And the Winner Is…

When we came back from Spring Break, we were in the middle of our opinion letter writing unit (I know, I still have not finished the story, but here’s the beginning again if you missed it!). One of our first writing assignments was an opportunity to both tell me about their Spring Break AND test out their newly learned skills. Double win, right? 🙂

Here are the directions I gave them:

Kiddos then spent several days planning and writing a letter that showed me their mad letter writing and convincing skills, and that included the most fun parts of their time away. Unfortunately it took me a little while to get around to choosing a winner, but yesterday we finally sat down to crown the winner. And the winner is….

It was SUPER hard to decide on the winner (there were two that it came down to and they were SO close!), but in the end, Millie’s letter had all the things we had be learning about: greeting, a stated opinion, 3 or more reasons, transitional words (like one reason is, another reason is, finally, closing, correct spelling and punctuation). When I read it out loud, it was great to see (and hear) the reaction of the class–they could tell just by listening that it had all those parts.

And since it was a writing challenge, the prize was something to help make her writing even more spectacular–mini gel pens!

I don’t use competition all the time, but sometimes it works to raise the level of excitement, engagement or even production. And in this case it just made sense. Way to go Millie, and other friends of Rm. 202 who wrote some great Spring Break letters!

Pictures of the Day–April 14, 2015

Somehow I think I’ve started a new feature: Picture of the Day. It’s actually something I was thinking about trying my hand at for next school year (because I need something else to do, right?), but in true form, I decided to try it now, too! (And I should get over to my family blog and pick it back up, too, shouldn’t I? That’s actually where I first got the idea….oh well, one ~~project~~ blog at a time I guess….) Anyhow, it’s funny how you look at things differently when you know you want to post something every day. It’s kind of like how I teach my kiddos that writers look at the world differently than “regular” people–they EXPECT to see interesting things that they can capture in words, and sometimes in pictures! So today when someone said, “Hey, look, they all have on the same shoes!” I HAD to take a picture of it. That’s our first picture of the day–cute first grade feet in Converse tennis shoes, all in different colors and sizes!

Cutest ever, right?? 🙂

And since it’s not fair to just show shoes, here are the cutie-pie faces that go with those awesome kicks:

Say cheese! Diego, Makayla and Peyton 🙂

And since kids can’t get all of the focus here (after all, there is 1 KOOKY TEACHER in Rm. 202, too!), my friend Landen took a picture of something else cool we noticed today: Mrs. Appelbaum (she’s kind of like a celebrity around here lately!) and I were twinsies with the color and patterns in our outfits! And I must mention that Landen both offered to take the picture AND AirDrop it to me so I would have a copy. 🙂 Gotta love those growing tech skills, huh?

Pictures of the Day–April 13, 2015

Today was a special day at our school, and an even specialer (yeah, I know that’s not a word but it sounds cool right?) day in our town. We celebrated Hats On Day to collect money for kids with cancer, but it was also Cardinals Opening Day–which is really worth a day off in my book–but alas we together at school. Here are a couple of pictures from both of these special activities:

If only I could crop myself out of this one…the other two are so cute, right? 🙂

Those are some pretty awesome Cardinals’ fans, aren’t they? Look, C.J.’s backpack even has Cardinal red on it! Looking good, kiddos!

Another fun day in Rm. 202 at Robinson and a great start to a super week! 🙂

SPECIAL EDITION–First Grade Math Warm-Ups: Data Collection Focus

So I missed posting last week’s math warm-ups because my phone has decided not to talk to my computer (which, I believe is a ruse to make me finally give in and get an iPhone–everything else I use is Apple anyway, so I guess it only makes sense…) so I can’t show you the pictures I took.

Well, it seems that wasn’t so big of a deal anyway, because there have been lots of math activities (not just warm-ups) that have been related to data collection, and this way I can connect them all. Bonus. 🙂

We began several weeks ago, as I knew we’d be launching into a unit on data collection and analysis, to try our hand at some easy surveys in our math warm-ups. We talked with the very first one about the idea that we’ll be collecting, organizing and analyzing data (and what all of those things mean). Then we spent many days answering survey questions, and doing just those things:

After we’d had some practice with the actual answering the question and orally analyzing the information, we started working on how to represent that information. Thanks to my friend Mrs. Appelbaum (remember her, with the AWESOME name and the great idea for webs in writing/science?), I had a really good visual to show my kids the expectations for what they should be able to do with both describing and representing data by the end of this unit:

I think the best part about this checklist is that a kiddo in her class asked her to make it so he’d remember what to do.

This checklist was the next step for us and with it we began to look at how to SHOW what the answers were, especially to people who weren’t there in our class when we took the survey (this meant that they would have to be clear and concise).

We had a go at the idea with that question about cereal and pancakes, trying it ourselves and then coming back together and trying many different ways that were on Mrs. Appelbaum’s sheet. WOW–look at all of those ways to say the same thing:

Today’s work was really cool as 3 friends decided to start organizing it AS we were collecting it. Jacob, Lauren and Amelia made the paper into a t-chart and even put labels so kiddos would know where to put their answer:

We showed the total with both tallies and numbers, and then also tried a pictograph:

We also talked about the part of the checklist where we make sure to show how many people took the survey, which we did by adding the totals of both columns.

Today we took a fun and important step and began to do surveys on our own! We reviewed the steps and then worked with a partner to plan the question we’d be asking, using these ideas for stems:

Screen Shot 2015-04-13 at 8.22.46 PM Tomorrow we ask the question of our friends and start collecting data! Stay tuned for the fun! 🙂

Chapter Book Previews: First Try in First Grade

The first year I taught 5th grade, I came upon a great idea for previewing chapter books with readers–the idea being that you teach them how to do it together with a whole class read aloud and then they’d hopefully begin to transfer the process to independent reading. Well, I can’t say that that ever happened, and I don’t even teach 5th anymore to try again, but what I do know is that the process worked well enough that I decided to revive it for a try in first grade.

I believe that our newest chapter book is the 21st we’ve shared together this year. Yes, I said 21st! That’s amazing, no? We agree. 🙂 Well, if you’ve been following our read aloud timeline progress and updates, then you know we enjoy short books with funny characters, interesting pictures and exciting adventures, and that we’ve become fans of Kate DiCamillo (we’ve read 7 of her books!). Once along the way, we tried something a little longer and more complex, and started reading The Lemonade War (I have read the series and also heard once of a whole school doing this as a RA and thought I’d try it with my crew), but quickly abandoned it when it seemed like we weren’t ready for something with such little support for readers (well, listeners in this case).

Well, recently it was my turn to choose the title (since they’d had control of the previous 15!) and I introduced them to the amazing world of The One and Only Ivan. They did great with that one, even without pictures and even though it was super long.

Well…it was my turn again, and with the help of my friend Millicent (to whom I should really give the credit for choosing the book with her mom), and the choice was the classic The Wizard of Oz. I was willing to try it with this crew both because I think we’re more ready that earlier in the year, and because I wanted to try it with my own first grader last year (when it was suggested on a list by NPR for their Backseat Book Club).

As we were getting started, though, I wondered if there was something I should do this time around to help support my kiddos, since the story is much more complicated that others we’ve read. That’s when I thought of how I’ve brought so many other things from my 5th grade days to 1st grade and they’ve gone really well. I knew I had just the thing to try, and it was our Read Aloud Preview Packets.

With 5th graders, each kid actually had their own paper copy of the packet, on which they’d write questions, inferences, noticings and whatever else they needed to help them digest the story. I figured that this time, since it was our first time, we’d try it together and then maybe I’d give them a go at it on their own.

Tuesday, then, we sat down together and I opened our class copy in Word on the ActivBoard. Here’s how our conversation went:

Starting with the front cover, we studied and analyzed, pulling up all the schema we had as well as recording wonderings we had based on the picture. This one was different than the actual cover of our book (which is a beautifully bound green leather copy), so I grabbed one that I thought would create a good conversation.

Then we were on to the back cover. Again, our actual cover was just green, so I found one that we could talk about:

Next was the Verso and Dedication. Well, this one didn’t have a dedication, but we talked about what that word meant, and what it might say if there was one. This next part was really also just an explanation of what a verso is and what you can learn from studying it.

Moving on, we looked at a special feature of this book: a map! We had read another book with a map (Who Is Stealing the 12 Days of Christmas?) and so connected to that knowledge as we thought of how this one would help us as we go through the story.

The next (and last) part in the preview is usually just the first page, but this book also had an introduction, so we did that one, too. The goal of this step was to help kiddos get their minds set to dig into the story. Baum wrote his introduction to explain his purpose and intentions with the story, and so it was a great conversation about how he wanted his Wizard to be different than previous fairy tales known to readers.

We didn’t actually read the first page, because kids were done (and I knew that we’d be reading it the first day anyway), but finished our conversation with mention of how many of them were coming into this book with experience seeing TWOO movie (two different versions, actually). We talked briefly about how different books and movies usually are because they’re made by different people, and how we could keep track of these similarities and differences as we read.

Whew! I’m so glad we did that! I wasn’t quite sure how it would go, but Rm. 202 kids seemed really into it, and they had lots to say during our discussion. We’re only about 6 pages in, but it seems like they’re already mesmerized by a great classic story and I am, too–I’ve never read it, either! Here’s to another GREAT read aloud!!

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:

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

We 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!

Sara uses her smart reading strategies to learn about ladybugs.

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

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. 🙂

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

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.

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

Evan recorded facts about red foxes.

Ella Marie was super excited about learning more about bees!

Thomas found a book about bearded dragons for his work.

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

Charlie was checking out a book on zebra sharks.

Diego’s learning about tiger sharks!

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!

This chunk has been completed just since January:

I 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.

Well, 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:

Now, 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:

Look 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!

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!

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! 🙂

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!

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

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!

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!

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.

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.

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 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:

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! 🙂

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