This Week's Anchor Charts

 I love hearing my girls (and sometimes a few boys) outside chanting rhymes. One of their favorites goes, "If it's a girl, I'll give her a curl. If it's a boy, I'll give it a toy. If it's twins, I'll wrap em up in toilet paper, send them down the elevator..." Anyway, we're doing r-controlled vowels ir, ur, er this week, so I made this chart to go with that rhyme. I think they will like it. I made a decoding practice page also and uploaded it to my tpt store. It's free. Hope you can use it in your classroom.

Verbs that add -s.

I also made an anchor chart for verbs that add s. My little people have a really hard time with this, so maybe this will help.

This is an anchor chart for compound words that I forgot to post earlier.

A little noun/verb sort activity I found on tpt. I made the Mcdonald's carton. It took a lot longer than I thought it would, but it was worth it. Most of my kids can sort nouns and verbs now. They really paid attention. What kid doesn't love Mickey D's?

 

Rockin' Super Improvers

I have been testing the waters with Whole Brain Teaching this year. I haven't fully jumped in yet. So far, I really like most of it. We do the attention getters- class, yes? and the "teach-okay!" I love the "teach-okay!" It's very effective for keeping them engaged. I use it a lot with teaching our amazing words. I make up gestures to go with each word. I've been using lots of different motions for the teach-okay part which they love. I'll do stomp, stomp, stomp, salute! And they echo back. I mix it up. If you're not familiar with WBT check it out on youtube. Here's a link to a bunch of videos and a great first grade blog- http://mrsshipleywholebrainteaching.blogspot.com/p/whole-brain-teaching-videos.html.



So anyway, I have not done the scoreboard. I tried it for a while, but couldn't think of good rewards. So that's fallen by the wayside. I discovered WBT two weeks after school started, so I am learning as I go.

 

 

I am planning to incorporate the Super Improvers Wall next week. I finally finished the board (the kids have been asking me about it all week, so i've gotten their attention.) I hope it works! I really, really do. I need to find a way to motivate my kids.

 

I did a rock theme which I stole borrowed from this awesome site- http://wolfelicious.blogspot.com/2012/08/my-super-improvers-wall.html. I hope she doesn't mind. I must say, I'm pretty excited about how mine turned out.

There are ten levels. Every kid starts out with a gold star (fan). When I see them improving on something (it could be anything from making a 100 on a spelling test to raising their hand before talking) they get a sticker. Ten stickers-move to next level and get a purple star and so on... I like the idea of setting individual goals for my students. They're all so different but everyone can improve on something.  

 

These letters took me forever to draw...

 

        Rock star font- LOVE! I did extend the line on the 'a' a little further with a sharpie because it looked like it said "hell of fame."

I found these guitar cutouts Michael's and decorated them with the new fancy schmancy duct tape.

 

I am excited to try this out. It's different from anything I've ever tried before. We'll see!

Honeybees

This is a little sequencing/retelling activity we did for "Honeybees." They had to draw a picture in each cell, cut them out and glue the cells in order. Some tried to make it look like a beehive. It took them quite a while to do this. On Fridays, I usually give them some type of art activity instead of stations.

The Big Circle and Life in the Forest

Here's a fun little craftivity (i love how we make up words, like today I heard "verticality" on Dear Geneive and I wondered if she just totally made that up) we did for The Big Circle.

 

This is an activity I found on TPT that I thought went really well with the story "Life in the Forest". Plus it was FREE so you can't beat that! The kids did a really good job with this. Their drawings turned out super cute..

 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Animal-Babies-Addition-Word-Problems-with-Three-Addends-for-First-Grade

Merry Christmas!

I got two Christmas gifts this year.  And it was the best. A student handed me this note. Much better than a coffee cup any day! 

 

She also wrote me another one which cracked me up. Then another student wrapped up a candy cane with notebook paper that she had decorated herself:)

Inspector Fix It

This is going to be short and sweet.  I just wanted to share an idea I got from teachertipster.com. If you haven't looked at his ideas, they are awesome! Anyway, this idea jazzes up your daily fix it. I write 3 daily fix it sentences on the board. Then we sing the Inspector Fix It song.

Inspector Fix It Teacher Tipster

By the way, does anyone have any idea what happened to this teacher? He has just disappeared and his website is down. 

The first time I tried it, they went nuts. I was like, "I can't believe this is actually working." Why don't I ever think of these things myself? When I say, "Looks good to me!" they all yell, "NOooo!!" Yesterday when they raised their hands to tell me what was wrong with the sentence, I let them use a magnifying glass to "inspect" it. Then they really started raising their hands. Of course, some of them STILL forget to correct the mistakes, but oh well. Rome wasn't built in a day. At least they're excited about learning. They actually remind me when I've forgotten to do Inspector Fix-It. That. I. Love.

Here is another link to one of his videos about editing writing. I have never tried it because this is the first time I've seen it, but it sounds really fun.

Fame Frames

Last week in pictures

Keeping up with a blog is hard! This is more like the last 3 weeks in pictures. What have we been doing?.... Well, we had a great time with Max and Ruby. My kids always love this story. We talked about the main idea.

Then we reviewed words using something called a toughie chart. Here's a picture of mine.

This is the link that explains what to do. I don't follow it exactly, but it's very helpful for reteaching important skills. http://www.wiki-teacher.com/resourceView.php?id=1015 

 

 

I made this cut and paste activity for the kids to do. (Since we don't have art or music anymore. Waah!) I miss my breaks. If anyone wants this, I'll try to figure out how to scan it. Just leave a comment.

I have been making fry phrase cards for Unit 2. So far I've made them for The Farmer in the Hat, Who Works Here?, The Big Circle and Life in the Forest. These are really good for struggling readers. Here's the link to my TPT page. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Life-in-the-Forest-Fry-Phrases-Reading-Street

 

Last week, I finally did some math stations. Completely off the fly but the kids loved it. Now I have to get organized and plan them the right way. This is a picture of some doubles fact cards the kids matched up. These were free on TPT. There are lots of different kinds: pirates, fish, bears, dinosaurs, dogs etc..  The kids had a blast doing these.

Last but not least, we are having a food drive. To get the kids excited, we are having a contest between the first grade classes. Whoever brings the most food items gets a pizza party. This is a graph I made. Each jar will represent 5 items. My class is ahead with 18 cans. Woo hoo! I thought this would be a good way to motivate them to help their community. Plus we can work on graphing and counting by 5s.