A Day of Motivation!



For the last two weeks, I have been wanting to re-create my letter headings for my word wall and I finally got up the motivation today. Consonants in green and vowels in purple! Found a great idea on Pinterest to hang ribbon down from each letter to staple the words to. Can't wait to get it up in my room! Here's a freebie copy of my letters if you would like to make your own! (the blank circle is what I used to trace on cardstock for my borders)

 

 



I also made it to Big Lots and the Learning Shop today! Love both of those places! Got some new borders and some guided reading texts (on clearance!). I have been accumulating multiple copies of books for the past two years to use as guided reading books and they have been sitting in random piles, shoved on bookshelves and carts, etc. I am excited to finally have some big baskets to organize them in on my counter. Take a peek at my baskets from Big Lots and pick up my labels here if you are interested!!



Now that I've done a little organizing today, I'M HOOKED.... going to do some paper organization tonight! Need to put together a "teacher binder" for the next year!

PLEASE COMMENT with things that you CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT in your teacher binder! I'm always looking for new organization ideas!!

Wish List Wednesday!

Today, I am inspired by Owl-ways Be Inspired for Wish List Wednesday!

 

My most wish listed item on TPT is on sale for 20% off today through Friday, July 4!

 

The Ultimate Poetry Writing Unit for K-1-2

Enjoy!!

Summer Update!

OH MY GOSH... Somehow it is already July and I have completely lost track of time and apparently, I took an unplanned hiatus from blogging. The end of the school year just got SOOO busy... as I'm sure that you can all relate to and then my husband and I spent the first two weeks of summer prepping to move into our first home! (UPDATE below!) Well, I am back to blogging and ready for a little update!

END OF THE YEAR:

For the end of the school year, I wanted to send my students off to summer vacation with fun first grade memories and some activities to keep their minds busy over the summer! I decided to put everything into a sand bucket for the kids to keep and they LOVED it and I loved putting it together.




Prepping the summer buckets on the eve of the last day of school!
  

The buckets included:

 

-our class DVD-

-my summer learning packet- see previous post-

-our end of the year writing books-

-a new book to take home-

-school yearbook-

-anything in our classroom that had students' names on it-

-bubbles-

-sidewalk chalk-

-stickers-

The Summer Learning Packet:

Check this out on TPT!



The finished buckets... ready for the last day of school!

 

THE HOUSE PROJECT:

 

Okay, so this is not teaching related, but my husband and I just bought our first home... a colonial two-story with a great layout... but definitely in need of a little TLC. I have spent the past two weeks covered in paint and other cleaning supplies (I can't complain though because we had LOTS of family members come and help paint!). We also had all of the flooring replaced as well, which was soooo fun to pick out and it was exciting to see it all come together! We are now moved in (still organizing) and I am LOVING it! Still many more projects to do! Here's a few photos!

 

Our fireplace mantle in the family room



Our lower bath

Our kitchen... love that little piggy!

 

SPELLING UPDATE:

 

Now that the moving craziness is over, I've been sitting down to re-create our first grade spelling/word work/homework. As a first grade team, we have really been re-vamping our spelling expectations. Each week, students have some word family words based on a vowel pattern and some sight words from the Dolch word lists that are the focus for the word work that week. We do send home spelling homework which includes...

 

-cover sheet with words-

-write it three times-

-write a super sentence-

 

and recently added:

-ABC order-

-sort your words-



 

Take a peek at our Short A Word Lists FREEBIE including Dolch sight words (two weeks of spelling). If you are interested in more word lists, I have already finalized all of our short vowel lists which take us through December and include all of the words on the Pre-Primer Dolch list. If you like what you see, please become a follower of my blog and I will send you the rest of the lists for FREE! Email me at firstiefavorites@gmail.com. Enjoy! (If you are already following me... simply email me and I will send them to you!)

 

 

We use the Daily 5 structure at our school so word practice happens during our word work time. Here are some of my previous posts about word work- lots of interactive ideas!. Another thing that is included in our spelling list pack is a set of "word cards" that my students use during Daily 5 word work. The cards are laminated and have the spelling words for the week. Students take the list to their work spot in the room and don't have to scan the room to find the words (for example- if they are on the board)- they have the words right on this card! The photo below shows an example of one of the cards!

 

 



Feeling great after organizing our spelling... onto the Long Vowel spelling lists!

 

Loving summer vacation in our new house...

sleeping in... homemade breakfasts (oatmeal brulee and yogurt)! Feeling like a lucky girl right now!

 

 

How is it the end of MAY already??

Quick post today... been sooo busy, oh my goodness!

 

I am proud to present my Summer Learning Activities Packet...
now on TPT!!

 

ON SALE NOW: MAY 26- MAY 30 for just $1.50.
Then the price will go up to $4.00.

 

 

50 pages of Summer Learning Activities for First Graders

 

Including:

 

Language Arts: using reading strategies, sight word rainbow writing, sight word graphing, word family brainstorms, compound word practice
 

Writing: poetry, letters, opinion writing, reader responses, writing about summer activities, nonfiction writing

 

Math: addition, subtraction, greater than/ less than/ equal to, math fact practice, number grid puzzles, number writing, money math, telling time, measurement, story problems, What's My Rule problems

 

Social Studies: interview a family member, drawing maps, writing letters

 

Science: bubble blowing experiment, living things exploration, outdoor scavenger hunt

 

Enjoy! Now, I'm out to enjoy this beautiful Memorial Day weather!

Five for Friday: It's May!

Another great, relaxing, sunny Saturday morning! So thankful for lazy Saturday mornings!! Loving my Sara Bareilles Pandora Radio station, steaming cup of coffee (loaded with Hershey's chocolate creamer... oops!), and it's time to do some blogging!

 

Linking up with Doodlebug's Five for Friday... with 5 great things about my week!

 

MATH FLUENCY!

 

 

As part of our math workshop, I have been teaching the kids about "MATH FLUENCY." We talk about fluency all the time during Daily 5... rereading texts, practicing sight words, etc. Then, we started talking about how having math fact fluency helps us to be more accurate and faster math thinkers. During math workshop, I have math fact rings for kids to practice while they are waiting for me at the back table to start "teacher time." It was a great way for my kiddos to warm up and get their math brains ready.

 

HOWEVER, what I was noticing is that students weren't taking the math fact practice seriously. They would take a ring of math facts and casually flip through them, look at the answers, and I don't think that they were really even looking at the math facts. THEN, I realized, WELL, DUH.... I never modeled how to correctly practice math fact fluency cards. We had talked about why they were important, but we NEVER talked about the correct way to practice. We stopped math workshop mid-rotation right then because I could not let this go on any longer... and it wasn't their fault... it was TOTALLY mine!

 

I modeled for my students how I go through a ring of math fluency cards and WOW, what a difference in their practicing for the rest of the week! This inspired me to make new sets of facts to add to our already existing collection...

 

Updated the set in my TPT store... now with 23 different fact sets!! Check it out here!

 

A-Z READING BAG UPDATE!

 

 

Back in February, I posted about how I send home books with students each week from the website, readinga-z.com. Here's my previous post about book organization and parent communication about the student's reading at home.

 

This week, I put together some new books to send home... my kids have been flying through the ones that I previously made!! Time consuming project... printing the pages, copying the covers on colorful cardstock, laminating the covers, binding them... but so worth it! When my kids came back from music and saw the new stack of books, they all wanted them NOW!

 

SPRING CONCERT PREP!

 

My kiddos have been practicing like crazy for their spring music concert with our fabulous music teacher. The theme for the concert is U-N-I-T-E, Songs of Peace and Joy. I absolutely love one of their songs... "This Is My Wish." Brings tears to my eyes when I hear their little voices singing this! I am creating the slideshow to accompany the performance... here's a sneak peek!

 

FINISHING UP POETRY!

 

We are finishing up our poetry books!! Just have to make the "About the Poet" page and decorate the covers of our books. My kids can't wait to take them home and show them to their families! We loved writing poetry. Unfortunately, I don't have any new pictures of the kids' writing... I'll have to update next week, when their books are completely finished. Check out our poetry unit in my TPT Store... The Ultimate Poetry Writing Unit for K - 1 -2.

 

Grab TWO freebies from my poetry unit in this previous post, We LOVE Poetry!!!

 

SWEET NOTES!!

 

 

Love when kids come to school with kind words that they wrote for you at home!! Warms my heart... this is why I do this!!

Quick Math Freebie!

So excited to use this new math center this week during math workshop.

 

All you need to do is write #s 0-10 on popsicle sticks and make a +, - , and = stick.

 

I did the numbers on one color and the symbols on another, but you wouldn't need to use colored sticks.

 

Students put sticks together to make addition and subtraction problems!

 

Grab your FREEBIE of the recording sheet here!

 

I don't know about you... but my kids love ANYTHING to do with popsicle sticks.

We LOVE Poetry!

What a beautiful Saturday morning... up early working on my Poetry unit, which I just posted to TPT... whew, relief!!!

Doing a little shopping this afternoon with my sister and my cousin... It's going to be a great day! Love these girlies! 

 

So during the month of April, we have been writing poetry for National Poetry Month... as I'm sure many of you are! When I first told the kiddos about our poetry unit, I was met with several groans... but they have all realized that poetry is fun, creative, different, silly, exciting! They LOVE it!!

 

We jumped head first into the unit by doing a really creative project that I blogged about last week.... It got the kids' creative juices flowing and was a great start to the unit. The project incorporated writing a poem about spring and doing a great Kandinsky-inspired art project. Click this link for my previous post, We Welcome Spring with Kandinsky.

 

During our unit, we wrote the following types of poetry and as we went along, I created/recreated my previous poetry writing paper, planning sheets, examples.... ALL OF IT!

 

Shape Poems
Couplets
Alliterations
Acrostic Poems
Color Poems
Cinquains
Haikus
Word Poems

 

Here's a peek at our Shape Poems and our Word Poems... the writing paper has been updated since I did this a few weeks ago! Check out the FREEBIES for these poems!

 

WORD POEMS:

 

Students had to write a poem creatively to represent its meaning. The writing paper has been updated in this FREEBIE for WORD POEMS.

 

SHAPE POEMS:

 

Students wrote about a shape... where they see it, what they like about it, etc. Then they write their poem around that shape. Here's a link to the FREEBIE of the SHAPE POEMS.

 

For the rest of my poetry pack, click the LINK to go to my TPT store!

 

 

Wow, it feels so great to have this all organized... Next year, I will be GOOD TO GO! :)