This Week in 1st Grade

Last week was NUTS:

Superbowl Sunday: Cold weather and precipitation
Monday: 2-hour school delay due to icky weather
Tuesday: Regular school day
Wednesday: Regular school day
Thursday: Snow day!
Friday: Snow day!
Saturday: BEAUTIFUL, warm weather.
This week's forecast: Cold and snowy! Aah!

Texas has not had all of the extremely crazy weather that some of you have experienced this year so far, BUT we still have had some! So, as you may have already guessed, this week will be for catch-up for 1st grade!!

MONDAY
Phonics/Spelling: Review combination or and introduce combinations er, ir, and ur. On Wednesday and Thursday in small group, we will add "Park the Car" with the new combinations to our list of activities. Friday will be r-controlled vowels BINGO! :D

Reading/Writing: Penguins research project--we have been researching penguins for the past three weeks. This week we will learn about main idea and informational text features. We will use the text features to answer specific questions. My GT students will be starting a mini-research project on penguins as the class continues research together. I whipped this up for them (and will share with you very soon):

We will also begin our own informational text book about penguins--fun stuff!
Math: Numeration 51-99 unit--this week is all about reviewing how to represent numbers, and comparing and ordering two-digit numbers. Station activities will come from this unit:

We will also view some of our favorite money videos to review coins and their values:

I also found this one today that I will introduce to them (they will LOVE it):

Science: We have been busy studying weather and clouds. Last week, we sorted cloud pictures to learn the terms clear sky, partly cloudy and overcast. After looking at clouds in the sky and reading Little Cloud by Eric Carle, we will make a cloud foldable similar to the one pictured below (from Pinterest). Instead of cloud types, we will make a visual representation of clear sky, partly cloudy and overcast.

We will also begin learning about what makes seasons! Here is a GREAT video we will watch that shows one year in 120 seconds, specifically how the trees look during each season.

Then, we will make our own season trees like the one below (from Pinterest), except we will be doing all 4 seasons on one page.

Social Studies: We will continue learning about landforms! We have already discussed types of landforms and where to find them. This week, we will use Google Earth to explore different landforms in the world (and on Mars!).

Finally, we will write about our favorite type of landform. Here is our writing paper (click on it to download it):

Well......time to finish preparing for the week. Thanks for coming by! I hope you have a good (and normal) week! :)

I'm Baaaack! + Making Inferences

So, for a number of reasons, I took a two-week social media hiatus exactly two weeks ago--best two weeks of my life!! Well, not the best actually, haha, but I did learn a lot:

• It is possible to let go of social media.
• Not checking Facebook and Instagram every five minutes actually WON'T kill me.
• However, if you abandon social media, you WILL find something else to fill the void...like online shopping. :/ :P :) (not a good idea!)
• And along the same lines, no FB or IG = MORE texting. That counts as building relationships, right???
• My phone battery lasts WAY longer when it isn't dinging with notifications all day long! I left school one day last week with 96% battery--what!!! :O
• The Bible has much more interesting stories than Facebook.
• Planning a four-year-old's birthday party is LESS stressful when you have more time to focus on it!

As you can see, I had a lot of realizations! ;) I am grateful for the experience and will be definitely be doing it again every now and then!

Now, on to my classroom happenings--

Yesterday, I introduced our month-long penguins unit with a little inferencing activity. After that activity, we filled up this little guy with schema about penguins:

The aforementioned inferencing activity went pretty well, but most just weren't exactly sure what making an inference meant! They were having a hard time communicating their conclusions. Thankfully, I already had another inferencing activity for science lined up...

Tuesday afternoon for my class means computer lab time--yay! This means that I get a solid 30 minutes of alone time in my classroom right before the last hour of the school day. :) This time was PERFECT for setting up Case #235B: The Mystery Visitor.

Right before I brought my students back into the classroom after computer lab, I told them that someone came by to visit while they were gone. The person that came by had to hurry out and forgot to put his materials away! In order to figure out WHO came by, the students had to study the clues and make an inference about who the mystery visitor was.

He left his very stylish IKEA umbrella open on the floor. Tsk tsk.

Weather books strewn all over the floor. Clearly, this person is not a teacher.

Some tools on the back table.....

And this map was left up on the Promethean board.

Who could it be??!! My Super Sleuths got right to work studying the clues and recorded the clues and inferences made on this sheet.

They ate up this activity. As you can see, they did a FAB job! Now, as they understand making inferences more and more, we will write more in our sentences. For now, this is super.

Grab a copy of this recording sheet to use in your classroom by clicking below! You will also see one without "Who has been in our classroom?" so you are able to use it for other inferencing activities.

Thanks for coming by! Enjoy your freebie!! :)

My Math Block Mini-Series {Part 5}

Welcome to part 5 of this series! If you missed any of the posts in this series, click below to go back:

My Math Block Mini-Series {Part 1}

My Math Block Mini-Series {Part 2}
My Math Block Mini-Series {Part 3}

My Math Block Mini-Series {Part 4}

7. Build the hundreds chart

This is something we started just a few weeks ago. I put up the blank chart and told them that all of the numbers fell off and we need to rebuild it (challenge accepted).

Please ignore the orange thing for now. :)

I have been pulling seemingly random numbers each day for the kids to put on (seemingly because there is a purpose behind each number that I pull). The first few days, I used multiples of 5 and numbers that go one under the other. The kids quickly caught on and knew exactly where the numbers go. The usual routine is I pass out 3-4 numbers to random (good listening) students. One at a time, they stand up at the front and show us the number (I will call on low students last to give them extended time to figure out where the number goes). The other students will look on the chart and eyeball where they think it goes. After 30 seconds to 1 minute, the student with the number places it where he/she thinks it goes and tells why. The other students give up a thumbs up or down if they agree/disagree. Sometimes, I call on multiple students to tell where it goes instead of the helper. That is totally random. After each number is placed, we always discuss patterns and make some predictions. In the few weeks that we have been doing this my students' knowledge of the hundreds chart and numbers in general has skyrocketed! I am very pleased and impressed!

We use the orange window to focus on a number and determine what is 1 more and 1 less. I made it really quickly one day because I forgot to make it ahead of time; it is just laminated cardstock with popsicle sticks taped on the back.

8. Weather

Weather has become a bit more popular since we added a few more things to it. Here is a flashback to September:

And now:

It changed after we studied more about clouds and wind in science. I LOVE to change things up based on new learning and so do the kiddos! One young meteorologist (we always use the proper term) takes the page off the clipboard (which is attached with command strips) and goes outside to check the clouds and the wind; he/she will move the paper clip accordingly. Another meteorologist grabs the "How does it look?" cards and checks the sky. A third meteorologist grabs the "How does it feel?"cards and checks for that.

While the meteorologists are checking, the calendar helper is calling on classmates to make weather predictions. We have recess, P.E. and music right before our math block, so the students recall what it looked/felt like from then. After the meteorologists return and deliver the report, we put all pieces back on the board and read it together.

And that, my friends, ends our calendar time!!! :) It took 5 posts to explain it though our calendar time only 15-20 minutes (longer when they have SO much to say and I hate to turn it off). I'm so glad you stopped by to read about it and I hope you are leaving with some new ideas!

Next up in the series is the remainder of my math block, which is math lesson/stations time. Tune in tomorrow!! :)

My Math Block Mini-Series {Part 2}

Yesterday, I began this mini-series on my math block. (Click here in case you missed the first post.) I gave you an overview of calendar time yesterday; in today's post, I will show you the components on the calendar board.

Ahhhhh, calendar. Again, one of my favorite times of day. As my students have grown and changed, so has our calendar time. This was our calendar area back in September on the 14th day of school:

And here it was two weeks ago, on the 119th day of school:

Quite a difference!! Here is what everything on the board is for (minus the obvious):

The Calendar

I custom-made the days of the week labels on the calendar. I used to use velcro to attach the number cards and it worked just fine. However, this month we started doing something different with the pattern, so I needed some sort of clip that the number cards would easily slide into. I couldn't find any from our local teacher store, so I had to improvise!

And the BEST part is the clips match my color scheme perfectly. And I got to make another pattern. Double rainbow.

Weather

Hundreds Chart

Odd and Even/Days in School/Money/Mystery Number/Birthdays

Come back tomorrow and I will describe each component and our routine! :)