#GRA17 is FINALLY HERE!

I think it was two years ago when I first officially joined the Global Read Aloud. We were reading The Year of Billy Miller that year and I was teaching 2nd grade. I was invited by my Tweep Tam in Australia and was excited to collaborate worldwide with other kids and teachers reading the same text. Then last year, as I returned to 1st grade, I brought Ms. Turken along for the ride and had an even more amazing journey exploring and responding to Lauren Castillo books!

As we moved into this fall, excitement was high to join this project again, and THE DAY IS FINALLY HERE! We are so jazzed to be studying Mem Fox (and old, familiar favorite author!) and sharing our learning along the way. We will for sure use Seesaw to show our friends and family our thinking, but also hope to collaborate with other kids via Skype, too.

We started with a short video about Mem Fox, and some wondering about both her life and Australia, where she lives. Then, I shared a book I had written when I was teaching 2nd grade (as a mentor text during a culture study we were doing in Social Studies). It was a little indulgent–I got to have a Peter Reynolds moment and say “Australian Culture, by ME!”–but also helped give kids some background on Australia before we read.

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Kiddos wrote and drew about what they learned and uploaded their thinking to their Seesaw journals.

Today we came back, ready to hear Koala Lou (the first week’s book), but instead we first teased kiddos with a habit that we’ve learned that good readers do–take a sneak peek. We studied the front and back covers and kiddos made predictions about what they thought the story might be about. They did a pretty good job of guessing some things that actually happened in the story. Again, these were uploaded into Seesaw so we could share our learning. 🙂

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Then…finally, last thing today, IT WAS TIME to finally hear the story! We gathered in Rm. 112 and it sounded something like this:

We are SO EXCITED to see what comes next! Art maybe? Have any suggestions for us? 🙂

Happy Half-Day: October 2, 2017

Yesterday we had a 1/2 day. Just about one a month, teachers and students are released early and we head to an afternoon of professional learning (and yes, kiddos head home!). Check out some pictures of the fun and learning we had during our morning together. 🙂

Have you seen the SUPER AWESOME patio we have on the back of Rms. 111 and 112? Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. We have plans for how we can use this place for whole group situations (anyone wanna buy us an outdoor rug?), or maybe adding some different seating so kids or groups could work out there on nice days. On this day, it was perfect for a picnic lunch with our first grade friends. I think it’s funny how few students that looks like, but trust me, there are 40 kiddos and 3 adults out there in that space together. 🙂

AND…since it was so nice, we ventured outside to read again (remember the post about how reading in the trees makes you feel good?). Since we could only go to our front yard and we only had a little bit before it was time to go home, Ms. Turken and I gave kiddos the choice of reading-to-self or listening-to-reading while we were out there. As is usual, we were about 50/50 in each place.

There is just something different about reading outside, in the sunlight with the breeze blowing on you. SO glad these kiddos like it, too! Can’t wait for the next beautiful fall day we can do it again–I still have another great location for us to visit. Stay tuned so you can see what happens next on our reading journey! 🙂

Todd Parr: Reading Under a Tree!

If you’ve been around here for the last couple of weeks, you’ll know that we have become LOVERS of Todd Parr (and even Todd Parr himself!), and we’re on a mission to read all of this books. We’re at 10 so far, and one of the latest ones we shared together was The Feel Good Book.

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Before I even start I have to say how much I love this cover. Doesn’t it make you feel good before you even read it? Makes me want to dance. 🙂

Ok, well…we read this one the other day, and kiddos were asked to think about this question:

We found out that for a lot of us, hugs (especially from our siblings!) and our animals make us feel good!

Well…as we read the page that said: Reading under a tree makes you feel good, someone said, “I’ve never done that before.” “WHAT?!” (I’m pretty sure I shouted). “You’ve never read under a tree?! We have to change that!” So yep, we made a plan to make sure everyone knew what it was like to read under a tree. 🙂

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Besides just being fun (and making us feel good, like his books remind us), this was the perfect fall-weather day to enjoy outside, and I was reminded of how wonderful our outdoor spaces are at Robinson. And this isn’t even the end of it! There are at least two or three other places I can think of that we can snuggle down with a good book! Kids were already asking when we could do this again, and I was totally ok that everyone complained that we came in too soon. 🙂

THANK YOU TODD PARR, for making things like this so much fun and giving us great ideas for more ways to enjoy great books!

#classroombookaday 2017 UPDATE: Week 7

Hello, #classroombookaday friends! Another super week and we’ve read loads of great ones! Here’s our wall as of Friday:

We added 15 this week and are up to 115 books so far! Many of them are the same as last year (as kids have asked me), but so many of them are brand new ones I’ve never heard of before now. I love how we are finding new authors and then reading ALL of their books, as well as reuniting with old author friends from before. 🙂

Here are the highlights from this week:

You probably already know (if you read last week’s post) why there are so many Todd Parr books on this list! We have been HUGE fans of Todd Parr and are set to read all of his books. Perhaps the most fun part of this week was when Ms. Turken (and my kiddos) and I got to MEET HIM!! He was at our local bookstore to share and sign his newest book Love the World and we were there. 🙂 Super excited for this pic with our new friend. 🙂

I think I mentioned before, but it is worth repeating that I love how easy it is to share big messages with little kids by reading Todd Parr’s books. Everyone of them is accessible by all levels of readers and are about BIG IDEAS. We have had SO many deep conversations as we read and I’m so thankful for those lessons.

This week also added several stories that are related to things we’re learning:

Night of the Veggie Monster is a mentor text for our Small Moments unit in Writing, we’re using Ollie the Stomper as we’re learning about building good reading habits in Reader’s Workshop and the other two accompany our study on Light and Sound in Science. LOVE that literature is involved in these subjects.

The last ones were just for fun. Hug Machine has a fabulous Emily Arrow song (see below), the Sam book was a new one from our pal Mo Willems that we hadn’t read, Betty Goes Bananas is from the same author as the Mr. Panda books we’ve read (Steve Antony), and we’ve read several of the other “if you want to….DON’T” books along the way this year, too. Oh, and I wish I had a video of this, too, but I feel that I should mention that a puppet named Mr. Giggles read that Betty book to us and it was super fun.

Whew! What a great reading week. I’m excited for this week to come, as well, because we start the Global Read Aloud!! Stay tuned to see lots of Mem Fox added to the list!!

The BEAUTIFUL Skin We Live In!

Seems like I have been waiting FOREVER to share this post with you, but I wanted to wait until the final products were hung up before I finally wrote a about it. Man, it’s been hard!

If you have every visited my classroom, or if you have read this blog before, you hopefully know that diversity and community are two important parts of my classroom. I have done much over the last year to incorporate more diverse texts into my classroom (and life!), have celebrated cultures of our classroom families, and stressed with my kiddos how amazing it is that we are NOT all the same! Different is BEAUTIFUL!

I used some similar books from years past, because they are great and still worked to share that diversity, appreciation, celebration, inclusion message I wanted to send. Kids really enjoyed them. 🙂

I have done portraits many different ways over the years, but wanted to really focus on making them LOOK like us, especially the beautiful COLORS of us. It was a fun experiment to find just the right combination of paint to represent each kiddos’ face, and we had some great conversations about what we noticed, what we liked and what each color looked like.

The walls in this new room have afforded me the best place so far to display these masterpieces. They are high and smiling at us and we can see them from everywhere. I LOVE that you can see each kiddo’s personality in their portrait and even if they weren’t labeled we’d be able to tell who is who because they did such a FABULOUS job creating them. But most of all I love that they represent how beautifully and wonderfully made is each and every one of my Rm. 111 kiddos. 🙂

First Read With Your Roadrunner of 2017!

Man, this must have been a busy week because I didn’t blog all week AND I have pictures from things that happened a week ago. MANY APOLOGIES! Goodness. I will try to do better this week. 🙂

But for now, I’ll share pics from our first Read With Your Roadrunner. We had so many family members representing, and I love that kiddos were willing to share their parents with other kids who didn’t have someone (even with my own kiddo who needed someone since I had to be teacher, not mom–thanks Nicholas!!). We had several siblings who came to join us, too, and believe me–RWYR is always a GREAT way to start the day! Can’t wait to see even more next time!

Mrs. Weststrate and Mrs. Dix came to join us!

Josiah had two visitors!

Nicholas let my Allie join his family for the morning!

Ms. Clay read with Mkahi and Makenna.

Bennett and Campbell shared a book together.

Mr. van Alstyne shared a book with Thomas and Avi and he has a SUPER reading voice!

Zander and his brother shared a chapter book!

#classroombookaday UPDATE: Do You See What I See?

So before I even say anything, let me show you a picture. 🙂

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Do you see the BIG GIANT thing that happened this week in our #classroombookaday challenge?? WE HIT OUR 100TH BOOK!! WOOHOO!!

I went back to look and it seems like we hit that mark about week 5 last year (not that it matters, but somehow I’m competitive even with myself!), so we’re a week or so off (this was our 6th week of school). Regardless of when it happens, though, it seems like such a GREAT accomplishment to have been able to share so many amazing books with these first grade kiddos (and SO MANY words and SO MANY great conversations, too!). Let me show you what we added this week. 🙂

Wow, right? 15 books is pretty good, I’d say, but didn’t have time for all the ones Ms. Turken and I really want to read (and actually we read more than this but the rule is that we can only hang it up if BOTH of our classes get to hear it). We had several things happen this week that impacted these choices:

Our class focus was on the Robinson Expected Behavior of being kind and caring. We also talked about being considerate and responsible for our choices. I love the line in that book We Can Get Along that says “I can choose to walk away, my choices BELONG TO ME.” It’s so important that kiddos know and understand that they need to OWN their behavior, that THEY are in control of their choices and also that their choices have consequences (both good and bad ones!). Do Unto Otters was so great, too, as there are so many practical examples of what it looks like when we think of others before ourselves. And not to leave the other one out, What Does it Mean to Be Kind? was a great one for littles because it’s just so simple: this is kindness and this is not. Nerdy Birdy was shared with us by Ms. Cohen (our counselor) when she came to talk to us this week.
We are also SUPER EXCITED for a visit that Todd Parr is making to a local bookstore near us next week and we are getting ready by reading as many books of his as we can! We have enjoyed them and even had Mrs. Sisul share one of them with us for her Principal Read Aloud this week. LOVE that she’s involved in this journey of ours!!
Many first graders have gotten into the read-aloud game and sharing books with us! This week three of Ms. Turken’s friends and our own Maddie read to us and it was so great! What amazing readers they already are, with such expressive voices (oh and sorry, Sutton, somehow I didn’t get a picture of you 😦 )!

4. We started new investigation in counting and organizing and so we read the funny story of the disorganized Masloppy family to set the context for our math work.

Whew! What a busy reading week! We’re having so much fun and enjoying so many new stories and authors. Can’t wait to see what’s on tap for next week! What have you been reading? Please leave us a comment and share a great story you have enjoyed lately, or one you recommend that we read! 🙂

You Can Read EVERYWHERE!

Last week we read a great book called You Can Read by Helaine Becker (as we practiced Read-To-Self and talked about the 3 ways to read) and it was quickly a first grade favorite. The kids in the story are reading in all sorts of (funny) places, including the bathroom, the backyard, the bus, the car and maybe even in a tree.

If you’ve been around 20somethingkids for a while, you know that reading and books and literacy is a BIG deal for me and my students. So what better way to spend our first 1/2 day of the year than enforcing that YOU CAN READ EVERYWHERE idea by making take-home t-shirt book bags??

We had been collecting t-shirts for a couple of weeks and finally we were ready to do something with them! Because we are on this co-teaching journey together, Ms. Turken and I had planned that both rooms would be doing this today, and that we’d use both of our rooms for the work. Kiddos spread out and got busy knot tying! Besides being fun, the job of creating this bag for themselves enabled them to practice some important fine-motor skills and also helped get them SUPER EXCITED about filling up their new bag with books to read at home!

The smiles when they were done, as well as the SILENCE in the room as they worked (alone and by helping friends!) was inspiring! 🙂

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First Grade ABCs

Not surprisingly, the alphabet is an IMPORTANT part of the first days of first grade. Some kiddos are still learning the letters, some are still connecting the sounds, as well as learning how to correctly form the letters so that we can become efficient and fluent writers (more on that later).

We’re read lots of ABC books:

Every year I like to do some sort of class-made alphabet. Last time around we drew the pictures, and then I used our creations to make the letter charts for our tables (that kiddos can utilize while they write and read).

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This year, instead of just drawing, we decided to use torn paper. Our focus has been on fine motor work at the same time as letters, sounds and names and so it just made sense. Kiddos made their image on an index card and then we attached it to the letter.

And even before they were finished they looked AMAZING. Doesn’t this picture make you happy?

Ok, well then here they are hanging up. Decided to put them over our cubbies because they are easily seen, as well as because kiddos can reach them if need be.

I love that every year the same activity can be new and different and this year it was because of the vowels. In the past, there has only been one picture for each one. This was always confusing when we were actually using the chart or wall letters because somehow the kids always needed the other sound. So this time we made two. 🙂 Or…in the case of A, we actually made 3 (including the way that a can sound like a u at the beginning–or end–of some words). I’m super excited about how much more useful (and used!) these letters will be.

Also, because we’re working so hard on forming our letters correctly, we added the directions for how to make them (the red numbers and arrows). Again, hopefully this will make them ever more helpful!

Here are the rest:

I’m not sure I’ve been so excited about the alphabet before! GREAT job, Rm. 111 friends!

#classroombookaday UPDATE: First of the year!

Somehow we’ve gotten to the 22nd day of school and I have only posted ONE TIME about our book-a-day challenge. Because that’s the reality, I will NOT tell you about every book we’ve read (we’re up to 85 as of today!!), but I will give some words about this week’s additions. Hope you enjoy, and maybe even find a book you might want to read!

First, here’s what our wall looks like right now (the pic on the left):

(At this point last year we were at 89. Funny–I thought for sure we were reading faster this year!)

This display is so different than how I displayed it last year, and in some ways I think it’s hard to see how quickly it’s growing…

…but FOR SURE it’s an improvement because of all of the kids and teachers who get to look at it now! I LOVE to see last year’s kiddos walk past and marvel, as well as other kids point out the books on our list that they’ve read, and the way so many people say “Man–they read ALOT of books!” I’ve even heard from teachers who have now begun to keep their own book lists as they read with their classes. LOVE the inspiration that can come from such a project just because it’s shared in a different way!

Ok…here’s what we read this week:

You can probably tell by the titles that our focus this week was on our community (getting to know each other and celebrate how each of one us is special and unique) as well as the celebration of Dot Day–we ended up reading 6 of Peter Reynold’s books!! The Hooray for Kids book was really cool and led us to a scavenger hunt where we found out what kind of kids we are:

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As we shared out after we were finished we made lots of connections to who is like us and who we might want to know better. I’m excited to build on the things we learned!

What did you read this week? 🙂

20somethingkids and 1kookyteacher

Starting a 3rd Grade Journey

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