Main Idea Freebie

I was going through my hard drive tonight (looking for graphics) when I came across a page I made a while ago for a sub day. We were discussing main idea using a book about butterflies, so I made a quick, little recording sheet for the kiddos.

Of course, this sheet can be used for non-butterfly books. Click on the picture to download your copy!

Also, I am still working on this:

I am hoping to have this completed REALLY soon! My goal is the end of June! I am up to 108 pages right now and still going. This pack will include notebook pages for fraction recognition, equivalent fractions, fractions on a clock, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing fractions, fractions on a number line, and MORE!

Off to keep working--good night! :)

Germs, Mold, and Other Gross Stuff + Giveaway Winners!

That's the name of my Technology Camp. Awesome, right??! The camp is for students entering grades 4-5, even though I do have one entering 2nd! She is doing her best to keep up with everyone else...

And since this is Technology Camp, I have been lugging these...

...up and down THESE alllll week!

And it never gets old.

We are down three days and still have two more to go this week. So far, we have talked about germs, bodily fluids and functions, scabs, and Lizardman, played with diapers and grown mold, and the best is yet to come! We still have bird poop to research and gunk to make! I'll share more about the activities later on this week.

Have you seen my latest product??

Here are some more images from the product:

Posters for display that answer the question, "What do scientists do?" You can print the posters...

 ...or you can create a wall display using the cut-and-assemble set.

Several graphic organizers:

Includes 2 class books! Here is one:

I hope you had a chance to enter the giveaway to win a free copy of this pack! Here are the winners:

Thanks, ladies!! Check your email as your prize is awaiting!

Technology Camp and Science Introduction for K-2 Pack!

Happy summer!! I got a little carried away with the chalk the other night, by the way... ;)

I hope your summer is off to a great start and for those of you that were in school last week, I hope you now actually out for summer! School in June should be outlawed...

I have managed to stay quite busy so far this summer! Last week I taught various technology classes for teachers all but 1 day. This week starts Summer Technology Camp, something I have been a part of in my district since its inception a few years ago. I have blogged about this truly WONDERFUL experience for the past two years. You can read alllll about it here:

Summer Tech Camp 2012

Summer Tech Camp 2011

I look forward to sharing this year's activities with you very soon!

I have spent all of the rest of my time with my 3-year-old! We have had SO much fun playing in water, painting, watching Beauty and the Beast, visiting friends...Last night, I took her to a Paint Your Own Pottery place for the first time. She had a BLAST!

Painting her elephant

My vase

Her pieces! Can't wait to see them after they are cooked!

In between all of the above-listed activities, I spent a moment here and there making this:

I am happy to announce that this pack I have been working on for a WHOLE week now is now FINISHED. And I could not be happier because I plan on using it in my own classroom! :) This science pack is perfect for kick-starting science for your new school year! It includes:

-4 lessons/activities to answer "What is Science?"

-8 lessons/activities to answer "What is a scientist?" and "What do scientists do?"
-anchor charts
-wall display cut-and-assemble (with picture sample)
-graphic organizers
-hands-on activities and experiments
-2 class books with student pages
-rubber band book (foldable with instructions)
-an optional ActivInspire flipchart to accompany lessons

Check it out here!

 Want a free copy? Enter for a chance to win! Leave a comment with your email address; I will randomly pick 3 winners tomorrow.

Have a terrific Tuesday! :)

Shared Writing!

I LOOOOOOOVE teaching writing! Being at the forefront of sentence structure, word choice, spelling, etc. is one of my favorite parts of 1st grade! This year, we have done countless shared writing pieces.

Each Tuesday-Friday half of my class goes to a special while the other half remains in my classroom for small(er) group instruction. During this time, we may do additional rounds of Daily 5, review games, make-up or redo work, shared writing, literacy stations--the activities change weekly based on our needs. One of my favorite things to do during this time is shared writing. With only 10-12 students, I can ensure that EVERYONE gets a turn to write! Below, is a shared writing activity we did back in April:

We started off brainstorming topics and then chose one together (the zoo). We discussed things about the zoo to write about and said some sentences out loud. After deciding on what to write first, I started the piece by writing the first word (as a guide). The students took over after that. They helped each other spell, even though the person with the marker was ultimately in charge of how to spell the word, and reminded each other of finger spacing, punctuation, and capital letters--they loved that. It's funny to watch them turn into little critics. 

One group decided to write about a zoo.

Same procedure for this group, but they decided to write about a recent field trip.

When spelling words, we use the "stretch it out" method (we had a whole lesson on that several months ago). If we are unsure of spelling, we write what we think, circle it, and move on. Some students circle frequently and some never circle. When students circle words on rough drafts, I will go over the correct spelling with them during our writing conference and applaud them for doing best guess spelling! If they don't circle, I usually don't correct. For now, the important thing is to spell it the best you can and move on!

(These are written on the same piece of chart paper--gotta conserve!!!)

I would have liked for them to illustrate the pieces, but we ran out of time. Oh, well. Objective complete. :)

Did you see the super fun fraction activity I posted last night?? It was a random, late-nighter so click below in case you missed it!

Fractions--Parts of a Set

In 1st grade in Texas, students must be able to use appropriate language to describe parts of a set WITHOUT the use of fraction symbols. Well, I have a fun and SIMPLE activity to support this TEK (that can also be used in older grade levels)!

I know a lot of you like to go above and beyond your standards and teach your students things that they are to learn in subsequent grade levels. I know this mainly because I see the fabulous, cute, and creative activities that you use in your classroom. I understand why you see it as beneficial to your students and I KNOW your students are always excited to realize that they are learning something that an older grade learns! HOWEVER.........you must realize that there is a logical reason why certain standards exist for your particular grade level (certain concepts and ideas must be taught before others can be learned, certain concepts and ideas may be too abstract for your grade level and would not benefit your students to teach it to them, etc.). What's my point in saying this??? When introducing fractions, it is crucial to provide many opportunities and experiences for your students to visualize the fractions. Oftentimes, teachers move from the concrete to the abstract way too quickly (in any given area of math, really). If your standards do not include using fraction symbols--don't use them. Sidebar complete.

Back to the activity!! It is simple, really. I had a bunch of paper strips left over from an art activity we so I decided to use them for a little fraction fun:

I realize that the captions are small (click to enlarge) so here are the instructions:

1. Roll the die. Dot one color.

2. Roll again. Dot another color.

3. Fill in the part-part-whole chart.

4. Write statements to describe the set.

That's it! This was way fun and this gave me an idea of their understanding of what we had been studying for the past few days.

For those that were struggling, I drew special attention to the part-part-whole chart that I required them to draw on their board (which is AMAZING to use for fractions, by the way!!). 

After the students completed a few strips, they were instructed to get in partners and describe their set to each other.

After this activity, we made caterpillars:

They were instructed to pick one of each paper (one for the background and one for the statements),  a cup of 7 pompoms (colors of their choosing), and 1 wiggly eye.

 I love how this student took on a challenge and picked 5 different colors!

To connect our learning to what we had been studying in science, the students drew their caterpillar in its habitat. Most just added leaves and trees while others drew the rest of its life cycle! I was way impressed!.......and I just realized that I didn't get pictures of the finished products. :/

Hope you enjoyed this! Happy summer (or almost summer) to you!!!

Five for SATURDAY!

1. BIG News!! Started this--I am finally ready to think about other grade levels!! (Only took a few months........)

I am in the very early stages--hope to be finished REALLY soon!!! :)

2. This is underway!!! Started on Friday!

3. Did some non-standard unit measuring this week! WAY fun!

 

4. May is the PERFECT time for writing with sensory details! We chilled out on the porch with popsicles one day and watermelon the next. My students LOVED this and LOOOOVED the early morning treats! :)

Check out one of the poems they came up with together: 

5. Opened an Instagram account!! Way more fun than Twitter!

 

Click here to head over to my Instagram page!

Happy Saturday! :)

Treasures from YouTube!

Here are some of my favorite videos from YouTube that we use regularly in my classroom OR that we have used with great success!

MATH

Rote counting to 100 with a little fitness!

Skip counting

Everybody loves money...

Time (obviously)

Addition fun (in English AND Spanish!)

More skip counting

ELAR

This is just greatness.

Short, sweet, and to the point!

Can't go wrong with Schoolhouse Rock!!

Other very good parts of speech songs.

So fun!

SCIENCE

This is just amazing to see!

So cute.

Very imformative. :)

We are watching this one on Monday--can't wait, haha!

HANDWRITING

This song WILL be stuck in your head. Guaranteed. Love it.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

Clean up!! Must be finished and at the carpet before the song is over.

This is just fun! Will definitely get those sillies out...or make them sillier.


I said a boom chicka boom!


Self-control and wiggle release all in one video!

SOCIAL STUDIES

Learning about families

Just a snippet of the speech.

Great explanations!

BOOKS AND STORIES

Jack and the Beanstalk

The Princess and the Pea

10 Fat Turkeys--this is great with a storyboard!

Great for science when talking about animals and animal babies.

More a song than a story but fun anyway.

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!

Have you used any of those before? What are some of your favorite videos?

Learning About 3-Dimensional Figures

We recently spent about 2 weeks exploring and learning about 3-dimensional figures. This unit was great fun! We started out by bringing in some items from home that looked like 3D figures, such as cans for cylinders, boxes for prisms, etc. We looked at all of them together and shared observations through discussion. This was great because it gave me a little sneak peek of what they already knew.

To begin sorting through these figures, I chose one student to stand up at the front with his object, a cereal box. He told us about it (shapes, color, flat, etc.). I then asked the others to join him with their object at the front if their object looked similar. The others then gave descriptions as well. All the while, I was just waiting on someone to mention number of sides or lines or points or something (I knew someone would!). Sure enough, one sweet little girl talked about the number of pointy parts that were on her box. We decided to count the parts together. I gave a friend some dot stickers to help us keep track and we began to count the sides as she put stickers on the pointy parts (vertices) with the friend handing her each sticker. At this point, I did not introduce any formal vocabulary. We simply referred to them as pointy parts, points, or corners.

They also became interested in the number of flat parts and lines on the box. We counted those too, using happy face stickers for the flat parts (faces--yes, that was intentional!) and a different color of dot sticker for the lines (edges). After we finished hers, we labeled it with the number of points, lines, and flat sides. I divided the class into smaller groups and each remaining student with an object took their object to a small group and they counted and placed stickers on the objects together.

We came back together and each group shared their findings with the class. We labeled each object and noticed that all of them had the same number of points, lines, and flat sides, even though they were different sizes and colors/designs! Hmmmmmmm, more to come, there. We placed the objects onto our graphing mat, wrote our observations onto an anchor chart, and continued on.

We looked at another student's object and called up other students with similar objects. We noticed that not all of our objects would have points, lines, or even flat sides. Here we are in the middle of our sort:

And finished sort:

After another day of discussion, recording ideas onto an anchor chart, and figure exploration, I finally introduced the math terms for the words we had been using. We went back to our anchor chart and crossed the informal terms and replaced it with the formal. We also crossed out ideas that did not apply to all variations of the figure (such as "all cones are blue"). We compiled the information we gathered onto these final copies:

For the rest of our unit, we kept the figures in a 3D Figures Museum at the back of our room:

We also spent part of each day of this unit just exploring various figures during station time.

3D figures:

Color tiles:

Shape sticks (formerly known as angle sticks):

Tangrams:

Another thing we did was trace the sides of our figures to see what shapes would turn up. We used happy face stickers, of course, to help us keep track of the faces.

We also explored to see if each figure could roll, stack, and slide. No pics of that, of course... ;)

Well, thanks for stopping by! Hope to see you at the Teacher Appreciation Sale on TPT and TN! You deserve a break! ;)