Tag Archives: read aloud

Robinson University–1st Grade Style!

Our school has begun a really great program that we run on 1/2 days called Robinson University.  Somehow I participated in it all last year and never wrote about it, though.  Ugh.  Basically the big idea is that all the adults at our school offer a variety of classes to the 2nd-5th graders, giving them the opportunity to try out things that they may not have the chance to participate in during their regular school day or even in after school activities.  Last year I taught a sewing class with Mrs. Uhles, and there were many other exciting things available otherwise.  The ones I can remember (and surely I will forget some good ones, so I apologize in advance!) were things like coding, cooking, gardening, art, outdoor adventures, dodgeball, chess, yoga, card games, board games, The Olympics, Rig-a-Ma-Jig, crab soccer, LEGOS (lots of LEGOS!), 3D animation, and even a musical!  This year there are many amazing offerings again and we’ve added geocaching, jewelry making and loads more–all based on kid recommendation and adult expertise!

Needless to say, these days are super motivating and pretty much EVERYONE comes to school to participate with HUGE smiles on their faces. 🙂  Ok, that’s like most days at our school, but it’s especially true on 1/2 days. 🙂

Well…on RU days, though, kindergarten and first grade do their own version of exciting adventures, but geared more towards a early elementary lens, and without so much ado (the big kids go to all different classes with different teachers and different kiddos and rotate to more than one class!).  We have had great opportunities to plan amazing experiences for our kiddos so far, too, and have used our 1/2 days to extend the learning that is going on in our classrooms at the time.  For our first 1/2 day in September, we spent time exploring with scientific tools in the Robinson woods, learning and applying knowledge about light and sound.  For our second go-round (which was just before Veterans’ Day), each teacher worked with their small group to teach about a branch of the military.

For this last one of the semester, we decided to give our kiddos a sneak peek of what the big kids are doing, and even get them ready for when they’ll be making their big choices in 2nd grade.  After the team talked it over, we agreed that we’d still do rotations so that kiddos could get a variety of options, and that we each wanted to do something that was our passion.  We each offered something so different and it was so much fun!

Kiddos had short rotations of an engineering challenge with Mrs. Mafigiri, play and improv with Mrs. Marks (she had costumes and toys and puppets!), an introduction to coding with Ms. Turken and I offered a couple of great read alouds.  I know, you’re surprised by that, right?  Ms. Mimlitz, our more than amazing TA was also in the loop, and took kiddos out for some fresh air and play time.  Luckily it was a beautiful day!

I know that the kiddos had a SUPER time in all the other stations, but since I was really on in my session, it’s the only one I can share details about.  Sorry. 😦  Promise I’ll make them good. 🙂

Since the other teachers had a theme in their stations, I wanted to make sure that my read alouds and our activity was around a central idea, too.  We had found a great list of picture books that promote a growth mindset from weareteachers.com and knew it would be a great place to use as a resource!  Since growth mindset is a BIG DEAL in our Robinson community (and is even in our Robinson Mindset we recite every morning) so it’s the direction I went with our stories.

I ended up choosing two great stories that I knew would allow for great conversations and would fit into my time frame.

Before we read, we reviewed what we knew about having a growth mindset and I shared with them some words that one might use if they were using a growth mindset–things that they might hear in their heads when they were using their self-talk.  I had these sayings on speech bubbles stuck on popsicle sticks and we made the characters “say” them at various points in the story (I didn’t get a good picture of them individually, but you’ll see them in our final product later on in this post!).

Once we had read and discussed, we worked to create some visuals to help teach the REST OF ROBINSON about using a growth mindset.  We had gotten the OK from Mrs. Sisul to use an empty bulletin board in a downstairs hall where everyone walks, so we were excited to fill it up with first grade faces.  I had each first grader (and then lots of Robinson adults!) choose either a saying that they used a lot to remind them to use a growth mindset OR one that they struggled with using and wanted to try to use more often.  Either way kiddos posed in front of my book-covered classroom door with their speech bubble and CHEESED!!  Let me show you. 🙂

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Pretty great, right?  Yeah…and the first time we walked by, of course we had to stop so everyone could say “that’s me!” or “there I am!” 🙂

Here are the sayings, up close:

And now, since I know you want to see all of those cutie-pie faces a little closer (so you can say, “Hey, that’s my kid!” or “Hey, I know her!”), here’s a quick slide show of all of the pics on that board.

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Thanks for reading about Robinson University!  We’re excited for our next 1/2 day when kiddos will get a chance to choose two of their favorite activities from this first try to spend more time exploring!  What a great day that will be. 🙂

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week 16 (yep, we’ve missed a few)

Whew!  I’m pretty sure I blinked and November was over, and I also took a look and now we’re on WEEK 16 of our book-a-day (or a little more!) challenge.  I think I shared that we’ve now moved to the inside of our door, but if not, here’s a pic so you’ll see what we’re up to now.  Sorry to have missed the last 3 weeks! Thanksgiving break always throws a little bit of a wrench in the works. 🙂

So…here’s where we are as of last Friday, December 9:

We’re up to 266 books!! I am still wondering if my prediction of 500 will happen, but for sure we’ll get close to filling up this side of our door before Spring Break!

#classroombookaday UPDATE: WE FILLED UP OUR DOOR!

Many of you have been along for this entire journey so far as we’ve taken on the #classroombookaday challenge, but for those who have not, please check out the links to them here so get caught up before we share this momentous occasion with you. 🙂

Week 1  Week 2   Week 3  Week 4  Week 5  Week 6

Week 7  Week 8  Week 9  Week 10  Week 11  Week 12

Ok…are you ready for the big news??  Take a look (just peek past that super cute kindergartner–she’s really excited for Rm. 202!!):

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LOOK!!  WE FILLED UP OUR DOOR!!!  Amazing, right??  And for the record (I’m keeping one, aren’t you??), it happened on Thursday, November 17, after we read our 225th book!!  WAHOO!!

And remember when we started our Friday with Read With Your Roadrunner? Well, a kind and loyal parent and blog reader, Mrs. Schuster, happened to ask me about the status of our door.  “Have you filled it yet?  If not yet, then soon, right?”  I admitted that we had indeed already met the goal, but that because of printer problems, I hadn’t yet been able to get the pictures ready so I could attach them.

Well, this actually worked out in our favor as her next question was something along the lines of “Well you’re going to celebrate it, right?” Of course I knew that this was a momentous occasion, but I had failed to plan how we would celebrate.  Talk about a right time/right place situation–Mrs. Schuster would come to the rescue and we planned a little ditty for later that afternoon.  In the meantime I had to get the pics on the door and throw together what we’d do at our party. 🙂

So…after we did some heavy work cleaning up our “hot mess” of a room before we got started (thanks for those words, Aadish!), we gathered on the rug to enjoy a special time celebrating some AMAZING work we’d done as readers together.

We gathered in a circle on our rainbow rug (where almost all of our reading also happens!) and had a little chat.  We mused about all the books we’ve read so far (225 to cover the door, but 228 altogether!) and tried to imagine what that meant in terms of number of words we’d read and also about how many we’d get to by the end of the year if we were already at this point in NOVEMBER!! It was so great to watch their faces and listen to their answers and it was clear that there were only positive, happy emotions running through Rm. 202 friends.  And it was also clear how the only “big” numbers that many first graders know at this point are a billion or a “million billion thousand”! Hee hee.  Those were their answers to how many words we’d read and how many books we would end up with. Love it.  Probably not that many, Rm. 202 friends, but FOR SURE there would be close to (or maybe more than) 500.  At least that’s my guess!

I wish I had pictures and videos of all that happened, but hey–I’m usually the videographer and photographer capturing all of that, so not this time.  But you what?  It is probably better that way.  When I’m  not looking at the world–and our classroom–through the screen of my iPhone, I can be more present in the moment I’m trying to celebrate.  I can more thoughtfully digest the things they’re saying about how all of these books are making us SUPER READERS and what their favorite titles are, and how Jamie can speak to the exact day and place we read one of her favorite books. “Don’t you remember? We read it outside that day we spent at Meramec under the tree?” was what she reminded us.  Isn’t it a magical example of how this challenge is as much about the EXPERIENCE of reading as it is the number of books or the skills we’re gaining.  I so want for each of my learners to have that same “I remember when I read…” moments–lots of them!–that will carry them far beyond first grade.  Hopefully long into their adult lives when they can begin replicating them in their own families. 🙂

But that’s for later.  For now I can only control the experiences I provide, the titles I choose and the excitement I bring that I hope is contagious and inspires them to do the same.  And as for inspiration, Mrs. Schuster (remember the mom from the beginning who suggested our party?) was inspired to write us a poem to mark the day.  It was pretty great.  But since I wasn’t ready I don’t have a good video of her reading it to us. 😦 Boo.  Here is the text, though, which will soon become a permanent fixture somewhere in our room.

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Isn’t that the best?  THANK YOU THANK  YOU THANK YOU for that little gem, Renee, and for letting me share it here.  Only makes sense. 🙂

Oh, and then there were 20something kids eating fruit leather and letting it hang out of their faces like tongues.

And wouldn’t you know it?  They connected this to a book we’d read this week about how a if your tongue was as long as a frog’s tongue, you could like your belly button! These kiddos are in DEEP!!  Love it. 🙂

And a my goodness–what a great way to finish a busy week!  EVERYONE was all smiles as they walked out of Rm. 202 for the weekend.  Here’s to a door-ful of great books to come!!

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week 12

Whew!  This was a BUSY week!  We had a day off with Election Day, but then came back and hit the ground running with Veterans’ Day on Friday and our program.  We were really excited about continuing our work with shapes, non-fiction (both in Reading and Writing), as well as some author work with Lauren Castillo as we finished up the Global Read Aloud.  So…that meant that we got 19 books read in 4 days, and we also hit a TREMENDOUS milestone: we passed 200 books!!

First the update of what the door looks like now:

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WOWZA!  Look at all those books! (And yes, I did have to fudge that last strip of pictures–didn’t get them on before I left on Friday!)

We are up to 208 now, and reached 200 with this book on Thursday:

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We put a star on it, just like when we got to 100. 🙂

This week we read 3 or 4 non-fiction books to help us with our reading and writing work, 5 shape books to go along with our math investigations, 2 books about the sun (the focus in our Science unit right now), and a couple of additional texts by some authors we love but haven’t read yet: The Happiest Book Ever by Bob Shea (we started Wednesday morning with this one!), King Baby by Kate Beaton (we read this one twice because it was so good!), Cat the Cat Who is That? and Nanette’s Baguette by Mo Willems (all those -et words!!), and Happy Like Soccer by Maribeth Boelts and Lauren Castillo.  Lastly, we ended the week with a Veterans’ Day tribute as Mrs. Meihaus read America’s White Table to us during our Library visit.

As I always say, I’m excited to see what this next week will bring us (I think there are at least 6 books on the plan for tomorrow already!), and am SO GLAD we are doing this challenge.  Someday soon I plan on having some big-deal math around the work we’ve done here so far, as well as predictions for where we might go.  Can’t wait to share! 🙂

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week 9

This was a short week at school (we only had Weds-Fri), so our list is a little smaller than other weeks.  But believe me it is no less amazing! (Oh, and by the way, I realized that picture looks like we’re a little closer to filling up our door than we actually are….still a couple more weeks away. 🙂 ).

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Here’s the close up of the week (which I realized I don’t usually share):

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This week we started with another Mo Willems title we hadn’t read, as well as a Kate Klise book that kiddos read last year before she came to visit.  On Thursday we were lucky to have Mrs. Sisul swing by with her brand-spanking new copy of Hotel Bruce, which she had promised to read to us when she came with Mother Bruce earlier this year.  She had a great story about how she had gotten her copy from her favorite local bookstore and had also celebrated Bruce’s book birthday last Tuesday.  We read two Pigeon books for our punctuation study, and The Reader for the Global Read Aloud this week.   Two of our books were recommendations from our friend Rachel, and then lastly we were lucky to have a familiar 4th grade friend come and read to us on Friday.  Remember when Allie came to read Naked to us?  Well, during that visit they had asked if Riley could come, too, and Friday he finally came!  His grade was having a whole day reading celebration and so he spent some of his time reading Mustache Baby Meets His Match to us.   We LOVED it!

Another successful reading week!  Our count is up to 161 so far, which is SO AMAZING!  Can’t wait to see what this coming week holds! 🙂

Global Read Aloud Week 3: The Reader

This week was the half-way point of the Global Read Aloud.  We have so enjoyed the texts we’ve read so far, and this week’s book was no different.  Lauren Castillo has become a new friend to all of Rm. 202 kiddos and we enjoyed interacting with another of her great books: The Reader.

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As we read this beautiful story of a boy, his dog, a cold, snowy day and a good book, we discussed many parts and made many predictions.  We talked about who we thought “the reader” was, where we thought they were going, and we even connected a part of the story with the punctuation investigation we started the other day (which OF COURSE I’ll tell you more about later on!).

We got to this page of the book, when the boy heads toward home, and thought that maybe something was missing (sorry, Lauren Castillo!).

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So…we added it. 🙂  And the best part was that Rm. 202 kiddos knew that it needed exclamation points to make it sound exciting, and they also suggested that it be written in all capital letters because that also tells the reader how it should sound. 🙂

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Great, right?  And of course, no disrespect to the way it was actually written.  Reading lots Elephant and Piggie books makes us see speech bubbles EVERYWHERE!!

After we read and talked, we decided to get artistic and kiddos were invited to paint in response to the story.  They were asked to answer one of these two questions: Where is YOUR favorite place to read? or What is YOUR favorite thing to do in the winter?   Once their paintings were complete, they chose a paper to matte their piece, and wrote a card to explain their creation.  We brainstormed words we might want to use and created a chart to use a resource in our writing.  I CANNOT wait to see what these look like altogether on the bulletin board at school, but I had to go ahead and share them individually with you here from home.  They sure are pretty!!

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And I know I have said this every week of the GRA so far, but maybe this is the week that we finally join the slow chat about the books we’re reading.  Maybe. LOL 🙂

 

 

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week 8

It’s the end of the 1st Quarter, and I am SO GLAD I decided to keep track of our books like this!  I know that it has helped us in loads of ways, and has changed some of my thinking as well.

First of all, while it is not hard data, I can tell that the kiddos in my room have gotten more interested in both reading and writing because of the presence of so many great books!  The first few days of school, I remember saying sadly to my friends, “This class doesn’t like to read!  They don’t like books! What is up with that!?”  Honestly, I remembered the sounds of disgust and the moans that emerged from many first grade bodies when I’d announce that we would meet on the rug to share a story, and the mention of having THEM read was like asking them to drink vinegar!  I was seriously worried that we’d be fighting all year about how amazing reading and writing are and how you should do them every day.  To look at them now, you’d never know that was where we had started.  I can say that everyone in my class is a willing reader, and many choose to do so whenever they get a chance to make a free choice.  It has also upped the excitement about writing, as well, since Rm. 202 kiddos understand the connection between reading a great book and where it came from.  They have, on many occasions written their own versions of great stories we’ve read–mainly Elephant and Piggie, but also other Mo Willems books (yep, we’re still HUGE FANS!).  They are then super excited to be able to read those books to the class; this is a new phenomenon in my primary classes–I’ve never had kiddos so eager to read to their friends!  You will notice many of these kid-published titles on our door. 🙂

Secondly, I’d have to say that our excitement with #classroombookaday has changed my intention, purpose and selection of read alouds in our class.  Read aloud has also been a big deal in my classroom, and I completely believe that it is a crucial piece of the puzzle to creating strong readers and writers–and thinkers!  In the past, however, my read alouds have been primarily chapter books.  Even in 1st grade, my book choices were longer texts (often series or other stories) that I know and love that I want to expose my kiddos to so they can love them, too!  First grade read alouds last time included graphic novel series like Lunch Lady and Babymouse, which most kiddos hadn’t yet heard of.  We also enjoyed many authors that wrote a variety of different kinds of books, like Kate DiCamillo.  We have read the Mercy Watson series, the Leroy Ninker series, as well as The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane.  While I do believe I will eventually get around to reading longer texts and starting our Read Aloud Timeline (another core part of my literacy instruction), I think this will probably not happen now until after the new year.  Because of my focus on the #classroombookaday challenge, I’ve become more interested and aware of great picture books and picture book authors that I didn’t really know before (it’s weird I know, I am a first grade teacher and I didn’t really read picture books).  This has lead to some new friends and new favorite books and new people to connection with on Twitter with my class.   This whole process has also increased the amount of books that kiddos bring me from home or from the library that we “HAVE TO READ.”  I love that they are being more discriminate about what their friends might like or what a “good” book sounds like. Win/win for everyone, wouldn’t you say?

Ok, so here’s our new door picture, up to date from last Friday.  We’re up to 152 now–which blows my mind!  And we still stop to look at the beautiful book covers (as does almost everyone else who walks by!) every time we’re in the hall.  Check it out!

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This week we read many less books than previous weeks.  I’d say it was probably because it was the last week of the quarter and so worked much more on finished up assessments and such instead of gathering together on the rug for a lesson (which is when most of our read alouds happen).  We have 3 kid-written books on our door this week, as well as a Curious George book, a wordless book by Tomie dePaola (which is a new author to us), another Ashlyn Anstee book that also has an Emily Arrow songEmily Arrow song, a Pigeon book we hadn’t read, a Pete the Cat math book and the second book from the Global Read Aloud schedule.  Whew!  Even with less titles, we were busy and engrossed in REALLY GOOD BOOKS!

I do have a couple more pictures to share before I go…

Mara, Kaiden and Aadish are three kiddos that have been most interested in writing their own texts for our class to read.  This week we had one from each of them, but I’m sorry to say I only have a picture of Kaiden’s book–not of him actually reading it.  Sorry buddy!

Ok, one more. 🙂  Ms. Turken’s class is also on the #classroombookaday journey, and their board looks like this:

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Don’t all those books just make you happy?!  Thanks for reading!  As always, if you have a book or author suggestion, please leave us a comment and we’ll definitely try it out! 🙂

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week 6

Wow–I feel like every week I say “I can’t believe it’s been this long already!” but again, I say I can’t believe it’s been SIX WEEKS of the bookaday challenge.  But even more, I can’t believe we’re already at 124 books!!  I love that some said today, “I wonder if we’ll get to 1000 soon!” Ok, so maybe it means I need to do some more place value work, but I also think it speaks to the love of reading and books that is growing in Rm. 202.  And I love it!

Beyond just sharing the “door picture” like I’ve been doing every week, I want to highlight a little about what has happened with some of the books we read this week, as well as some wonderings that have come up this week as we’ve been reading.

First our latest picture:

img_4361I feel like I say this every week now, too, but looking at this just makes me happy!

We started the week reading a book recommended by Mrs. Sisul when she was in our room last time–Up and Down by Oliver Jeffers.  We’re already fans of Stuck and Lost and Found, and had wanted to try some others (I have a couple of others in the TBR basket right now actually!).   We were supposed to take a vote after we read it and let Mrs. Sisul know if she should share that one with the rest of Robinson, too, and we voted YES!

A quick favorite this week was Are We There, Yeti? by Ashton Anstee, which we actually learned about because of our love of all things Emily Arrow.  Oh, come on, you know her–the Dot Day song lady.  Well…since we’re subscribed to her YouTube Channel, we know there are loads of other great book/song combinations she’s created, and this was one of them.  I’m posting the song below, but beware, it’s very catchy!!  I’m planning on using the lyrics to this song as our shared reading text next week, which I think will be really cool.

We added two more Elephant and Piggie books this week (how you can not LOVE those?): I Will Fly Today and Can I Play Too?  Both were great, but we laughed especially loud at the joke in CIPT: the friend who wants to play is a snake, and Elephant and Piggie are trying to play ball.  Lots of craziness ensues, but the end is a happy one where the snake thanks them for playing “with” their friend.  Yep–they throw him!  We definitely LOL’d when we saw that one. 🙂  And speaking of Elephant and Piggie (thanks Mo Willems for writing these amazing little gems!), we ended the week with a box from Amazon that had two new books in it!!  Thanks Raebers!  We’re excited to read I Love New Toy on Monday. 🙂

Kaiden brought in a big pile of books from home this week (I love that kids are starting to do that regularly and share their favorite titles with the rest of us!), and we shared two of them so far: Zoo Looking by Mem Fox and Please, Mr. Panda by Steve Antony.

We have a Mem Fox author box in our library, so Kaiden thought this would be a good one to read to introduce our class to her writing.  He brought Please, Mr. Panda because we’ve been working so hard on using kind words and being respectful.  That one hdd a great lesson about how it feels when people are rude to you as opposed to how it feels when others use manners.  We liked them both and learned form them, too!

I found a great one–The Best Book to Read–at the library on my last visit and was excited to finally share it with my kiddos on Thursday.  We had a great conversation about what the “best” book to read would be, and how that means something different to everyone. Mara suggested that every book is the best book to read.  She ended up being right!  This book also started some great conversations about libraries, and what special places they are, as well as an important discussion about library cards and what amazing treasures those can be!  It started a plan for a walking field trip soon!  We are so excited!

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Lastly, Mrs. Sisul came back again (isn’t it amazing that our principal reads to us!?) to read Strictly No Elephants by Lisa Mantchev.

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It was on her list during the first rotation of Principal Read Alouds, but I had her save it for a later time.  Her visit today was purposely tied to our conversations lately about including everyone, being kind to others, and the fact that I had found an Emily Arrow song about it!  Perfect, right??  I know, eventually I might stop gushing about her amazingness, but for now I’ll just share another song. 🙂

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Week 5

I feel like I should be sure to say thanks to Jillian Heise for the fabulousness that is #classroombookaday on Twitter.   And I am so truly sorry if I ever seemed like I created it–I think I just started using it in my title so I didn’t have to retype it when I tweeted out my posts.  Anyhow, what a great thing this has done (and is doing) in my classroom (and so many others!) to promote literacy, introduce readers to new books and to create so many great memories between me and my students.

Ok…this marks Week 5 since we started tracking our reading, and something very special happened–we hit 100 books!!  I haven’t done it yet, but I feel like I should mark that book with a star or something (it was the Light and Sound book just for the record!), and also begin more seriously planning what in the world we’ll do when we fill up our door.  The way the math is working, that will happen in about 6 weeks!  That’s not even the halfway point of the year yet!

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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!