We tried out a new brain break the other day when we needed to move our bodies. I think kiddos enjoyed it. See if you can figure out the directions. 🙂
Did you figure it out? (Or did I repeat them in the video? LOL) In case you didn’t, it’s an easy “game” where you just walk around until I say “Rock, Tree, House” and then you find a small group and you have to represent each part with your bodies. Easy peasy, fun to do, and got us moving!
Which would you choose? Rock, tree or house? 🙂
We have been Mystery Skyping at Robinson for a while now. Â It’s such a great opportunity for kids to learn more about their world, themselves, geography topics, asking good questions, and just have a lot of fun with something new.
In the past, the introduction and explanation was always done in person and honestly, I probably did too much talking. Â Probably kids were confused and maybe unsure about what they were getting into. They were excited, of course, but since it was a completely new thing, they probably had a hard time envisioning exactly what I wanted them to do. First graders have always done a great job–eventually–once we got the hang of it, but there was usually a pretty big learning curve.
Then, this year, as Ms. Turken and I were beginning to put together our first Mystery Skype plans, she had a SUPER idea of introducing kiddos to maps and Mystery Skyping in a completely different way.
Rather than talk, talk, talk (which I seem to do too often!?), she started with a screencast explaining what we wanted kiddos to notice and note about maps in general. Â The video was available to kiddos as a morning work job, and then we had some explicit teaching in small groups later on in the day, and they were able to watch the video again. Â This time they also had a job related to it, and some guidance from Ms. Turken or I with an actual map in front of them. Â Check out the first screencast she made here:
It was so great to watch how quickly kiddos seemed to pick this up (partly because of the video, but also because we had done some work previously with directions and maps in science). Â Just having the visual that they could visit and revisit if necessary was an important support that we haven’t had in past experiences.
The second day of our Skype preparation involved the next steps of the process, focused on what to ask our new friends to help us narrow down where they are in the world. Again, there was a screencast that we shared with kiddos, allowing them to watch and review as necessary.
We did small groups again, with a mock mystery Skype that we practiced as kiddos tried to guess the state that the teacher had chosen. Â Even after just these two days of practice, kiddos seemed ready to do the real thing.
The next day was our “real” Skype, and we did a SUPER job of finding out that our new friends lived in a very tricky northeastern state–Vermont. Â Because of our focused and intentional work, they got it right in just 4 questions! Â Thanks, Mrs. LaRose’s 2nd grade for playing with us!!
Kiddos were SO EXCITED!! Â Such a proud day in first grade and we’re looking forward to our next opportunity! Do YOU want to Mystery Skype with us?? Â Leave a comment and we’ll contact you, or contact me on Twitter (@jenbearden) and we can set it up!
We love recess in first grade. Â This is the second year we’ve had an “official” first grade morning recess–on the school calendar and taken no matter what–yep, rain or shine! Kids need time to run and play and breathe fresh air!!
Recently we attended a meeting, though, that helped us see the need to use this play time as an even more important learning time for our first grade friends.
Data is showing us that many friends in our school (and our grade level) are having a hard time playing. Â Sounds weird, I know, but with so many kiddos only doing structured, planned things like sports or spending more and more time on screens, they are showing us that they are struggling with playing together appropriately at recess. Â And what do first grade teachers do when we see a need such as this? Â Figure out a way to TEACH recess!
We decided to become more intentional with this time already carved out in our schedule. Â We decided we wanted to teach our kiddos 1) the “rules” of recess (like no fighting, use good sportsmanship, speak kind words, and some others), 2) how to play some specific games, and 3) how to appropriately use the playground equipment, rather than assume they know what they are supposed to do.
We decided which places on our playground we wanted to teach first, as well as what games we should start with. Â Together we chose: an area of our playground that houses the saucer swings, regular swings, monkey bars, playhouse structure, and merry-go-round; an area of our playground that is an obstacle course; duck-duck-goose; and kickball. Â Once we had activities and areas, teachers choose a place to focus on; classes would rotate as a group around to each place/teacher. Â We made up a schedule to allow students to spent multiple days and multiple recesses (we follow the schedule during our morning recess as well as their regular lunch recess). Â The time students are in each rotation is focused on explicit teaching, as well as getting to know kiddos we may not yet have met and for all of our kiddos to spend quality time with ALL the teachers on our team.
While we haven’t yet officially sat down to talk about what we’re learning from our kiddos (that meeting is tomorrow actually!), I think it is safe to say that there are some  things that I am seeing as I lead my swings/monkey bars/merry-go-round rotation:
This is the end of the first round of rotations, and I’m excited to see what our next level of play will look like. Kids keep asking us when they get recess back (ha!), but we’ve said many times that they will show us when they’re ready.  And no, in case you’re wondering, they’re not ready yet. 🙂
Every morning when we start our day, we make a rectangle (because our carpet doesn’t really allow us to make a circle–LOL), and talk about how we’re feeling. Â We talk about the zone of regulation we’re in (usually we’re green and blue!), and often there is a question that we all answer. Â Very early on, I used a question I stole from my 7th grader (thanks, Riley!)–what is your favorite breakfast food?
Not surprisingly, many kiddos around the circle mentioned pancakes. Â And very specifically, Luke said chocolate chip pancakes. :). It seemed like for the next few days, everything we read and everywhere we looked, we were seeing references of pancakes. Â This includes our cafeteria, where the “B” choice every Wednesday is pancakes for lunch. :). So….we decided that it would only make sense to have our very own pancake party!
The date was set, and as we awaited the day, we found as many pancake-inspired books to read to get us ready (and make us hungry!!). Â Check out what we found!
Then, on Friday, we were ready for our special pancake breakfast together! :). And I’d say, it was even better than we’ve even hoped!
Luke, with his chocolate chip pancakes. Â Thanks for the idea, buddy! Â YUM!!
This made our third snack-related day already (we’ve been together for 22 days), and we’re already planning our next! Â There really is something to be said about how special it is to share a meal together (stay tuned to see what it will be!). I have heard from many first graders that this was our best day yet! :).
Last year I wrote a story about my journey to understanding how and why directed drawing would be a good thing in the classroom. Â This year, I was even more dedicated to showing kiddos from the beginning how EVERYONE is an artist, as well as how important it is them know how to put their thinking into pictures. Â I decided that I’d start from the earliest days with this, and so we learned how to draw a boy and a girl.
I found a series of videos where an artist works with kids and teaches them how to draw things. Â In this one, he draws a boy and a girl and talks through variations you might do to make them different the next time you draw them. Â Here’s the video if you wanted to check it out:
As we watched the video, I drew the figures up on the board in great big form, and first graders tried it out on their smaller paper. Â They only had to do one or the other, but a couple took the challenge of drawing both the boy and the girl!
We stopped the video along the way to rewatch a step, or to answer questions. Â We erased, encouraged and enabled ourselves to not be perfect the first time we attempted this feat. Â We talked about how it’s true that this might be hard now, but that the next time we try it (to draw a kid or something else), it’ll be even easier since we’ve done it before. Â I heard many kids say how they were impressed by their first tries and also how happy they were at what their pictures looked like.
Another important thing I wanted kids to know how to do from the early days (because it’s a huge part of learning in our classroom) is to paint with watercolors.
So the next step, after we drew our kids was to learn how to paint them.
We talked about how to get water and carefully walk with it to our table (this is much harder than it might seem! 🙂 ), how much water to use to make the colors look richer or more transparent, as well as the order in which to paint so that the colors don’t run (yellow, orange, red, green, blue, purple, brown and then black).  We also learned that when you make a painting, the whole paper has to be covered (with details and background). Then we tried it out for ourselves.
One thing I LOVE about doing whole-class learning like this, is that even though we’re all doing the same thing, we are all doing it in different ways. Â And I love how often a kiddo will do or say something that we can share, as it might be helpful to everyone at some point. Â This happened as I walked by and saw Finley doing this with his painting:
We shared how he outlined the figure with the background color to help make sure it was crisp and clear. Â Lots of kids tried it out, too! Â And wow–what a great thing to learn today and use for the whole year. Â And beyond!
After we were painted, we already had some pretty great results. 🙂
But we weren’t done yet! Â Last step was to trace our pencil marks with Sharpie and sign our work!
And so after all of that HARD WORK, we had a pretty fantastic painting and some skills we can learn for the whole year and beyond. Â Check them out!
WOW!!  What incredible work, first graders!  🙂
I think I mentioned in an earlier post about how our goal for the first days of school is to make kids excited about school and get a feel for what the rest of our year will bring. Â Another way we decided to do this was to make ice cream for our first-day snack. Â I mean, come on–who wouldn’t want to come back after ICE CREAM on the first day of school? Â And if THAT doesn’t give a clue that this year will be fun-filled, I don’t know what would!
So, when, in the midst of spinning the cream as the first step to our ice-creamy goodness, I saw this in the mixer, I was less than impressed. 😦
Yes, friends, instead of ice cream….we had made….butter!!
I really just had to laugh as I explained to the kiddos what I saw in the mixer and then showed it to them on our big screen. Â I was glad that not a single kiddo was mad at me; somehow they seemed to understand that mistakes happen.
Mistakes happen….that’s the part of this story we honed in on. Â It was almost like I had done it on purpose (did I? hee hee) as a means of highlighting how messing up is how we learn new things. Â And now, we know that when you whip butter too long you get butter instead of whipped cream!
And don’t worry–I promised them that since we had messed up on our first try that I would try again and bring them some ice cream for their day 2 snack. Â And BOY was it yummy!
Oh, and we didn’t let that butter go to waste, either.  The next day we had bread and butter, with some honey courtesy of our friend Jacob’s bees!  Best of all worlds! 🙂
Here’s to a fun- and mistake-filled year in first grade!
Every year when we consider what to do in our first days, there is a hope and a plan to make the first day (or two) so exciting that kiddos can’t wait to come back for more. Â Rather than spend our first times together as a class sitting and talking about rules, consequences, expectations and well, more of the same, we strive to SHOW them what’s important to us, and at the same time give them opportunities to have fun and make memories form the very beginning. Â This year on our first day we made ice cream butter, read lots of great books and got to build with boxes!!
Several years ago Ms. Turken and I found this book by a beloved author (Jane Yolen) and loved it right away. Â Then when we realized the invitation it gave kiddos for creativity and imagination–and that we could do it on day #1–we loved it even more!
The concept is very simple: you can do SO MANY THINGS with a box and your brain. :). After we read the story, we just looked at the box pile (sorry! I forgot to get a picture! 😦 ) and brainstormed what we thought we might do with those boxes.  Many kiddos started to list problems they could see solving with a box (which was not necessary but a really great stretch of thinking!), or just fun things they might create to play with or use for something at home or school.  We took turns choosing our boxes and then got busy!
We built and created for most of the morning (or maybe the day?!) and it was great to watch what happened!  Kids were busy, working, cooperating, trying things out and trying again, and using all the grit and creativity they could muster.  It was exciting to see that already this class knows how to tackle an open-ended situation where there are many possibilities.  They took on the challenge with smiles and excitement and produced some pretty great results!  AND they had a super fun 2nd day of school and were excited to come back for more!! 🙂
I have shared about how we started building our Kindness Quilt and then an update on how it’s growing!
Here’s another SUPER idea that grew out of it, based on a conversation we had in math a week or so ago. 🙂
Kids had been asking questions about how big the quilt might be, or how many squares we have gotten so far from other classes, and also just “What will it look like?”, so I pulled up this picture for them to reference.
Then I asked them to think of two things (based on the protocol you might do with a 3 Act Lesson): What do you notice? What do you wonder?
These were their answers:
Now…the whole point of the wonderings was to give them some tasks to complete, right? So we then went back through that list of questions and tried to decide which were ones we could actually use math to figure out. We noted connections, as well as marking off ones that were just interesting, but not “answerable.”
After we had discussed the ones that we could actually tackle, mathematicians were invited to choose one with which they could get started. Everyone declared their favorite and went to get started. There were no “rules” except that they had to find a way to record their thinking so they could show us their answer. (As a sidenote, as we got started, we had to have a conversation about what “recording” might mean–we use Seesaw so frequently that it only meant “using your voice to tell about your work.” Oops. Guess we should talk about that more often. )
As kids got started, it was fun to watch the different strategies that they employed, including iPads, number lines, and fingers.
And aside from the different tools they chose to use, it was great to watch how EVERYONE had a place to enter this investigation! No one felt like they couldn’t do it, like it was too hard or like it was no fun. This was a highly motivating topic (they had all made the quilt!), with interesting questions (that they had come up with!), and they got to choose which question they wanted to answer (based on any criteria–which was easiest, which was most interesting, which was most challenging, etc.). EVERYONE was engaged, for the whole time! Kiddos worked alone and in partners–again, their choice–to answer as many of our wonderings as they could.
Check out what they discovered!
What questions would you ask about our quilt? We’d love to hear them–and maybe even try to answer them! 🙂
Last week I posted about how our Morning Meeting Feeling Circle helps build relationships in our classroom. That same day something else happened that I was reminded of that also does this same thing: Lunch Bunch. 🙂
Several years ago in my classroom I had a routine of inviting kiddos to eat lunch with me–either I would choose a day to come to the cafeteria or they would be invited to come to our room to eat lunch there. For some reason (I forgot?) I haven’t done this for the last few years on a regular basis.
This year, however, I have several kiddos who regularly ask me if they can eat with me. This occasional situation turned into something official earlier this year when I had enough different kiddos ask that it just made sense to make it a “thing.” So, now, on most Tuesdays, anyone from our class is invited to join me in our room after recess for Lunch Bunch.
I remember the first few times we did it, only about 8 or so kiddos came. That’s still pretty good odds, though, I’d say–about half of our class. As time has gone one, though, EVERYONE has started to join us! Now we even look around and figure out who’s not there with us. Isaac is usually the one who volunteers to go to the cafeteria to get whoever is left. 🙂
I think we had several kiddos missing on this day, so it’s not everyone, but it’s most of us. 🙂 Oh, and Isaac didn’t make it into this selfie, so he wanted one of his own. 🙂
And then so did a few other friends. (And I think if we’d have had enough time for me to work my way around the room, everyone would have wanted a selfie with Mrs. Bearden. 🙂
Lucy and meÂ
Makhi and Mrs. Bearden (and a photobomb from Beckett!) 🙂
Me and Avant 🙂
It’s funny how just a change of place, or a change of thing can impact how you interact with kiddos (and how kiddos interact with each other). Ok, I guess it’s not really a surprise, though, since food is such a universal thing and breaking bread together helps people of all ages and cultures to get to know each other better–this is true even of first graders!
I love how our conversations run the gamut and how much they are willing to share about themselves, often without even having to ask them anything! There are usually quick connections made over foods we have that are the same, or a really funny conversation started by someone asking about something I have in my lunch that no one else in the room would eat!
Lunch Bunch has become a staple of life in Rm. 111 and I don’t think I could (or would!) change that. A couple of times our Tuesday routine has had to adjust because of a meeting or inside recess and kiddos are SO UPSET! They are always so quick to ask if it can be moved to the next day or the next day. And you know, if I’d let them, I think most kids would come to eat with me every day! I know it makes them feel special and a part of something, and you know–I feel that way, too! Getting to know my students as PEOPLE helps me in so many ways as I help them as learners! What a super special time we have together. 🙂 . Can’t wait to see what happens this week!
After the success of Global School Play Day, my first grade team was ALL IN on how to give our kiddos more opportunities to play. In all the subjects. On any given day.
And it was incredibly convenient that at the end of Global School Play Day, we had team time to discuss just that topic! #luckyus #firstgradedoubleplanforthewin
After we tossed around several ideas, we landed on trying something in math first. And we also decided that using The Periodic Table of Play as our resource for ideas would be the best place to start. Our district has done work with Laura Seargeant Richardson, and has committed to putting play up at the top of a list of priorities for all kids and adults in our district. We have a deck of Play Possible Schools cards in our library, and they were the perfect place to dig in. 🙂
While the conversation was long and detailed, the short story is that we decided to take one concept (fractions) and each choose a different way to “play” with that idea. We chose an element of play and then figured out a way to apply that to fractions.
There are only five of us, and eleven elements, so we tried to have a variety of options.
We decided on:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
Before the chosen date of our Play Day, we planned what part of our element we could focus on, and got ready for our activity. In order for kiddos to be able to choose their play place (which was another crucial part of our plan–kid choice!!), we put together a Google Slides presentation to invite them to come play with us!
No one knew which teacher they would end up with or really what they would be working on until they showed up–which added to the excitement and motivation!
Here’s what kiddos chose to do. Check out how much fun they had!!
This group observed a science experiment that included using different parts of an Alka-Seltzer and predicting/watching what happened. Kiddos recorded their thinking with words and pictures.
Lucy had some words to explain her math time today:
Friends in this group worked with Legos to represent different unit fractions in a variety of ways. What a fun way to use a typical first grade classroom tool!
 Mathematicians in this group worked in a pizza restaurant! They got to take turns being a chef (and making fraction pizzas), taking orders and also making a menu. What an authentic and FUN way to apply fraction knowledge!
Check out Ali’s explanation of what she did!
 Friends that worked in the “feeling” group used their senses of touch and smell to explore fractions. Listen to Riley explain what she did and why she liked it! Spoiler alert: This was the BEST DAY of math, EVER!
 This was my group. 🙂 . In this one, mathematicians were invited to plan, create and then play (well we didn’t get to this part, but will do it later!) a game about fractions. Kiddos chose to work alone, in partnerships and also in groups of 3.
And check out what Hailey had to say about what she did and why she liked math today. 🙂
So…can you tell that this first ever First Grade Math Play Day was a roaring success?? Everyone involved had fun and we even noticed that there were not any behavior issues during our play time, either. 🙂 . I mean not surprising, though, right–when everyone is having so much fun learning??
After reflecting on the day, we noticed that a large number of our kiddos chose the groups that played with Legos and made games. And many of the ones who didn’t get to do that today said that they would choose it if they had a chance again.
And now we’re left with some questions to chew on. When will we do this again? Will we try math again? Same topic or another one? Should we try another subject? How can we use what we learned about how our kids like to CREATE and MANIPULATE to better meet their needs at mathematicians (even on regular math days)? We’re excited to think through the answers (and possibilities) and get another play day on the calendar!
Will you join us? We’d love to hear your thoughts about our try at math play, and also at how you do this in your own classroom! Leave a comment with your ideas! 🙂
20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher 