Author's Chair

My class loves sharing their writing in the "Author's Chair". This week we practiced capitalizing the first word in a sentence, adding a period and writing all of the other words/letters in the sentence with lower case letters (unless it's a word from our "What Gets a Capital Letter" chart). Each student that shares first reads his/her sentence and then shows the class their illustration. We give each author a compliment on his/her writing before the next student shares. We are becoming authors and illustrators!

Surfer of the Week--Elsie!

Elsie was our first "Surfer of the Week". We loved getting to know all about Elsie this week when she brought items that are special to her in to share with us. On her last day, her mom came in and read us a story that was one of Elsie's favorites from when she was a baby. Thank you for sharing with us this week Elsie!

My Eyes Can See

New Bathroom Procedure!

Today we learned our new bathroom procedure during our morning 90 minute reading block where we do Daily 5. The students are allowed to use the restroom without asking to go, but only get the one chance during the 90 minute block. During the student's choice time, I am working either one on one conferring with students or working in strategy groups and are not to be interrupted while they are completing their independent choices. We were having a few students who seemed to be spending more time in the bathroom than at their choice =). So to solve this problem, we now have our names outside the bathroom door and if a student chooses to use the restroom during one of his/her choices they remove their name tag from the door and place it in the basket. After doing so, they go about the rest of their morning completing various activities during each of the five choices. Today being the first day, we had several students who were sure to use the new procedure. I'm sure the "newness" will wear off and it will just become part of our normal routine!

Election Day!

During writing time today we discussed how today is Election Day. We put what we are studying in writing and information about Election Day together in a predictable chart. We started talking this week about what words get a capital letter, the beginning of a sentence has a capital letter and every sentence should have a period at the end. We haven't talked about question marks or exclamation points yet, so right now all of our sentences are usually ending in a period. We completed the chart about Election Day using what we have learned with capitalizing the beginning of the sentence, special holidays and names of people. We also had a few words within the sentence that were missing and we discussed why they should not be capitalized. We finished each sentence by adding a nice, round period! After completing our chart, we read through our Time for Kids magazine all about voting on Election Day!

Fun with Numbers 0-20!

During several math mini-lessons we have practiced recognizing and creating numbers 0-20. This week we put an activity at "Math with Someone" where they are doing the same idea as we did in the mini-lesson. One partner takes a number card out of the bag, while the other partner closes his/her eyes. The partner reads the number and hides it and the partner who had their eyes shut opens them and creates the number on the pan. If they get the number correct, we give each other a compliment on a job well done. If they create the incorrect number, we ask them to try again!

 

Below is video of two students completing the activity together.

 

Describing Spiders

To finish our study about spiders, we completed a chart describing what spiders are, what they can do and what they have. After filling it out we realized we learned a lot about those 8 legged non-insects!

Stop! Stop!

Our poem this week was called Red Means Stop. The new sight word "go" was in it!

 

Number Bonds!

One of our new activities for Math by Myself during Daily 5 Math is to practice different ways to make numbers 1-10. The student takes a chart that says "Ways to Make 10" (and other numbers) with two circles on it, a dry erase board, marker, eraser and 10 counters. They can choose any number 1-10 to work with. Once they pick their number, they count that many out and put them on the chart. Then by moving various amounts from circle to circle, they create different ways to make that number and write it on their dry erase board into a number bond.

All About the Characters!

During our first mini-lesson today we learned about characters in a story. We first talked about what we already knew about characters and most of the students only were familiar with characters in movies or television shows. After discussing what made those characters in movies, we realized characters are also found in books! We discussed how in order to consider a character they have to talk, move or do something important in the story. For example, a tree in the background is not a character unless it is talking in the story. We then read a Halloween story about Clifford and wrote down any characters we found while reading! Afterward, we discussed what made those people/animals characters.

Spider Masks!

We have been learning about spiders! We wrote sentences about spiders this morning and created our own spider masks this afternoon. We were sure to add 8 legs to the mask! We will continue our study on spiders and bats the rest of the week.

Grandparent's Day!

We had a wonderful showing of grandparents for our Grandparent's Day! Below is a video montage of both pictures and video taken from the fun morning. The students went to several stations with their grandparents. They read stories, painted their hand print on a poem, played games, made a placemat, created a pasta necklace, painted their cheek and ate cookies and drank punch!

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Red Ribbon Week

This week was Red Ribbon Week. We showed our support and goal to saying no to drugs by wearing our red ribbons and giving a thumbs up!

Fire Safety

We learned all about Fire Safety and ways to stay safe if we are ever near a fire. We completed a chart as a class telling some of the information we learned.


During our math time, we used shapes we have been working on to make our own fire trucks! We started to realize how many shapes are around us all day long!

Hokey Pokey! Poem 10-25-2012

Our poem this week was one line from the Hokey Pokey! We had a lot of fun saying the poem with the motions and adding in a few other lines as well =).

 

Beginning, Middle and End Strategy Lesson!

One of our main CAFE strategy focuses this week was on retelling the beginning, middle and end of a story. We practiced with several books throughout the week during our mini-lessons and ended the week retelling one of our favorite stories The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin. Since we had read the story earlier in the week, we watched a video clip of the story before filling in our chart!

We Can--Poem 10/19/2012

This week our sight word was "we". We enjoyed reading our poem in silly voices, acting out the motions and practicing our word by word matching! Below are two videos of our performance. The first we are reading it and the second acting out the motions!

 

 

 

 

 

Exploring With Morning Work!

For our morning work every day, each table gets a blue tub of  manipulatives. The students job is to explore using these manipulatives in various ways. Some create patterns, pictures, buildings and much more! Just one way of adding in a little "play" into our day!

Shape Drawing

We introduced a new activity for "Math with Someone" today. We have begun learning about the 3D shapes cone, sphere, cube and cylinder. The students take a baggie with various 3D shapes and build something with them. After they build their picture, they draw what they built on their paper. They love being able to use their imagination to build with the shapes and then illustrate their work too!

Writing Beginning & Ending Sounds

We have been practicing writing sentences with sight words and the beginning and ending sounds of words we do not know how to spell. Today for our morning message, we wrote two "We can ___." sentences where we had to fill in the blanks for the missing sight words, plus the missing word we did not know how to spell. We stretched the word out and wrote down the sounds we heard at the beginning and the end of the word.

Our two sentences were:

 

"We can rn" (run)

"We can sp" (skip)

 

Number Swat It!

Today during one of our mini-lessons for math we practice number recognition with a game called "Swat It". Students went head to head to be the first to find a given number. Whoever found and "swatted" the number first stayed up front to face another student. The class loved practicing their numbers with a little friendly competition =).

First Field Trip!

We went on our first field trip of the year to Exploration Acres. We played in a pile of hay, shot corn out of a corn cannon, raced rubber duckies in water, hiked through corn mazes, took a hay ride and picked our very own pumpkins off of the vine! What a day....we can't wait for our next trip!

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Name Practice

In order to keep students engaged and to use various tools when writing, the students practiced writing the letters in their names using water colors. They were able to use as many colors as they wanted for each of the letters in their name. The only requirement was that the first letter was of course capitalized and they wrote the letters using the correct formation we have practiced in class. They turned out GREAT! =)

Daily 5 Up & Moving!

We have worked our way through introducing all of the choices during Daily 5 time and are practicing our stamina with each choice. One of the favorites for the class is "Read to Someone". This is when they get a chance to sit and read books in their book boxes with a friend in class. They have practiced sitting "EEKK" with each other. EEKK means  to sit "elbow elbow knee knee". This way of sitting encourages the students to sit and share the books easily and without much disruption. Now that all of the choices have been introduced are up and running, it is time to get started on conferring one on one and working with strategy groups!