Monthly Archives: April 2015

Science Meets Writing Meets Popplet

We were in a little bit of an “in-between” time in writing last week and so I took advantage by doing something new.  I can thank my friend and neighbor in Rm. 201, Mrs. Appelbaum (isn’t the the BEST name for a first grade teacher??), for the idea for how to connect our writing with science.

Ok, a little background…we have just started a unit on animals in science, and so were eager to do some reading and learning.  I got a big ‘ole pile books from the library about all kinds of interesting animals and we got to work.  First we just read, but then we got to thinking about how we could record the things we were finding out as we read.  We had already done some work with Popplet (remember how Diego so ingeniously figured out how to make the camera work?), so I thought they could easily transfer that thinking to new info on animals.  Well, it didn’t go quite that easily, and I decided we needed to do backtrack a little bit.  That meant (by suggestion of Mrs. Appelbaum) that we do some webs on paper (together first, then on their own) first.  So that’s just what we did.

We started with a text about sharks:

CAM01856and then we worked together to write things we learned in our book about sharks:

CAM01849We talked about how to write just blurbs or words, not whole sentences, as well as how to add details.  After I was pretty sure they understood what to do, I set them free to try it out for themselves.  It was our first try, but still, I’d say they did a pretty great job!

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Sara uses her smart reading strategies to learn about ladybugs.

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Makayla, Kylie and Lauren all hard at work on their animal webs.

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Landen made a web about gorillas, and even used more than one book on the topic to collect his information. Then, he turned his paper over and did another web about moths. 🙂

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Jacob read about leopards. His web ended up filling up almost the whole page!

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Amelia and Millie working hard on their webs. Millie, who learned about hummingbirds, ended up reading at least 4 different books about her topic and adding loads and loads of facts. Amelia was researching stingrays.

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Nate is getting ready to add his topic to the middle of his web.

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Evan recorded facts about red foxes.

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Ella Marie was super excited about learning more about bees!

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Thomas found a book about bearded dragons for his work.

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Ava found a book on frogs to use for her web.

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Charlie was checking out a book on zebra sharks.

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Diego’s learning about tiger sharks!

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Peyton’s web showed many things he’d learned about hammerhead sharks! We had many different kinds of shark books on this day and they were all very popular (everyone at his table had a different shark book to read!)!

Oh, and the part about Popplet in the title?  The next day, many kiddos took the information from this draft of their webs and transferred it to Popplets on their iPads.  Some started brand new Popplets using the same process that they’d practiced here.  The best part is that this is something they’ll be able to repeat again and again as they research new topics and organize the information they learn!  SWEET!

Ok, finally, a slideshow of our work from this day:

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First Grade Read Aloud Timeline–UPDATE

I am SUPER excited about how the Read Aloud Timeline has taken off with this class!  I have written about how I’ve brought many “big kid” things with me to first grade, and how my firstie friends have taken them and run!  So as I was putting yet another timeline image on our wall, I realized it was way past time for an update.

I believe that when I first wrote about our 1st grade version of the timeline we had finished around 9 or 10 books.  As of late last week, we filled up the whole wall!  We have (at least as of today–and the number changes very quickly around Rm. 202) 20 books completed!

CAM01884This chunk has been completed just since January:

CAM01885I know you can’t tell the titles because the writing is too small in the picture, but we’ve become big fans of both Baby Mouse and the Lunch Lady, as well as enjoying amazing “big kid” titles like The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo.  Oh, and then there are the 5 Mercy Watson books we’ve roared through in the last month or so, too!  Yep, obviously we’ve come to trust Kate DiCamillo as an author and are now sure that we can read ANYTHING by her and it will be great. 🙂

Because we are such speedy readers in Rm. 202, sometimes we end up with class books and wall pictures that are not yet put together or hung in the right place.  This is just such the case right now: the last two Mercy books are waiting to be laminated and bound.

CAM01886Well, since this is the case, and I’ve got a couple of days til they’ll be ready to hang anyway, I’m asking for your help in solving a little bit of a problem.  And yes, I stress the little part of that problem–it’s really just a decision we have to make.

The trouble is that we’ve filled up the whole wall (and actually all of the space on the 3 walls I have the timeline attached to!), but since the year is not yet over, we’re not finished creating timeline images that need a home.  So we have a couple of options and need some help deciding what to do with our next images.

One option we have is to go down the wall (or sliver of wall) next to the closet, like this:

CAM01887Now, this is a totally viable option, giving us plenty of room to finish out the year filling up that vertical space.  You know what bothers me, though?  The pictures don’t line up with the ones on the wall, and as long as they continue to be horizontal (which the next two are), there is that big piece that isn’t attached to the wall.  Somehow I’m sure someone’s arm will run into it accidentally (or dare I say it, on purpose!) and crinkle it or pull it off the wall.  But–it would totally give us the space we need.

The second option (at least that we can see) is to turn the corner and keep the timeline going along the wall by that bulletin board, like this:

CAM01890Look at all that wall space!  But….it’s practically the ONLY wall in the room that can’t be seen unless you’re standing right there in that very spot by the sink.  And that only happens if you’re washing your hands or getting something from the art center (and you know what’s funny?  See how I didn’t hang self portraits in that spot?  It’s because no one would be able to see them!).  So, again–lots of space, but a downfall.

I know, I know….this is really a small deal in the scheme of the world and not really a big problem (#firstworldproblems for sure!).  But, to a teacher who both appreciates the aesthetic of things and who wants to create the best environment for the learners I spend my days with, it’s teeny things like this that I agonize over.  Silly, I know, but hey–it’s me. 🙂

So will you help me?  In the end it would probably be just as effective to flip a coin or just vote with my class, but I thought I’d ask other (perhaps like-minded) professionals who could help me make the decision based on how they’d solve the same dilemma in their own spaces.  Please?  Pretty please?  🙂  Thanks in advance!

In Rm. 202, Everyone’s in the Geek Squad!

One thing I love about learning how to use iPads–or anything that is new to most kids in the room– is that we figure things out together!  Sometimes this happens when I teach a new skill, and sometimes it happens when even I don’t know what to do and I simply say, “Let’s figure out how to do….”  Either way, someone becomes the expert and then shares that knowledge with a friend.  Then we all become experts!

It goes right along with the saying we have in Rm. 202–that we are all teachers and we are all learners–and it makes my teacher-heart happy!

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I think my favorite story yet came the other day when I had to step back, get out of teh way and let my firsties do what they know how to do.  Here’s what happened:  we were learning to use Popplet and Diego wanted to put a picture into one of the popples (the circle parts of the web) he was making, but every time he tried, the screen on his camera came up black.  As I walked by and he was trying to figure out what ot do about it, I saw him get into the settings on his iPad and start to tinker.  Now, mostly because I’ve been working with 10-11 YOs for so many years and I know the havoc that can be wreaked when kids are in the settings on their devices, I had red flags coming up when I saw this.  I asked him what he was doing, he said, “Well I remember one time this happened with another app and it was because the app didn’t have permission to use the camera.  I wonder if that’s the problem this time.”  Then he proceeded to find the settings for Popplet and indeed, the app did not have the right settings to use the camera!

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WOW–talk about transferring knowledge!!  I had to apologize for my jumping to conclusions, and congratulate him for knowing what to do.  And of course, when 4 more people had that same problem during our work time, he was the expert I sent them to!  WAY TO GO, DIEGO!!  And the best part of this all?  The stories I could tell like this one keep happening every day!  We’re learning many things that we will use for many, many years to come. 🙂

Fiction, For Real!

We started a new writing unit today (no, I didn’t forget to finish telling you about the last one!–just haven’t yet).  The focus will be realistic fiction, and I wanted (as suggested by the Units of Study from Lucy Calkins) to see what they already know how to do, so we participated in an on-demand writing situation this morning.  Usually I make these very scripted and time-specific (generally they are supposed to be 45 minutes), but today the directions were a little looser: show me what you know about writing by creating a story.  Oh, and it has to be something that could really happen.

For some this was SUPER exciting, as they’ve been asking to write stories all year (and have even added many to their writing journals that we use in our room).  For others the idea of a REAL story was a bit daunting and even a little confusing–they weren’t sure yet (since we haven’t studied it) how this was different from their personal narrative (small moment) stories we wrote at the beginning of the year.  Oh, and to try to debate “real” topics with 6-7 YOs. Man!  Aliens, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, digging through the Earth to China–these all came up today in conversations about whether they could be included.  Tough questions being asked here!

I then gave them as long as they could (and would) write to finish their composition.  I’m happy to say that we lasted almost an hour, and some could probably have worked even longer!  Man–talk about some writing grit and stamina!  I was impressed!  Many great things were demonstrated already today, and we haven’t even started learning about this genre yet!

Ok, a couple of pics of our Monday morning amazingness! 🙂

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We used pink paper booklets today for our pre-assessment. The unit will be writing on white, and then we’ll use purple for the post-assessment. Easy way to keep it all organized!

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You’d think after this long they’d stop being surprised when I take their pictures! Say cheese, Amelia! 🙂

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Well, I did tell them I saw the Easter bunny out my window yesterday. So that’s real, right? Yep, he was small and brown, just like Jacob says–and he jumped away when I opened the blinds so my kids wouldn’t see him. Who’s to say if that could or couldn’t happen? LOL

I’m excited to continue to share the journey of this unit.  And yes, I will finish our opinion writing posts someday soon. 🙂

First Grade Math Warm-Ups: Week of March 30-April 3, 2015–WALKER’S CLUB EDITION

Our math warm-ups are almost always related to what we’re working on in math.  Sometimes it’s the beginning of the unit, and so kiddos don’t have much schema yet and aren’t really sure what to do.  Later then, the warm-ups become practice of the strategies they’ve learned and are working on perfecting (or at least using more efficiently).  This week, they were even the same topic: Walker’s Club.

Let me explain…

In a nutshell, this year we started a program to help our Robinson kids stay healthy and active, as well as have productive fun at recess.  We call it Walker’s Club, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, everyone walks laps around our playground at recess.  Every kiddo (and now even teachers!) has a card to keep track of laps that is punched each time they come around.  Parents, principals, teachers and even a group of kids volunteers to be punchers, and there’s always a big buzz about how many laps kiddos have at any given time.  There are prizes called Toe Tokens that kiddos earn at certain increments along the way.  So fun!

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This picture seems like it’s from so long ago! Don’t know how I didn’t share it earlier–they seem so little, don’t they?? 🙂

Well, to make it even better, and to celebrate National Walkers’ Day (which happened on April 1), Mrs. Wilson decided to make a competition for the month of April to see who can walk the most laps.  Each grade level will have a winner, and that class will earn an extra 20 minute recess + POPSICLES!!  Needless to say, it. was. on.

Math this week, then, naturally began to revolve around Walker’s Club laps: setting goals (first it was a conversation on how to set goals) how many laps other classes were walking, how many we could walk in a day, and how many we actually walked in one day.  Oh, and strategies for how to add up long strings of numbers so we could answer each of those previous questions.

Check out what we’ve been working on this week!

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As we started out our goal-setting, we decided (ok, so I suggested) that we should figure out how many we laps we usually walk on a Walker’s Club day. We could use this number (along with some other data we collected) to set a goal for how much each kiddo would walk/run every WC day.

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After we knew how many laps was our usual, we decided to ask our first grade friends the same question. Since they were the ones we’d be competing against, we also needed to know their usual number so we could adjust ours and make a goal that would matter.  This one’s from Ms. Turken’s class.  We got some data back from other classes, too, but haven’t yet analyzed it.

I need to insert a little note here: the first time we sat down together to add up that big string of numbers, we didn’t really know what to do.

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See this?  These are all of the answers we got when we went to work with our partners to add up the data.  WOW!  All the way from 10 to 122!  We needed some practice with an efficient and ACCURATE way to put lots of numbers together.  This gave me some ideas for future work in warm-ups.

So next came the idea of finding 10s as a quick (and organized) way to put lots of numbers together.   We then added (and readded) all of our data together from our chart and Ms. Turken’s chart.  We also tried it with other random lists throughout the week (so that when we came up on Walker’s Club data again, we’d be better at using that 10s strategy):

This one was a practice problem from the morning, but we didn't quite get time to review it later in the day.

This one was a practice problem from the morning, but we didn’t quite get time to review it later in the day.

This one was actually the warm-up from Friday (when I was out of the classroom), and I showed the sub how to record the combinations of 10s.

This one was actually the warm-up from Friday (when I was out of the classroom), and I showed the sub how to record the combinations of 10s.

This practice did help us, and when we added together our first OFFICIAL Walker’s Club list of laps, we knew what to do.  The problem (which was a good one to have) was that our list included lots of numbers that we couldn’t put together to make 10s.  That’s totally cool, though, because Evan had just been working on how to put numbers together to make 20s and 30s (and other multiples of 10) on Dreambox, so he helped us figure out what to do with all of those 8s:

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When I wrote my lap number up there, I felt a little bit funny since it was so much less than my Rm. 202 friends. I was SUPER glad to know it helped us out, though, as we could use it to go with some other numbers to make a combination of 20. Whew!

Check that out: on our first day we walked (and ran) 114 laps!!  This made us feel like we were off to a tremendous start (especially since we knew Ms. Turken’s class had only done 75 on their first day) and helped us set at least a preliminary goal for ourselves: we need to walk/run at least the number we did today to stay ahead of our friends.  We’ll talk more about how many that will be in all when we come back next week, and we’ll adjust that goal as we go forward and begin to hear what the other 3 classes are doing.  And hey, no matter who wins this April competition, we ALL WIN because we’ve got new strategies in our toolbox! Plus we will all have had lots of fun and lots of fresh air and exercise!  How can anyone complain about that!?

We’ll keep you updated on our progress as we go through the month! 🙂

Jokes of the Day: Week of March 30-April 3, 2015

This is another week full of kid’s jokes!  3 out of the 4 of them came from Rm. 202 friends!  Here you go.  Happy joking and I hope they make you smile. 🙂

Monday

What kind of makeup is a ghost’s favorite?

Mas-SCARE-a!

Thanks, Lauren–that’s a funny one!

Wednesday

This one’s from Kylie:

What did one stump say to the other stump?

Nothing, he was stumped!

Hee, hee! 🙂

Thursday

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

No bell.

No bell who?

No bell? Guess I’ll knock. 🙂

We love knock-knock jokes!  Thanks, Ava.  We smiled at this one for sure!

Friday

Why did the man throw the clock out the window?

Because he wanted to see time fly!

I shared this oldie-but-goodie joke because we’ll be starting a study on time very soon.  🙂

Hope you giggled a little and that you have a SUPER weekend!  See you next week!

Mary Casanova–An Utterly AWESOME Author Visit!

I really couldn’t decide if I should use that title or Mary Casanova–She’s SOME Author, but either way, we were super lucky to have some time with author Mary Casanova last week.

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I don’t know how I hadn’t heard of her before recently, she’s written over 30 books, and have been nominated for many awards–including Show-Me Reader Awards right here in MO!  Some of our favorites of hers that you might know (and that inspired the post titles) are:

We’ve had many other awesome authors and poets visit Robinson over the 15 years I’ve been here, like Lisa Campbell Ernst (she’s actually been here twice in my tenure!), Douglas Florian, Kristen O’Connell George, John Reynolds Gardiner and Eric Kimmel to name a few.  There really is nothing better than listening to a real, published author talk about what they do and how they feed their soul (and their writer’s notebooks!) so they have things to write about.  If you’ve been around here for even a little bit, it’s no secret that I would love to be included in that list of names someday.

Before she came, our fabulous librarian helped us share her books with our kiddos, and she did a little author study about Mary’s life and home in Minnesota.  They even made a bulletin board to welcome her, with a canoe filled with at least a hundred animals you would find living near her home in the North:

CAM01708When she came, she did such a GREAT job of keeping our kids engaged and learning, including them in her presentation by having them do voices and parts of the books she read to us.  As she read a favorite, Some Dog, to us, the boys played George (loyal basset hound), and the girls played the part of Zippity (energetic new addition to the family):

You could definitely tell that Ms. Casanova has experience speaking with young audiences by the level of engagement in the room.  I had to take a picture at one point that probably says it all.  She had them on the edge of their seats (er..carpet spots):

CAM01771Besides reading some of her books, she told us about where she lives in Minnesota, and gave lots of great advice about being a writer.  She said something that I’ve heard most every author say, but that is super hard to get kids to believe sometimes: the best ideas for stories come from your life and what’s going on around you.  She told us about how most of her stories were based on things that had happened to her, people (or animals) that she knows, experiences she’s had, things she’d wondered or thought about.  Somehow, though, I find myself trying to convince a roomful of kid writers every year that the stories you share don’t have to be epic, grand or splashy–they just have to matter to you.  What you ate for breakfast, the scene you saw outside your bus window on the way to school or something funny that your brother did to you last night can all be the basis for a great piece of writing.  Someday they’ll believe me, right?  Help me continue to spread the message, will you?  Oh, and help me remind them that the way to be a better writer is to write. 🙂

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Then lastly, as if she hadn’t already been great enough, she had one more piece of amazingness up her sleeve: she let us act out One-Dog Canoe with puppets, an oar and a giant canoe she had brought with her!  What fun!  The best part?  Our friend Landen got to play the bear!  He rocked it, let me tell ya. 🙂

CAM01776 CAM01778   CAM01781 CAM01782Wow!  What a great way to spend a Thursday morning–entertained and inspired by a REAL LIVE WRITER!  Thanks, Mary Casanova for taking time with us.  Rm. 202 friends LOVED IT!! 🙂