Another week, LOTS more great titles! I thought it was fun to look at the pictures this way:
Or like this:
I think we’re up to 71 already! And yes, I guess it’s not really #classroombookaday, and more like #3or4booksaday, but hey–that’s not a hashtag yet. 🙂
The only probably is that there’s not enough time to read all the books we have on our list or in our basket!
What have you been reading? What suggestions do you have? 🙂
We are SUPER lucky to have a literary principal at Robinson School. Is that the right word for a book-lovin’, read-aloud-givin’, kid-supportin’ administrator who visits to share GREAT NEW BOOKS with students? Whatever you call it, we’re very blessed. I know some of it has to do with her past life as a teacher, but she’s also a mom, and a veracious reader herself. And she wants to share that with us! LOVE IT!
So…thus far she’s been in 3 times (which is pretty great since we’ve only been in school for 3 weeks!), and shared some great titles with us.
For her first visit she brought Excellent Ed, and helped us think about what we’re already great at, then make goals for things we’re still working on. This fit in perfectly with our butterflies. 🙂
Then she came back to read Stuck to us and teach us to “try one more time!” That lesson has come into play loads of times already, even just right afterwards when Nicholas was telling the story about how he learned to tie his shoes when his dad gave him one more demonstration. 🙂
And THEN she came back again today and read us a funny story that we can all pick up when we head to our Book Fair starting tomorrow (great timing, huh??), Mother Bruce. This was a great one, but on the first read I wonder if Mrs. Sisul and I thought it was funnier than Rm. 202 kids did. Oh well–the adults were entertained! LOL
Oh, and I must mention one more thing about this whole principal read aloud thing…I love Mrs. Sisul’s excitement for literacy and books and how she inspires my kiddos to be readers when she comes so jazzed up about books (and yes, that is definitely the right word for it!), but what I love even more is that she takes her time to show Robinson kids they matter by doing this, too. Goodness knows principals have tens of thousands of things to do in a day (all of which are important), but I appreciate that she makes time for kids first. My Rm. 202 friends know Mrs. Sisul as a friend, a reader, an adult with a connection, a lover of humor, someone with grit and most of all a person. She’s not just a disciplinarian or a stranger in the office that no one ever sees–she’s a part of our community and we LOVE to have her visit. 🙂
Ok, Mrs. Sisul–what will you bring us next?? (Please don’t make us wait until November for the next Mother Bruce book!! 🙂 )
Today was kind of tricky. I have an unfortunate beginning-of-the-year-my-kids-got-me-sick cold, and it’s taken my voice. 😦 Luckily my throat doesn’t hurt (no, I don’t have strep–don’t worry, friends!), but it’s hard to not talk when you’re a teacher. LOL The hardest thing–especially when we’re in the midst of a #classroombookaday challenge–is the read alouds. I couldn’t NOT read aloud today (especially when there are texts that go with subjects as well as the ones just for fun), so I figured we’d “read” them on YouTube instead. I know it’s not really rocket science, but it’s the first time I’d done it, so I was kind of excited about it.
Today was a 3-book day, and two of them were videos. We started the day with How Full is Your Bucket? for Kids, which is one that kiddos know from kindergarten. It’s a great story, and is a super book to use with kids anyway, but this one was chosen also because we’ve been having some empty buckets at the end of the day lately. 😦 Everyone needed a reminder. 🙂
Check it out, in case you haven’t ever read it (or even if you have!):
Another one we “read” like this was The Night of the Veggie Monster which is a mentor text for our Small Moments writing unit we’re starting. It’s so funny and is a story every kid can relate to personally.
Kiddos were so excited about this kind of read aloud that I might start to incorporate it more frequently just as a change of pace. 🙂
I’m wondering…
Kids: What did you like best about these stories today?
Parents: What did your learner tell you about our #classroombookaday choices today?
Teachers: How do you use videos for read aloud? What suggestions do you have?
Thanks for sharing your voice!
Picture books, Notability with pictures, inch tiles, Legos, games and paint?? Who knew there were so many ways to practice writing, reading and CELEBRATING our names? Well, Rm. 202 kiddos knew, because they’ve been doing loads of things with names lately!
As we continued our study, I shared another great book from the unit Mrs. Wessel shared with me:
This is a great story for many reasons. It’s a story about a refugee family, where the little boy is struggling with fitting in, and many keep mispronouncing his name. He feels like he’s “lost his name in America.” He comes up with a great idea for how to help his classmates (and teacher!) learn his name, and it includes pictures. I also love this book because it features main characters of color. We’ve been talking about (and reading!) books in our room lately with African-American characters and authors (as well as some that are of other backgrounds), and how important it is that kiddos see themselves in the books they read!
Well, along with reading this gem of a book, we send kiddos home with a little job to do. It’s a suggestion from the What’s in a Name unitWhat’s in a Name unit that was shared with me, and was too good not to try.
The sheet asked families to share their stories about the origins of student names, any family connections, info about meaning and nicknames, as well as what the kiddos thought were interesting about their names. What fun it was to go around the circle and share personal stories about kiddos’ names, and watch their faces light up as we talked about THEM and THEIR special details. We heard about things we never would have learned without this activity, and I think in many ways the special thoughts (and giggles) we shared here will continue to help weave us together as the beautiful quilt we will become. All different and unique, from different places and made of different cloths, but tightly stitched together with respect, experience and love. 🙂
After we shared the book and some stories, kiddos got busy creating art like Sangoel did (his name is pronounced Sun-goal, by the way). I gave each kiddo a slip of paper with their name written on it and they were to use a variety of mediums to create a colorful representation of themselves. Many chose to use what they had learned about the meanings of their names (Aadish means “sun,” Allie means “nobility” and Ayonna means “beautiful flower,” for instance), and others just added their favorite colors and patterns or images of things they like. Regardless of their choices, we will add this to the collection of beautiful things in our room that remind us of who we are and how special each one of us is. 🙂 Plus they look pretty great hanging in the hall right now. I LOVE our bulletin board out there!
We started talking about names last week and are continuing the conversation as we build our community together.
We’ve continued reading great books together,
and discussing the importance of our names and how they tell something about us as people. They are the first words we learn, they are letters we know, and they connect us to people in our families and our pasts. They are OURS!!
We worked on name building challenges as well, with inch tiles and with Legos (thanks for that idea, Ms. Lewis!), and we were able to document our work with our iPads (thanks Kirkwood School District!). We are learning more about how to show what we know, use GRIT when things are hard, share our ideas and questions with our friends, ask someone else before the teacher, and how to send that documentation (pictures, notes, etc.) to Mrs. Bearden in eBackpack. Seems simple, but it’s hard work in Rm. 202!
Inch Tiles Name Challenge
Kiddos were to build their name with inch tiles. They were challenged to try their last name if they got their first name quickly. It was fun and interesting to watch how each kiddo came at this challenge differently, which tiles they used and if they used capital or lowercase letters. They took pictures of their work when they were finished.
Lego Name Building Challenge
This time learners were challenged to build their name with Legos (one, two or all three–or four–of their names!). Then they were to have a friend take their picture with their creation. We’re still learning to take photos, so some of them are a little blurry. 🙂 The most interesting thing to me about this challenge was how many kiddos build their names in 2D, just putting the Legos flat on the table or floor, rather than 3D, putting them together and building their names UP instead of out (but yes, you will see in the pictures that a few friends tried it that way!). There were no specifications related to this, but I will probably add that parameter for everyone next time. 🙂
I have to take a minute and highlight a strategy that we discovered during our Lego building. I went over to Kaiden at one point and saw this:
If you can tell, he had only built the LAST four letters of his name. I asked him to tell me about his thinking and he told me:
We had to stop the rest of the class and have him share his thinking–this was a great example of what to do when you’re stuck, when you want to quit or you don’t know where to start: do the part you DO know how to do and keep thinking about the part you DON’T YET know how to do. Often you’ll figure it out while you’re working. GREAT JOB OF USING GRIT, KAIDEN!!
We already have done many interesting and fun things as we’ve started this new year together. And as we get into more “real” learning (yes, I know all learning is important and in many ways the “soft” skills might be more important, but I digress….had to call it something!), I am looking for ways to continue to stress the themes we’ve started with: everyone is valuable, we are different and we are the same, we support each other, we are all starting in different places and that’s ok–we’re all growing and learning together!
So when I saw this unit shared by our friend and AMAZING coach (and I don’t use the word AMAZING lightly) Amy Wessel, I knew I needed to find a way to use it–it matched up with all of those goals I already had in place. Plus it was interesting and fun and we LOVE those things!
Ok, so I didn’t follow the unit completely as written, but I did utilize the book list as well as the ideas for “homework” to use with families.
Let me tell you the story…
As you’ve already seen from our #classroombookaday tweets and posts, we are a class the LOVES to read and often bases lessons/discussions on a good book. So of course as we started to talk about our names, I went to the book list shared by Ms. Wessel, as well as some others I had found on my own at my library (which is another AMAZING thing!).
Together we read Hello, My Name is Octicorn (which isn’t so much about names as it is about accepting those who are different than us and making new friends but has NAME in the name LOL) and Thunder Boy, Jr. (which was surprisingly about a boy who has the same name as his dad and wanted his OWN name that told about him).
Then, since I wanted them to get into those iPads that had shown up in our room, we went on a little letter hunt around our room. They were supposed to find all the letters of their name, take pictures of them, then crop the images and upload them into Notability to build their name (which is similar to the directions from our Outdoor Adventure Writing Outdoor Adventure Writing from the other day, too). THEN they were to take a screenshot of that image and later send it to me in eBackpack so I could see it (and share it here!). Oh, and they were supposed to take a selfie to use as their lock screen (which is how we tell everyone’s iPads apart when they’re laying around). See? Told you they know how to do LOADS of things already!!
They’re a little messy, but I did write/draw the directions for them, since it really was a long list of things to remember and do:
They did a great job of following the directions, talking to each other when they needed help (I had to encourage this with some friends, as they are still learning that I am not the only one with the answers!), and sharing things they found out with the rest of the class. These images will become the Home screen on their iPads for now. Check out some of our creations!
What a great start! Can’t wait to share more! 🙂
Remember back in 2012 when I did an iPad Scout with my 5th graders? Seems like forever ago, and we’ve come a LONG WAY since then.
For instance, I’ve now taught another 5th grade, as well as 1st and 2nd graders with iPads and it’s amazing how much these kiddos know about how to do things, how to troubleshoot, how to help each other and also what ideas they come up with that I hadn’t even considered!
So as we were ready to pull out our iPads for the first time this year, I was interested in how much I would need to explain before we could get going. So I asked a simple question as our warm-up this week:
I’m not sure if you can read what’s on that chart, but these kiddos came in to Rm. 202 with some SUPER smart thinking about how to be safe, productive and smart with their iPads. They told me things like wash your hands, put it on a table when you’re not using it (and not the floor!), use your headphones, be quiet, ask the teacher and do what you’re supposed to do. I mean come on–those are all the things I was going to say! It was so easy to begin our work much more quickly since kindy had put in so much time and work previously. GOTTA APPRECIATE THAT!
When my next question got lots of “yes” hands, I was again super happy. Aside from just knowing how to take care of their new device, they also knew how to do things with it! Aside from just knowing basics like being able to turn it on, put it to sleep, swipe the screen to get started (when it is sleeping), etc., they knew about apps that I wanted them to use (for example, Notability and eBackpack–the LMS we use in our district) and how to take pictures and then use those pictures to demonstrate learning. I’ll give more examples of that in later posts (like how we went on a letter hunt and built our names!), but for now we just have two words for our kindergarten teachers:
I really cannot express my appreciation more for how easy they have made my job of getting starting with iPads this year. They are ready and they are excited! And I’M EXCITED to see where we’ll be able to go with this sturdy foundation that’s already been built. 🙂
Over the summer, at a ELA/STEM learning institute we attended for our district, Ms. Turken and I were talking about what we could do to better encourage at-home reading this year in 1st grade. While we do not necessarily require homework, being a better reader (and becoming a reader at all!) happens by reading. Lots of reading. We brainstormed how we could do more to get loads and loads of books in kids hands so they could practice each night with their families. We remembered a connection we had to books at school, but we needed a way to get them home…
So I sent out a call to my friends on Twitter and Facebook (because that’s what teachers do when they have a question, right?), and very quickly I had lots of suggestions. Mrs. Horn, a friend and teacher at another school in our district, suggested this DIY t-shirt book bag from Mommypotamus. It’s a no-sew project, so we figured it would be easy, and since we planned on having kids make their bags, we knew they’d be really excited to use them every day!
Ms. Turken’s class was able to make their bags ahead of us, and came to show off/model them as they were finished. Boy was I excited when a friend of mine asked, “Hey–do we get to make those, too?” and when I said yes, she smiled so big and did a little cheer.
Friday was finally our day. 🙂
And so of course I left ALL OF THE T-SHIRTS WE WERE GOING TO USE FOR THE PROJECT at school on Thursday night. Nice, right? Luckily, though, I was able to find just the right number of unused shirts to upcyle into beautiful book bags. Double nice, right? Whew–saved by the big pile of junk in my closet. 🙂
Before we could make our bags (which required lots of knot-tying), I had to do a little bit of prep work:
In order to better facilitate such an involved project (it was simple, but still required some supervision to make sure the knots ended up in the right place), Ms. Mimlitz and I (remember her from our Outside Adventures? She is the totally amazing TA who works with all of our first grade friends!) pulled small groups while everyone else was working on must-dos and can-dos for the morning.
And I MUST give a shout-out to my small friend Keira, because she took to this project so quickly and ably that I gave her her very own group to lead! She was truly a gift that morning and helped so many friends get their bags finished. WAY TO GO, kiddo!
The plan once we are all finished (there were a few kiddos not there on Friday) is to fill our book bags every week with lots of great titles and read, read, read! Until then, check out how PROUD and EXCITED these first grade makers are with their creations!
I am SO GLAD we decided to take on this project, and once again–first graders rock!!
By the second day of school, my new Rm. 202 friends were already asking me about why we didn’t have a class pet. What?? Were they serious? They had found out about Mrs. L’s turtle, Javy (because of a sibling we have in 4th grade), and many had seen Ms. Turken’s water turtle, Bradford, who lives next door to us in Rm. 203. And so already my friends were turtle-crazy.
The problem? It was the second day of school, I didn’t have a turtle, nor did I really know anything about them (or had we decided yet as a class if we needed one or could take care of it!). So Ms. Turken and I devised a little plan: her class was going to learn about turtles anyway, because of Bradford and their interest in them, and they could teach us about what we might need to know about what would be the best kind of turtle to have as a pet (I had noticed that Mrs. L’s turtle–who is actually a “cousin” to Bradford–is a box turtle, as opposed to Bradford, who is a water turtle): box or water.
Well, they worked and researched and wondered and wrote and last Friday they were ready to share their information with us. They came over after lunch on our half day to present their research. We were SUPER impressed with how organized and professional they were with their words and how well they used the microphone, stood so we could see them, and were so quiet and listening when it wasn’t their turn. Again a group of first graders was knocking my socks off!
Like I said, Rm. 203 friends were SUPER turtle researchers and taught us a lot. And yes, now our turtle craze is even greater than before. We even found this book to read together to teach us more:
And luckily, I now also have a connection to a turtle. Updates to follow on whether or not a turtle joins the Rm. 202 family to come….:)
On Tuesday we spent the morning outside. Shortly after our morning announcements, the pledge, Morning Meeting, and a quick Pinkalicious story shared by Rachel and read by Ms. Mimlitz , we headed across the street with our iPads in hand with some important work to do.
Once we get settled under a grove of really big, shady trees, we read a couple of books together (which is part of our regular routine, especially now that we’re keeping track of our books with #classroombookaday), and played a rousing game of Simon Says.
Next, I gave some directions for collecting some important information. Kids had been a bit distracted by all the nature around them anyway, so their next job was to “collect” the most interesting things as pictures on their iPads. After walking a big circle around the area to show kids their limits, I set them loose. They were given about 15 minutes to check out all they could find and WOW was there a lot to look at! There were even some kind horticulturalists working nearby that pointed out some things for us to see!
During this time we had an emergency drill (which was handy since we were in our emergency drill spot anyway), and since it was probably already 90 degrees and we were HOT, we headed back inside shortly thereafter.
But we weren’t finished! The next step was for kiddos to crop their pictures, zooming in on the MOST INTERESTING part of the photo. I wanted them to really think about why they had taken the picture, as well as what the story was about that image.
These were the next directions. And let me tell you (and I’ll elaborate about this later on, too) that it is a little UNBELIEVABLE that kiddos know how to do this already at this point in first grade!
Kiddos did some great work, and we will build on this as we work together this year.
Check out our Outside Adventure WRITING!! Like I said (and I’m sure I’ll continue saying it!), what these kiddos can do with their devices already is nothing short of amazing!
Thanks for reading! Please leave us a comment and join the conversation!
20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher 