Five for Friday {Let’s Catch up!}

Hey, ya’ll! I’m FINALLY  coming out of football mom, tired teacher starting the year mode and finding a thing closer to balance! It’s been far too long and I’m dropping in to shoo away all those crickets that have been chirping around the blog! How’ve you been?!

My sonshine played football for the first time this year and let me tell you….IF you’ve never experienced the joy of having a son in a Texas youth football league….it’s taken pretty darn seriously! It was like having a part time job! So, with that being said…I had to take a little break to be present for my favorite player. Noooow, that the season is done, let’s get back to a little blogging fun!

Here’s a little flashback over the last couple of weeks…..

This has easily become my favorite quick foldable! We’ve adopted it from the Frayer model. The Frayer model is used for vocabulary development. The middle section houses a word, with the four surrounding sections dedicated to defining the word, listing facts/characteristics, providing examples and listing non-examples. Wellllll, as you can see, we did not use it for vocabulary, but rather used it as a way of visually organizing information on our papers. Could we use it at a different time for vocabulary? Absolutely! I think this quick organizer will be awesome to use for any number of things!

My students and I work and learn best when we’re creating, when we’re involved in the process of learning without the priority being the end product….so we complete a LOT of graphic organizers and foldables. This one provides us with the space to share the focus concept in the center, while dividing our paper into sections to show our learning. We also usually use them front and back. The example above shows how we illustrated 10’s and 1’s, then used the 120 chart to generate numbers.

I prefold the paper for students by folding the paper into 4 squares, then taking the central corner of the paper and folding it down diagonally to create a triangle. When it’s  unfolded, it reveals a rhombus in the middle with the 4 surrounding sections. Students are then instructed to trace the lines of the rhombus….followed by the 4 lines that are north, south, east, and west of it to create the writing spaces.

You’ll definitely see more of this foldable!

Place value is a tough concept for little learners, so we use lots of hands on fun and games to practice this skill. On this day, we rolled dice to build and compare numbers. Another simple foldable was used to record our learning. One fold straight down the vertical center of the page….the partners rolled, built, wrote numbers and recorded the comparison symbol on the fold line.

Tired of foldables yet? Here’s just one more……I pre-folded the paper. Students traced the fold lines, then we practiced modeling numbers in different forms. Looks simple, right? Not! Remember, these are 1st graders. Awesome 1st graders….that need to wiggle move and take their time to organize their work. We went over each section of the first number together and then students worked to display the different number forms for the last 2 numbers while I rotated around the room helping.

Creating foldables also provides the opportunity for students to listen for my voice and become accustomed to following directions. While our end products are organized well, it’s still the process of creating that gets us the most bang for our learning buck! And you should see the pride shining on their little faces when they see what they’re truly capable of doing! It’s amazing!

Every once in a while, they let me hold the pen too…! Macrons (line placed over long vowels) and breves (indicates short vowel sound)…yep, we talk about those too!

Writer’s workshop is moving right along! We’re enjoying Lucy Calkins lessons and are ALMOST done with our anchor chart. We’ve begun to publish, BUT have got to find the time to add the final step to our chart! That darn clock just keeps on ticking!

Wellllll, that’s what we’ve been up! What have you and your firsties been learning about? See ya again….real soon! =)

Sunday Reflections & Lesson Plans

Hi, Friends! How are ya? It’s Sunday evening…as I enjoy my guilty pleasure (reality TV), it’s really nice to have an extra day to prep for the upcoming  week. Actually, with MORE time on my hands I’ve gotten my lesson plans done earlier! Go figure! LOL!

In between completing mid-year assessments, we took some time to wiggle and learn in fun, creative ways. Having to slow down a bit for assessments has also brought about a few changes in instruction that I’ll share a little later…..here’s what we were up to last week.

“COOL, Mrs. Dwyer…I really like this book!”

 

To make the best use of our time, we incorporate science and social studies into our writer’s workshop block. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday we concentrate on sight words, grammar, and writing. On Tuesdays, our focus is social studies. On Thursdays, our focus is science. As often as possible, we also make cross curricular connections during our literacy block. We read The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall to explore how the change in seasons affect plants. After reading it and discussing it, we got our bag lady on…

 

 

For this activity, the sentences were completed through guided writing. After students finished their writing and illustrations, they then got to complete it by adding the apple tree torn art to the front cover. They really enjoyed this activity and put a great deal of thought into it, after we had a heart to heart about the importance of completing our work neatly.

“This is my favorite book we’ve made so far!”

 

They thought the Apple Pie Tree booklet was pretty cool, but favored our landforms flipbook a little more.

 

 

 

I have an active class full of some of the cutest, firstie boys you’d ever want to meet! Exploring landforms was right up their alley. Most of them chose to go mountain climbing to explore the features of their favorite landform. I WISH I had enough time to share the hilariousness we experience in Room 159. A boy heavy classroom is a very interesting, active place to be!

 

 

We spiced up our daily word work by using paint samples to rhyme and mark glued sounds. Writing with sharpies was definitely appreciated because they don’t get to touch THOSE too often!

 

 

By Friday, it may have been a sunny 70ish outside, but it was chilly in our classroom because a blizzard of blends blew through! Decoding blends is one of those skills that we'll spiral review constantly. With the introduction of blends, digraphs, compound words, suffixes….our words are getting bigger and correct spellings are becoming more important. Word play has to be fun!

 

 

Brrrrrrrrr…..in honor of all things Frozen, we listened to the soundtrack from the movie as we worked to complete our snow storm of blends too!

Looking ahead to next week…


Daily phonemic awareness activities have been added.



Small group lessons have been differentiated according to instructional needs.

 
Testing continues with mid-year reading records and adjustments to flexible groups are being made.



….with LOTS of fun to be had!  Stop by A Classroom Full of Smiles to check out her new weekly linky and the giveaway she’s hosting. You may recognize one of the contributors! Have a great week, friends!