Mittens & Things

Wow, I can't believe we're almost halfway through the year! It's been so nice this week to see everyone's bright and well-rested faces. :) This week was all about winter (although more of the fun snowy kind, less of the Texas rainy kind).

We started off by reading The Mitten by Jan Brett. As the kids know, she is one of my all-time favorite authors! She also illustrates all of her stories and is just all-around amazing! We talked about genres and how this is a folktale so she is just retelling the story to us in her own way. They loved it. Of course I forgot to take a picture of our finished projects because I'm so out of habit of photographing everything! Here's what the animals looked like.

We also read The Hat by Jan Brett which is another folktale. Then we used a Double Bubble to talk about the similarities and differences in the books. The kids made a ton of great connections to the other texts we've been reading as well as to themselves.

Our class wrote about their winter breaks and created some adorable little people to go with their writing. We sat in a circle and all shared our favorite things first. It was wonderful hearing how much people love their families and friends. Of course we all got to talk about our new fun  presents, too! :) Gotta love the honesty that comes from a 6 year old!

We also did a writing activity after reading The Jacket I Wear in the Snow. After reading the story we talked about all the wonderful adjectives we had read. We reviewed how adjectives make stories more exciting, and life is pretty boring without them! The kids colored a person, then wrote about what he was wearing using wonderful descriptive adjectives.

This week we created mittens to play a mitten concentration game. We rolled dice to create math facts on one mitten then we put its answer on the other mitten. The kids played concentration to make pairs.

In Social Studies this week we've been reviewing rules. It was a long two weeks away from school, but I'm glad to report that most everyone has remembered proper school etiquette! With the new ClassDojo in place, I think we're all excited to gain tons of points throughout the day. We've realized it's even better than the color chart because you can keep adding and adding and adding! I split the kids up into groups to brainstorm the different rules we have for different parts of the school. Then we made a giant Tree Map with all of their rules. They worked great with their teams!

ClassDojo has been awesome. I absolutely love it, and I think the kids do too! Like I've said, there is no limit for how many points they can get so I think that it's even better than the color chart. The kids can hear the sound on the computer and see what people are getting points for and why points are being lost. Any feedback from you is appreciated, too. I've gotten some good comments from a couple parents already! Here's our weekly breakdown. We had a great percentage. I'm one happy teacher!

All in all, it was a wonderful week back! I did miss the firsties, but boy am I exhausted! Stay tuned for the exciting things next week. It's one of my favorite things we do all year! :)

Class Dojo!

I am excited to try a new classroom management system! I follow quite a few blogs on my GoogleReader, and I've seen other teachers using ClassDojo for quite a long time. I've been curious as to how it works, so I've decided to take the plunge and go for it! I've used the color chart for the past couple years with great success, but I wanted to be able to integrate a little technology with it, too. ClassDojo seems to be the perfect solution!

Each Monday all the students will start with 0 points. Students will earn points for completing homework assignments, helping others, working hard, following directions quickly, being good friends and bucket-fillers, and staying on task. They can lose points by not turning in their homework, tattling, not trying their best, being off-task and silly, bucket-dipping, and dawdling.

Each afternoon I will see which 2 students have earned the most points for the day. The following day, they'll be able to hold one of my stuffed pigs at their desk, as long as they're still setting good examples! :)

At the end of day on Friday, the top 5 earners will be able to pick rewards from my Dojo Rewards List. They include such things like Mix It Up Lunch, sitting in the teacher's chair, show-and-tell time, etc. They will be able to redeem these prizes on Monday.

I'll make sure that all students with positive behaviors for the week also receive incentives on Fridays. I want to reward them for their good choices!  

I still want to stress the importance of working as a team. If our class has at least 75% positive behavior for the week, we will earn pom-poms for our jar. If we have an exceptional week, I will decide on another extra prize for the kiddos.

ClassDojo has a neat feature where I can email you a report card of your child's progress each week. We will still be keeping a paper record of your child's point totals so please make sure you're still checking their Stallion folder. Instead of their color chart, you'll find a new recording sheet. We'll write the total of points as of that afternoon for each day, so you'll be able to see their points build throughout the week.

We'll be learning this new system together so please forgive us if things need to change or if we decide we don't like the program. :) I am very excited to see how everything goes. I'm pretty sure the kids will LOVE the program.

Farm Week

As y'all know, we are going to Dewberry Farm next week. I am beyond excited! I love this field trip!!! In order to activate our schema, we studied farm animals this week. We created a nonfiction farm animals book to take home in order to begin our nonfiction unit. This was a week-long project, and it was a little exhausting but the results were AMAZING! I could not believe the quality of work that everyone put into their books. I don't think I've ever seen such great work in October ever before. I'm so proud!

We also finished our light, heat, and sound unit by studying heat. We read Heat Wave by Helen Ketteman and discussed different ways to make heat. The kids LOVED the book. It's pretty hilarious, and I'm a sucker for any of Ketteman's books. After we read the book, we created a Multi-Flow Thinking Map to talk about cause and effect. What a great lesson!

Our class also voted on Tuesday. Fort Bend has a mock election for the entire district. We talked about the importance of voting and participating in elections. I was glad to hear all the good things the students already knew, so I can tell that everyone has been discussing the upcoming election at home. :) We even used our voter registration cards when we went to vote. The computer lab had been set up with privacy folders so that the kids had their own little ballot boxes. It was a great experience for the students. Remember, parents can vote in the mock election, too! Your kiddos brought home instructions in their Tuesday folders.

We did some more SmartResponse lessons for math this week in guided math. I have found that this is such a great way to differentiate the kids' instruction as well as get them motivated and excited to do math groups.

We are working on addition and making groups of ten. The kids made houses and put part-part wholes inside of them to show me a way to make a group of ten. Then they wrote the fact families that went along with their pictures. This was a fun activity for them and a good way for me to assess their learning!

We filled up our pom-pom jar again! I'm so proud of our friends. We've been getting lots of compliments from other teachers in the hallway and from outclass teachers! :) We had another dance party with crazy socks. It seems to be a very popular choice for celebrating, plus I love how it lets us get up and moving to get our exercise!

We also won the Star-Spangled Stallions award for 1st Grade  for the first nine weeks! Since we received the most stickers out of any classes, we won the award! :) Mrs. Allen came by to congratulate us, and Ms. Carney even took us out for an extra recess! What a wonderful Friday surprise!

Can't wait to see everyone next week. Don't forget we'll be going to Dewberry Farm on Friday!

Fires, spiders, and other things :)

This week, we finished up studying fire safety. We'd colored our firemen last week but had run out of time. We read Firefighters on Raz-Kids as a class and then discussed all the things firefighters do for us. The students created their own tree maps for firefighters. They used the tree maps to write sentences about their firemen. This was the first time that the students were responsible for their very own words in their tree maps. I was so impressed by how well they listened and could follow directions for writing their sentences! They really did a wonderful job.

We also created Thinking Maps for fall. We discussed our schema (yay we remembered the word!) and I asked them to do a Circle Map, or a Tree Map if they wanted to challenge themselves. They really turned out great! These kiddos really understand Thinking Maps, and they seem to enjoy them. We are understanding that they help us to organize our thinking so that we can better understand these topics.

We also talked about spiders this week. With Halloween around the corner, it's always fun to incorporate a little bit of scary things into our schedule. :) We read Itsy Bitsy Spider one day and talked about our sequencing words to retell the story. The kids were very excited to learn all the new verses in the song. We made connections to the character by having a discussion of what we would do if we were the spider. Would we keep trying hard to climb up things or would we just go home and take a nap? :) We got some pretty funny answers.

We also researched spiders on PebbleGo and used the information we learned to create a Tree Map as a class. I made a SmartExchange tree map so that the kids could actually manipulate the words themselves. We used our Airliner to move the words on the screen. It was the first time that I've let the kiddos use this form of technology, and I was SO proud of how well they did. They truly listened to the rules and were very gentle with everything. Basically, the Airliner is connected to the computer wirelessly so it can be used like a remote pad to control the computer. The kids can hold it anywhere in the room to manipulate the mouse on the computer. It's very fun, very hands-on, and very tech-savvy! :) Then I had the kids make their own tree maps and write sentences about spiders. It was a great activity full of learning and hard work!

We also made scarecrows for long a week. Then we wrote stories about what we would do if we were scarecrows. The kids had a fun time coming up with creative things that they would do if they were scarecrows. I was also proud of how they colored really well. We did a whole lesson on tracing and coloring in the lines, so I'm seeing hard workers doing their best!

After the kids did such a great job with the Airliner, I wanted to incorporate it more throughout the day. In math groups one day, we worked on subtraction stories and identifying numbers on a ten-frame. What a fun way to integrate technology throughout our day!

We created sun dioramas and researched the sun on PebbleGo as well. We used our information to help us study light and heat for our science lessons. I'm glad that the kids love PebbleGo so much. It really is a wonderful resource. The first grade teachers actually wrote a grant last year so that we could purchase it for our school because we love it so much! :)

To finish off our week, we read There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. No matter how many times anyone has read this book, it's always a riot. To practice retelling the story, we made an old lady puppet using a paper sack, and we colored our different animals to "feed" her. We found the song online so of course we had to have a couple sing-alongs. We then made a Double-Bubble Thinking Map to compare TWAOLWSAF to There Was An Old Monster that we'd read during monster week. The kids did another wonderful job, of course!

We also got another extra recess on Friday! Our class won the sticker competition for the week again. I was so proud of them, so we got to enjoy the beautiful weather. :)