Popcorn Adjectives! Such a fun lesson. We had a bit of trouble with the word good. Apparently popcorn looks good, smells good, feels good, sounds good and tastes good.... Sigh. Next year we will be talking about "BORING WORDS" and good will be first on the list!!!
This is one of our Wizard of Oz projects! Where would you go if you had the ruby slippers/sneakers? What I loved about this was how every first grade teacher did it differently! But they all turned out super cute!
Off to see the Wizard! Our torn paper art project. While we worked we listened to my playlist of 9 different versions of Over the Rainbow. It was lovely :)Not pictured: The publishing party! So much fun. We had about 5 classes come through and listen to their books. The kids loved getting compliments on their work. It was a good day!
So, the year is over. I still don't believe it. I had a wonderful year! My kids are sweethearts and I am so proud of all they accomplished. As for myself, I feel that I learned alot this year about what I am good at and what I need to do to be even better next year.
Here's a list of things to work on this summer:
have word work for each story in the text (pretty easy as some of you awesome bloggers post that very thing and all I have to do is download it:) )
create writer's workshop plans for the year (Mrs. Kirby got some awesome books to help me in this endeavor. Our kids are going to be bookmakers next year!!)
level my books differently- this year I had them by genre, which I liked. But the problem was in the beginning of the year, I just didn't have enough low material. So I've been collecting and I will organize by level this time.
create math stations- this could go slowly. I need to READ the book first... Then I want to create differentiated materials. So, it may be slow going, but I will try! Hands on is SO important in math, we've got to give them time and opportunity for it.
find some alternative material for reading basal- let me explain. I like our text, but there are a few stories that just didn't grab me... or the kids... and there are so many stories that DO! So, I am going to go through and find the weeks I wasn't thrilled about and replace them with books that we will love and still can be used to teach the same skills.
LAST- plan Daily 5 better! I love D5 and Cafe so much. And I did a fair job with them this year, but I know I can do better. Our reading block wasn't D5, it was centers that I scrambled to put together. boooo. So, I am going to commit to getting this set up so we can do it all year. Mostly, I need to just sit and think about it. There seems to be little time for that in teaching :)
Hope you have a great and productive summer!
