Tag Archives: learning

Painting, Twister and a Song, Oh My!: Dot Day 2016

I have been a fan of Dot Day for a few years, and tried with my last couple of classes.  Last year was the first year I seemed to get it on the blog, though, sharing our dot paintings and writing pieces that graced our hallway all year.  They really were amazing.  But as I went into this year’s Dot Day, I wanted to see what else there was out there to connect to the day and to the book it’s created from: The Dot by Peter Reynolds.

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Because of my participation in most things Twitter, I found out about some great resources to use for Dot Day activities, and even had a place to share our Dot Day fun!  I was geared up for an even better Dot Day than last year, and when the day came, kiddos were as excited as me!

We started the day by reviewing our plans and then, of course, reading the story!  And who better to share the story of The Dot than the author himself?  Yep! We had Peter Reynolds read to us from this video on YouTube:

After that, I actually reread to Rm. 202 kiddos again, to make sure they “got” the story and so we could discuss what was actually happening and also how this story perfectly connects to our Robinson Mindset:

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We used some discussion questions that had been shared with me from my Twitter friend Ms. Hachen, and these really helped us understand Vashti’s problem, how she solved it and then how she made her mark on someone else in the same situation.

Then we enjoyed a song.  Two or three times because it was so great. 🙂

And then after we got the point of the day and our minds were focused on dots and making our mark, we got busy actually DOING it!

I had put together a flipchart to give kiddos a visual of their art options:

screenshot-2016-09-17-21-42-36 and basically anything that was round, or could make a dot was fair game.  And once they got busy creating, we were AMAZED at what we could do!  We made dots and watched them splatter. 🙂  And thanks again to the AMAZING Ms. Mimlitz who was our photographer and took some great action shots of our work!

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The final products are not quite ready to share (since I want to wait until they’re all hanging up and our writing is finished!) but you’ll get the idea as you check out our creative process. 🙂

Later on, it was time to have some more active Dot Day fun…

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This was both Dot Day-related, as well as a great opportunity for us to continue to practice managing our bodies and using self-control as we work together!

After we had made our physical marks, thought about how we were like Vashti and could make a mark on the world, we did some reflecting through writing using this sheet:

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We have done first drafts on these sheets, and will revisit and revise them next week so they can hang along with our paintings.  I can’t wait to share them!

We had had a day full of DOT fun, and we had to end it with one more run through of the Dot Day Song.  Just because it was so great!  And we’ve all been singing it since then. 🙂

And to be honest, this wasn’t the end of the fun.  Come back for the second half of our Dot Day extravaganza soon!  There’s  Skype and another art project to share!

Digital Recording: Counting Strategies

I shared the story of how we have been counting EVERYTHING in our room this week, but there’s a quick story that actually come just before that, as we started our initial journey into practicing counting and recording our strategies.

Kiddos were given a partner and a “mystery bag,” which was full of between 10-35 of something (bags were differentiated for different counters), and asked to figure out how many things were in it.  They were to use an efficient strategy and somehow capture an image to demonstrate how they counted their item(s).  Partners worked together to determine the most efficient way to count their items, took pictures together, talked about their work and added explanations to their pictures via the Notability app on their iPads.

Through the information I received from seeing their images, as well as through observations and conversations conducted during their work time, I was able to more effectively create pairings for later in the investigation.  Partnerships were formed to best challenge and support mathematicians in their continued learning.

Mathematical strategies and digital tools for the win!

 

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week 4

I cannot believe how much fun we’re having with #classroombookaday, nor how many books we’ve already read!  For all I know, we usually read this many books in 1st grade together (I’ve never officially kept track), but regardless it’s SO GREAT to watch the pictures get added and begin to fill up the door!

This week I think we added almost 20 books and I’m not sure we can pick a favorite!

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I do have to give a huge shoutout to Keira’s mom (loyal blog reader!) who left us some GREAT suggestions when she was at school for Read With Your Roadrunner today that she thought we would love.  And BOY was she right! I had never seen Red: A Crayon’s Story or Clancy the Courageous Cow before today but they will definitely be added to my classroom collection!  Both fit in perfectly (like she said they would!) with our conversations about valuing everyone for their uniqueness and celebrating how everyone can do something really well (even if that thing ends up being a surprise!).  Thanks for the suggestions!  Feel free to share your books with us anytime you want!  (That request goes for anyone, by the way!) 🙂

Name Game (and a Couple of New Books!)

We have been working on names in Rm. 202, both as a way to build community as well as to use a resources for our reading and writing.  We have read lots of books, built our names with Legos and inch tiles, as well as learned about the stories of our names and painted based on that inspiration.

And then we played games.

I moved our word wall this year, making it more accessible to kiddos and groups, and hopefully allowing us a place to gather to talk about words and how they work.  The first thing we learned to do with our word wall is play a guessing game based on our names.  A kiddo sat on the stool, and I gave 3 clues to a name, and they had to guess which one it was.

The first one had these three clues:

  • It’s a short name.
  • It has double letters.
  • The last letter doesn’t sound how you’d expect it to sound.

Kiddos guessed that it could be these options:

Pretty good guesses, right?  We had a great conversation about how the “ie” in Allie and Robbie work together to make the long e sound, and they agreed that that fit the “doesn’t sound like you’d expect it to sound” clue.  Peter’s name was suggested because it has double e in it, so I made sure they understood that the double letters had to be together.  That left ELLA as the chosen name, and we found lots of other words that also fit that rule, including the A that sounds like a U.  This will be a feature we’ll come back to many times as we read and write together this year.

Our second name had these clues:

  • It has 5 letters.
  • The vowel sound is a LONG one.
  • There is a silent letter.

The guesses this time were:

 

Pretty great thinking again, huh?  Two of those names were ones I hadn’t even considered.  Yeah, I know–pay attention, Mrs. Bearden!  The one I was thinking of was CHASE, and we talked about silent e and long vowels.

This game was a great first start with our word wall, and it will become a game kiddos play again on their own, during word work in our Daily 5 or even as a part of our word work in guided reading or just for fun at choice time!  Great work, Rm. 202 kiddos!

Oh, and I promised in the title I’d share a new book!  Mrs. Meihaus has a habit of reading to our class when we come to the library for our checkout each week, and this last week she did not let us down.

She shared :        screenshot-2016-09-01-12-46-51

which included several little surprises inside:

img_3720img_3721img_3722 Can you see how the pages get smaller and smaller in there?  It goes all the way down to a teeny tiny red book and then all the way back out again as you read through to the end.  Who had ever seen such an amazing text like that before?  WE LOVED IT!

Ok, one more.  We heard the sweet, friendly story of:

screenshot-2016-09-01-12-46-11 Heartfelt and wonderful.  Must read it again. 🙂

And learn to play the piano. 🙂

Mr. Schu in the Lou!

Sometimes I write in order, partly so the stories make sense, but also so I don’t forget anything.  Sometimes, though, things happen that you just have to tell about.  Today was one of those days!

Yeah, did you hear?  Mr. Schu was in the Lou!!  Oh, come on.  Lou, like St. Louis!  YES–HE WAS IN ST. LOUIS, AND HE WAS IN OUR SCHOOL! AND HE READ TO US!

Ok, sorry, I’ll stop yelling.  I just LOVE that librarians and teachers and authors can be celebrities.  And he is definitely a celebrity to me Mrs. Sisul our principal; our fabulous librarian, Mrs. Meihaus;our fabulous librarian, Mrs. Meihaus; and lots of teachers who know him from Scholastic (Mrs. Scanlon!) and Twitter (loads more wonderful people I don’t want to mention so I don’t forget anyone. 🙂 ).

Mr. Schumacher (which is his real name), was in town for something with Scholastic (I am guessing…he’s the Ambassador for Libraries so he’s all around talking to kids about books.  Yeah, I’m kind of jealous of that job!), and was kind enough to take an invitation from many Kirkwood Schools (along with many other places from the way everyone’s talking about him, too!).  We were one of the grade levels that was lucky enough to meet him.  Our turn was this afternoon, and we visited with our friends Ms. Lewis’ class.

Much of Mr. Schu’s job includes sharing book talks as a means of getting books in kids’ hands, and that’s what I expected him to do; I knew our class would lean LOADS of new titles we wanted to read.  But then he stopped telling us about a good book and started READING a good book to us.  Amazing.

The book he shared with us was this one (which none of us had ever heard of before):

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This book is much like our favorite Pete the Cat books, and we loved how it had reading and SINGING!  Oh, and we added in dancing, too!

I didn’t catch the whole thing, but here’s a highlight of the awesome Mr. Schu with some even more awesome first grade listeners:

And then, what do you do when you meet a celebrity, but take a picture with them??  We had to, of course. 🙂

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And then take a silly one, just for fun. 🙂

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We love you and the books you share, Mr. Schu!  Thanks for coming to St. Louis!!  Come again soon?  If not, we’ll have to schedule a Skype call! 🙂

Morning (Mostly Math) Warm-Ups: First Grade 2016

If you have been around 20somethingkids for more than this year, you’ve probably seen my math warm-up posts, and then the start of our writing warm-ups that went really well in 2nd grade last year.

This year I started morning warm-ups pretty soon after school began, to get kiddos into the habit of reading the easel, thinking about their answer, and adding their post-it.  The ones in the beginning, though, were not yet math (or writing), but were other things instead that were related to what was going on in the classroom.

Our first warm ups of 2016 looked like this:

 

Then, once we had the hang of it, we started into more traditional math warm-ups, which are related to what we will be talking about that day (or what we did the day before):

Kiddos are on a roll with this Rm. 202 routine!

#classroombookaday Update: Week 3

Another week, LOTS more great titles!  I thought it was fun to look at the pictures this way:

Or like this:

Week 1
Week 3

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? 🙂

No Voice Day!

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!

 

What’s in a Name? (One More Time!)

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:

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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!

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What’s in a Name?–Continued

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.

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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. 🙂

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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:

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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:

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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!!