Daily 5: Building Stamina

Anyone who uses Daily 5 knows what stamina is all about...before you can expect your kids to sit quietly and work through a round of Daily 5 so you can teach a small group uninterrupted, there must be some guided practice! The kids must practice doing exactly what is expected of them before you can expect them to do it on their own. That's where stamina charts come in...

When building stamina, you should keep a visual of the time so that students are able to see their progress toward the goal. You can do this many different ways. I will be printing off some charts on colored paper, laminating them and then posting them on my white (gray) board. We will color in our minutes each day until we reach our goal:



I decided to add a few more charts with a different goal so that I could share them with you all! I know we all do Daily 5 differently, timing included. If you would like to snag a copy of these posters, head over to one of my stores!

Enjoy!

Plants, Plants, Plants!

This is a JAM-PACKED plant post--are you ready?!?

Plants unit, week 2 ended yesterday! We have had some GREAT fun so far and have learned so much about plants! The kids have just been so excited about it all--makes a teacher feel pretty good!! ;)

In this unit, we are covering not only plants and their parts, but also some ELA objectives, such as main idea, making inferences, compound words, expository text, parts of speech, research, letter writing, revising and editing, and media and its purpose/techniques.

*********************************************

LAST WEEK
2 weeks ago, I introduced our new unit (we had just finished penguins) to my students by doing this:

Before the unit introduction, I checked out some plant books from our school library and displayed them on one of the counters in our classroom. I also put the plants book box from our classroom library on the counter next to the library books. Here are just a few selections of the many great plant books that we will be using during our unit!

The kids noticed the books early in the day.

I also picked some pieces off of the bushes outside my classroom door and put them in a tote bag to use for our lesson. We passed the tote bag around and felt inside the bag without looking. 

The students quickly started making inferences about what we would be learning about next! The plant books around the room (which they know I do for every unit) and the familiar feel of the items in the tote bag led them to believe that we would be studying plants--and they were right!! :)

Below is a little freebie page for recording inferences that would work well with this lesson that I used in a previous inferencing lesson.

We made a schema chart that we add to/adjust daily.

We will also keep track of new words that will eventually move to our vocabulary wall.

After we made the schema chart, we grabbed some hand lenses and our journals and went outside to write/draw about the plants at our school.

We used a classic book, Chrysanthemum, to review main idea. Main idea is SO hard for most of my kids. We have been working at it for a few months now and are getting better and better! Here is an image of the flipchart I made to go along with the book based on a lesson plan I found online.


We did the flipchart together across 2 days and then spent the rest of the week reading/studying short fiction and nonfiction passages about various plants for main idea. Again, we are getting better and better at it.

We also briefly discussed living and nonliving. I used this fabulous PBS video to kickstart a discussion about what those words mean.

We then did this super-fun activity that I posted about on Instagram a few days ago!

We made little cards that said "living" and "nonliving", went outside, placed the cards on living and nonliving things, and took pictures using an iPad. This was great fun! The kids then shared their photos with a partner and the whole group.

I wanted to print some of these pictures so we could add it to our living and nonliving anchor chart, but we (currently) do NOT have an easy way to print photos on the school iPads. We also had to turn them in right after this activity. Oh well.

THIS WEEK

This week's plant fun was motly about main idea (still) and the parts of a plant. We read this WONDERFUL Eric Carle book to jumpstart a discussion about parts of a plant (seeds):

This book is also for teaching about the life cycle of plants.

We drew what we already knew about plant parts...

...and then studied the parts of a real plant! The kids really picked them apart--they wanted to see and know everything about them.

We concluded the lab with drawing another diagram of the parts of a plant, in case they learned anything new.

The next lesson was about comparing the parts of different plants. Does every plant have a stem? Does every plant have roots? Does every plant grow the same way? This is a great book to start with:

We headed back outside to compare the parts of flowers to other kinds of plants, like grass, trees, and bushes.

Friday's activity about parts of a plant that we eat was fantabulous--we had a Plant Tasting Party!!

We sorted several types of plants by what part of the plant they are and then got to eat them! They did an AMAZING job at this and were obviously elated to get to eat and learn at the same time! :D

We concluded thew party by watching this book on TumbleBooks and discussing why the bear kept feeling cheated. We will read it again next week.

Finally, we planted some grass seeds and are hoping that they turn out as great as these ones did last year!

NEXT UP

Next week we will start a big plants research project that will include some wormy fun! I made a little journal for us that I will share after I get it just how I want it...

Soooo, what fun things are you up to in your classroom?

This Week in 1st Grade

So 2 weeks ago was NUTS and this past week was NOT much better!

Monday: Regular school day, though it became icy throughout the day and was slightly dangerous by the time we got out of school and on the roads.
Tuesday: Ice day! NO school!
Wednesday: Regular school day (and recess--FINALLY!)
Thursday: Regular school day, but I had a workshop and was out--sub day!
Friday: LOVELY (but windy) weather for Valentine's Day

So last week, I actually only taught on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. That is somewhat awesome.

Well, what does this next week bring?? A lot of the same things from last week since we didn't get everything finished!

MONDAY
Phonics/Spelling: Introduce trigraphs -dge and -tch with a whole group picture sort. We will sort the pictures by sound into two hoops (which I don't have at home, so I will show you on construction paper...).

Then, we will add the words for each picture.

Throughout the week, we will keep a flipbook of words we come across that have -tch and -dge in them. We will spend some time searching through books for them and will also keep a class list of the words. Here is a simple (at home!) example:

Handwriting: We will focus on ABC order, specifically on using the second letter when words have the same initial letter. Our sight words of the week have 2 sets of same letter words so this is a PERFECT time to review that concept. This is the very boring but colorful flipchart we will use. We don't have fun fonts at school (and aren't allowed to download them!) so Century Gothic it is! :P

The students will decide and write the order of the words on their dry erase boards. Then, together we will drag the words over in order to confirm their answers.

Handwriting (all 10 minutes of it) for the rest of the week will consist of lots of skywriting, some pencil and paper practice, and using our tactile handwriting boards.

Check out my post about these boards by clicking here!

Reading/Writing: Penguins research project--we have been researching penguins for the past four weeks. We didn't do much last week at all (only 1 day of penguin study), so this week will pretty much be the same activities I planned for last 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: We will finish up numeration on Monday and move on to learning about time on Tuesday! Our time unit always begins by reading The Grouchy Ladybug by one of my favorite authors, Eric Carle. Here is a great YouTube video of it:

We will then discuss a brief history of the clock (riveting, really) and the difference between analog and digital clocks. We'll discuss a sundial first and I'll show this quick video to demonstrate how it works:

After the sundial, we view/discuss how people used to use hourglasses to keep time and the difficulties that may have come with using one. We will then have a discussion about using a standardized format for keeping time and a tool that is not solely reliant on good weather days or people. Then it is time to explore the clock tools!

I give them about 10 minutes to just play with our little clock buddies. Exploring tools before using them as tools under your instruction will allow the kids' curiosity about the tool to be satisfied and get the play out of their system. They will then be ready to use them as properly!

We will use these videos to reinforce what we are learning about time:

We have already watched these videos a jazillion times this school year already, so the kids are very familiar with them! I give them a clock to use during the video since the videos are very interactive.

We will also build our own paper clocks in order to learn more about them, as well as build a clock number line to learn how a clock is actually a number line!

Since it is still February (and we only did stations once last week!), stations will still be from my Cross My Heart pack:

And here is a SUPER time game that I will add to the Math with Technology station:

Science: This week we will finish up learning about what makes seasons since we didn't get to finish last week. Here is a GREAT video we will watch that shows one year in 120 seconds, specifically how the trees look during each season.

And instead of making these season trees like I planned for last week...

...we are making a circle book about seasons instead. I will share it with you after we make them!

Social Studies: This week is all about presidents! Monday is Presidents' Day, so we will learn about the great contributions of some of our great presidents, specifically Washington and Lincoln. We are doing a little craftivity to house the information we have learned about these great men. My GT kids will be doing their own research on a great president and will make an informational book about it to share with the class. Fun fun!

Well, I hope you have a GREAT (and snow day-less) week!! :)

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! :)