just cannot stop! It is physically painful. And also delightful.

Well, this finally happened to me at school. My kids are hilarious, don’t get me wrong. This is NOT the first funny thing they have done. Usually I can just take a deep breath and chuckle to myself and move on. Yesterday, I was caught in a fit of laughter and tears!

I will spare you the joke. It was a “had to be there kind of thing”. It wouldn’t be very funny to anyone else. But, something about it just tickled me. And all the kids were laughing and I was laughing and then I tried to carry on with class and I kept laughing instead. Then came the hysterical laugh/crying! It took about 5 minutes to calm everyone (me, mostly) back down. We finally re-directed and moved on. It was a fun moment for us as a class.

Last Friday we wrote our class promise! The kids had great ideas and I took them all and organized them into this promise. We had three main ideas: how to treat each other, things to do each day, and how to act. My favorite idea from things to do each day was “Eat”. My favorite part of the day .

Then I let the students get paper for their faces and yarn for their hair. They did this with basically NO direction. I just wanted to see how they’d do it.

 

Is it any wonder why I love the firsties? Look at that? precious.

The corner child here gave me a giggle. Such short hair for a girl…

 

My favorite is definitely this bald one  

No, none of my students have goatees… But somehow this happened.

And the one angry eyes kid makes me smile.

It’s the best display in the room, I think.

Next post I’ll have pics of the awesome character traits display we’re making! Whoo!

Happy Thursday, everyone!

Fake vs. Real Reading

Today as my students were "Reading to Self", I noticed that a few of them were, in actuality, "pretending to read while I madly flip pages in my book"... Not what we want.

So I called my darlings together to have a meeting. I wrote "Fake Reading" and "Real Reading" on the board (i'm 95% sure I stole the idea from pinterest... ). I told them some of their classmates were not really reading, they were pretending... Then I asked for examples of what the "Fake Reading" looked and sounded like. Surprisingly, it was the culprits themselves with most of the answers!! haha. We listed flipping pages, talking, playing with clothes and shoes, wiggling around, and playing with the book. Then we listed what "Real Reading" looks and sounds like. Then we talked about which things we should be doing. It was a very good discussion.

Later when we "Read to a Friend" it went MUCH better! Yay! The magic trick to having them read quietly was to have them put their hand on their throat and whisper so quietly they couldn't feel their throat moving. It has worked brilliantly! We call it "a true whisper".

Then today during writing I introduced the conferencing aspect. We have a sign up on the board and 3 kids can sign up at a time. When one is finished they erase and the someone else signs up. It was HILARIOUS! They all wanted one-on-one share time (sweet firsties!) so it looked a lot like vultures circling a carcass! They kept hovering and staring at the board, just waiting for someone to erase their name! I don't think any of them got any work done. I hope tomorrow will go better. But, it is adorable to see how excited they get about it.

ALSO- today I was showing them a game for Math Workstations and we played as a class. It's called Save the Whale! It practices number bonds to 10. The poor whale is trapped in a ditch and you have to make the pipe long enough to pour water into the ditch so he can float out (hilarious premise.). So the pipe is x units long and you have to find the one to make it 10 units long. No joke- 3/4ths of my kiddos were getting it right on the first try! What?!?! Genius children. Now granted, it does have tic marks so you can count and figure it out- but I did NOT point that out. They just figured out. I was so happy/speechless!

Ok. LAST thing. NUMBER BALANCE MAGIC!!!! If you don't have this magical tool, please consider purchasing one. Our lovely Math in Focus comes with one (but we bought an extra as the MiF is back ordered....).

This thing is pure first grade MAGIC. You put a hanger (or tag as I called them today... sometimes I have NO brain...) on a number to represent the whole. Then you put hangers on the other side to represent the parts. Ex. whole:6 parts:2 and 4. When you do, the whole thing equals out. And all of my kiddos clap! EVERY TIME! I really felt like a magician today showing it to them. I get the feeling that number bonds are going to be a *snap* with these kids. Love it!