What we're learning this week

Happy Sunday, y'all! I am at home resting up/cleaning/watching tv in preparation for the very busy 4 day week ahead of me. I have a feeling that these last few months of school are going to go by incredibly fast due to how much stuff we've already got planned. Here is what we'll be doing this week and some of the anchor charts I hope to make.

Math: Graphing! This week will be our second week of graphing. My kiddos really seem to "get' graphing. They've already conducted their own surveys and turned their data into either a picture or bar graph. Most of them can also identify what information might be missing from graphs that I draw on the board. I love the plant graph that Cara Carroll just blogged about over at The First Grade Parade. We aren't studying plants right now but we can still conduct the survey and graph our favorite plants, right??? Also, at some time this week, I have to finish up assessing for report cards. Those go home on Thursday! Yikes!

Writing: Poems, Similes, and Metaphors: We worked on poems last week (cinquain, acrostic, and haiku) and will continue working on poems on Monday and Tuesday. Then, we will introduce similes and metaphors and try to incorporate them into our writing pieces. These topics made for some good laughs when my team was planning since we even have a hard time keeping the two figures of speech straight. I imagine it being pretty confusing and difficult for my kiddos too. I'll have to create a list of common ones to display in the room for future reference and try to make it memorable.

Reading/Social Studies: Fairy tales & Texas State Symbols: This will be our second week of Texas state symbols. We've only covered the flag, the bluebonnet, and our state grass so far so we've got quite a few to cover this week. I really like this Texas State Symbols anchor chart that Cara Carroll from The First Grade Parade made. I am hoping to recreate it. (Can you tell that I really like the anchor charts that Cara makes?!?)
During reading, we will be learning about fairy tales and I have, yet another, anchor chart that I want to make via Ms. Lesli Ann at Life in First Grade. It is going to be an artistic week for this teacher!!

Science: Life Cycle of a Butterfly: Last week, I received worms in the mail. Strange, right? We have been watching them move around and continue to eat the past few days. I am hoping that some of them decided to climb up to the sticky part of this cup over the weekend to begin their chrysalis phase.

What are you up to this week? 11 weeks until summertime!!!

Open House

Well, I survived Open House and have enjoyed 4 glorious days of spring break. It is crazy to me that we're half way through March and only 10 weeks away from this school year being over. Being incredibly busy sure does make the time fly!

Back to open house; the only way I know how to describe open house preparation is to say that it is utterly and completely exhausting. As I've previously mentioned, my school uses our ocean unit as the main attraction for open house. Over the past few weeks, we've been to the library to research the five oceans, participated in an ocean video conference with another school, chose an ocean animal to research using nonfiction books, had marine biologists bring in preserved marine animals and fossils, integrated technology by recording researched facts on the iPad, and learned facts about many different ocean animals. It has been fun to participate in so many different activities and see the kiddos light up and enjoy learning. The exhausting part comes when trying to decide what to display. Teachers (at least most that I know) feel a certain amount of pressure to display an elaborate and impressive open house display. Wonderful, creative, magnificent work that the kids have created and parents will love. However, you're not allowed to devote too much of your time to the creation of these masterpieces. Principals want the parents to be awed and the kids to be proud but they don't want to see any of this cutesy coloring nonsense going on during instruction time. (Disclaimer: MY principal has not said this or made any official rule changes. Just expressing how I feel.) All this to say that we had to take all of our ocean projects (that were already pretty low on the cutesy scale) and scale down the cutesy even more and up the educational factor. I know, not the end of the world. It is amazing to see how excited the kids still get about being allowed to color though. & don't even mention markers. You will get some squealing out of my kids if you use the magic word "marker!" While it was exhausting for me and a bit stressful (can you see asleep before 9pm?), it was great for my kids.

Sick of my rambling?

 Here are some pictures of our finished product. The first is the inside of our room just after open house, with jellyfish facts and octopus facts hanging from the ceiling. Sitting on each table is/was a folder holding the rest of each child's ocean projects, their math journal, science journal, and problem solving journal. They also had coral at their seats that they were able to create when the marine biologists visited.

 This second picture is the outside of our room. (My room is called the fishbowl because of it's crazy placement and very fishbowl-like feel so I made it a literal fishbowl. Perhaps ocean-bowl is more appropriate, though.) Hanging in the windows are more octopus and jellyfish facts, as well as shark facts, fish facts, whale facts, and two of the student's "first grade treasures." Hanging around the windows are my little oceanographers. The stories under their oceanographer detail why they would want to be an oceanographer, what they would bring on an ocean expedition, and what they would bring back from an ocean exploration. The inside of our windows look the same but I somehow forgot to get a picture of that before leaving for spring break.

Taking away the cutesy and adding in writing to every project, is what was so exhausting. No matter how many times I re-explained it, said it, pleaded, begged, and screamed - editing is really hard for first graders. (Ok, I don't really scream. I just have a very stern teacher voice and patience ran out about two weeks before open house.) I didn't want to put up absolutely perfect work because I wanted the work to be an accurate reflection of each kiddo. However,  I absolutely refused to put up work that was full of misspelled word wall words, completely void of punctuation, and littered with lower case i's. I feel that at the very least, first graders that are 10 weeks away from leaving me should be capitalizing the word "I," attempting to put punctuation at the end of thoughts, and using the biggest resource in our room to check their sight word spelling. Needless to say, there were many conferences had during this process. Many rough drafts and rewritten drafts. Ab. So. Lutely. Exhausting.

I feel like I've complained a lot so let me be clear - I am thrilled with how everything turned out. Every single student showed up with a parent and it was so wonderful to see the kids take ownership of their classroom and show their parents around. The parents loved it too. I received several kind comments that night and emails since expressing gratitude and appreciation. Here is an action shot during open house:

Impressive, right?

What you see on the screen was really the "big hit" that night. Each student drew a picture of the animal that they chose to research when our nonfiction library books were being rotated through first grade. Then, they took the information they collected and wrote a small paragraph about their animal. I then took a picture of their animal using an app called face talk on the iPad and recorded the kids reading their paragraph. When finished, the mouth on the animal moved while the student talked. It was so cool!

Well, I feel like I've rambled enough and even on spring break, 11pm is still past my bedtime. Hope everyone has enjoyed the time off, if you're lucky enough to get it! We are having our wedding food tasting tomorrow! So excited!!!

But first, here are the rest of the pictures I took of our open house projects. 

 

Classroom Picture Update

I promised updated pictures of my room a while back and finally had time to straighten things up and take some pictures on Friday. Enjoy!

Word Wall with Math Strategies above. Book boxes and school supply boxes (all from Target) in the cubbies below. 

Next to the word wall is the rest of our math wall and where the kiddos hang up their backpacks and jackets. On the adjoining wall is an area for student work that desperately needs to be switched up. Those foldables have been up for an embarrassingly long time.

Next to the student work display is a dry erase board and then my small group table and teacher area.

Opposite the word wall is the main focus board with our calendar & materials, hundreds chart, money posters, and our birthdays by month. Then we have our library with our daily 5 posters, various anchor charts (fancy words, peer-edit comments, reader's workshop), and our CAFE area. (Don't mind the huge shape in blue tape on the floor - we are starting area this week.)

And that brings us to our Science and Word Family areas. This will soon be transformed to an aquarium like area for our Ocean Unit that is on display for Open House.

I created two new items this week that took me quite a while. The first is a schema board that I am using during our classroom discussions when we start a new unit. The second is a Nonfiction Text Features anchor chart with pictures that briefly explain what each feature is used for. Since we're starting our ocean unit, both have been greatly used the past week. My kids will be selecting an ocean animal to research so the nonfiction chart will be referenced every day until Spring Break. (which is only 19 school days away!!!!)

 

That's all I've got, how'd you like that? Shout out to Kelli Raspberry!

Wedding Inspiration

While at the grocery store last week, the cover of Weddings magazine caught my eye. I just had to snap a picture! How adorable is this cake???

I am sure that it would be really expensive to duplicate but it will definitely serve as some inspiration when I finally get to this bullet point on my incredibly long list. Have I shared that with everyone yet? Here, have a look!

• Catering - Tasting scheduled for Spring Break
• Bridesmaid's Dresses
• Decor 
• Table Centerpieces
• Entry Table
• Aisle 
• Bar Top 
• Building Entry and/or Elevator Area

• Bridal Accessories
• Flowers
• Bridal & Bridesmaid Bouquets
• Boutinnieres
• Corsages 
• Flower Girl
• Aisle
• Centerpieces?
• Cake
• Groom/Groomsmen Attire
• Attendee Gifts

These are at least the "big" items on my list right now. I really need to get on the ball. Make some decisions. & I need to do it quick! I mean, it's already the middle of February. This school year will be over with before I know and then we'll be dealing with moving and getting settled in a new place as well as preparing for the next school year. Pinterest finds that are piquing my interest include:

Simple hair and a gorgeous, big bouquet!

Found here.

Really like the aisle with just flower petals and candles lining the edges.

Lantern centerpieces with smaller flower arrangements on some of the tables. Would be easy to add some color into this as well.

Found here

Cute sign to have out so you can see your guest's pictures. Love Instagram! 

Found here

Is there anything better than Pinterest? I don't know how people planned a weddings before it existed.

Life: Surprise Trip to Phoenix

As you could guess, I've been a bit busy and unable to blog as often as I have wanted to lately. Last week, I came down with a stomach bug and was out of school for two days. I did feel better on Friday but was so weak from not eating the day before that I couldn't even stand up long enough to take a shower. This really couldn't have come at a worse time because A) a sub didn't pick up the job on Friday so my class had to be split between the other two monolingual first grade teachers, and B) I'd planned a surprise trip to Phoenix to attend my little sister's baby shower. So, after sleeping pretty much all day Friday and with Pepto in hand, we (Lana, Newly, and I) boarded our plane at midnight on Friday and headed to Phoenix.

It rained the entire time we were there but the surprise was successful and it was so nice to get to spend some time with my mom, little sister & brother, and step-dad. We didn't really do much - dinner, played Fun Run (anybody else?), and watched movies - but it was just what the doctor ordered. Our flight home was delayed by an hour so we took off at 3am on Sunday morning and landed in DFW at 6am. Needless to say, Sunday was a very lazy day and we were real tired on Monday. If anybody needs some cheap flights, we used Spirit Airlines and only paid $117 round-trip. I am sure the departure and arrival times had something to do with the cheap price but it was worth it for us.

 

Case-of-the-Mondays? Not this week!

Thank goodness for a three day weekend! This past week was crazy. Middle of the year assessing is still throwing off our schedule. DRA testing, Papi's, CogAT, BLAH! On top of all of that, we had a thunderstorm/snowstorm on Tuesday! Snow, or really any precipitation, causes Texans to lose it. Honestly, I'm surprised school didn't get cancelled or at least started late. Our city usually shuts down when we get any kind of winter weather. But no, school started on time and it made everyone's mornings a little more interesting. It made my 40 mile commute much longer than it normally is but I didn't run into any problems on the roads that I took so I was thankful for that. This is the only picture I managed to take of it that day - looking out of the window in the hallway outside of my classroom towards our playground. It further illustrates my classroom's placement between the kinder/first grade and the second/third grade pods.


My goal for tomorrow is to be productive. I'd really love to sleep, work out, shop, etc. but when you're a first year teacher, you can't waste a free day. There is ALWAYS something to do. For example, I have about a million pictures of fish to cut out. (Anybody else out there use Investigations as part of their math instruction?) We're starting our measurement unit in  next week and I need lots of things cut out for my kiddos to measure. I also need to plan our review day for our third Math CBA. That's Curriculum Based Assessment, for the non-teacher-readers out there. I don't feel all that confident going into this CBA. I should since we have worked on word problems so much that my dreams are about different ways to teach them or different problems and wordings to use. It's been rough, though. It is really difficult for sweet little firsties to decide when to add or subtract and where to put the given numbers in a math fact. One of my team members made the anchor chart below, that I will try to reproduce tomorrow as well. With my own little bit of flair, of course. (Side note: I hope to one day create anchor charts as adorable as Mrs. Carroll @TheFirstGradeParade.) I am also hoping that this added visual will help my students decide when to add and when to subtract. (Please ignore the misspelled word. It happens.)

Does anybody have any tips for word problems? Have any non-school oriented plans for tomorrow??
Wish us luck next week! It'll be another long one with a whole day devoted to me administering the CBA to small groups. Yippee!

What's been going on...

My classroom is in a weird spot in our school. I am not in one of the pods with the other first grade classrooms. I am in, what we call, the fishbowl. A room in the middle of the main hallway that everybody walks by everyday. I didn't think I was going to like it at first, but it has grown on me. I feel like we're in our own little bubble away from the very loud kinder babies and classes that might be using the pod computer lab. It does get a little loud outside of our room occasionally but not as often as I originally thought it would.

An  upside to having this classroom, is the great deal of wall space that I have all to myself in the main hallway. I get to put up several different completed projects and everyone gets to see the awesome work that we're doing. If you're having a hard time picturing my room placement, check the picture below. Those two windows with the hallway view make me laugh but that is the wall that I get to use for our work. (FYI: Everything is so bare because this picture was taken back in August.)

 Currently, I've got our 4 seasons dioramas (that I actually need to take down) and our 'shape'ly snowmen on display, as well as our ancestery flags on the classroom door. My favorite display has got to be the snowmen. We spent four long weeks learning about shapes and created snowmen out of shapes for one of our mini-lessons. Then, to integrate writing into this activity, I had my kids work on their description words by describing their snowmen. Let me tell you, descriptions are not easy for first graders. I had so many that wrote in their story, 'my snowman has two eyes.' I tried to explain over and over again that this wasn't specific enough and that they needed to include the shape name, color, and size in the descriptions of the snowman's features. My sarcasm finally got the best of me after I read that same sentence in the 15th story, and I asked everyone that gave their snowman two eyes to raise their hand. To the shock of my students, everyone raised their hands and I finally saw some light bulbs go off. It was definitely a beating but the hard work paid off. When I finally got everyone to finished their descriptions, I put all of them together and stapled them in the middle of our snowman display. Then I printed up a cute "Can you find my snowman" cover to put on top. My hope was that people would walk by and read a few descriptions and try to find the snowmen that are being described. When I take this down, their descriptions will go in their writing journal.

Before Thanksgiving, we learned about the Pilgrims and Native Americans, as I am sure most first graders did. We discussed in detail the fact that all of us come from families that immigrated here, unless we are from Native American descent. Part of their homework that week was drawing/coloring/creating a flag that represented their ancestry. Aside from the US flag and Texas flag that I received (??), I was very happy with the result. I put them up on our classroom door with a sign that says, "Where on (Picture of Earth) are YOU from?"

This past week we discussed New Year's traditions and resolutions. I am hoping to put some of them up either inside my classroom or on the other side of our door. They are so funny! One student said that his resolution was, "to clean his room two times a month." ha! We are also going to be learning about Martin Luther King Jr., Marc Brown books, and how to classify objects. Should be a fun week! Then, a three day weekend!!!!!