Five for Fraturday!

Ah!  Another week where I didn't get to post until Saturday!  Maybe next week will be my week to come back to the blogging world more regularly :)  Here I am though to link up to Doodle Bugs Five for Friday!

My old teammate from my old school sent me this picture this morning... made my week!  I had this little one 3 years ago and left the school 2 years ago and I still made it as her hero :)  This is why we teach :)

My kids are doing an awesome job with our start of our small moments unit!  They really are latching on to the idea of finding a tiny moment and then stretching it out!  This is the first year the kids haven't struggled with the concept... maybe because everyday I look like a goober emphasizing the ideas of STRETCHING it out :)  I will try to take some pictures of the kids progress next week so you can see how awesome they are at writing already :)

We also started our geometry unit this week.  The kids only have to know what a rectangle, circle, square and triangle are... and their attributes.  They already learned this in kindergarten so we have been powering through to trapezoids, hexagons and pentagons (which have provided some of them a bit of a challenge).  We also started talking about 3-D shapes.  I made this game for next week that I think is really cute :)

 It will be available in my TPT store by the end of the day :)

We had a full moon this week, which explains my kids behavior on Thursday.  I couldn't understand how they had been so perfect on Wednesday during math centers and Thursday it looked like we had never done math centers before!  Then I noticed the full moon and ahhh, it clicked.  Does any one else feel the curse of the full moon in their classroom?  Fortunately, by Friday they were back to their perfect little selves :)  I love my class this year!

Speaking of my class, I have a couple changes this week.  One of my little ones is moving :(  I am so sad about this because he is such a hard worker and I was really looking forward to seeing his growth this year!  Hopefully he will continue to achieve in his new school.  I also got a new student who doesn't speak any English.  I have had my ELL students before, but never one with no English.  I know that at this age, he will pick it up quickly and I have already seen this... any tips of the trade for helping him out as much as I can?

Enjoy your weekend!

Annie

Small Moments Writing Unit

I love fall Sundays... I love sitting and watching football and creating things for my classroom.  Today I have finished my small moments unit!  Yes!  Writers' Workshop is planned for 3 weeks!!

My kids have really settled nicely into the Writers' Workshop routine this year.  They actually love this writing time and are trying their best during the whole 45 minute block.  I can't wait to start Small Moments with them.  I find small moments a bit challenging because the kids have a hard time focusing on ONE small moment, but we will work hard on it!  Below are some screen shots of my small moments unit, which is now available in my TPT store for the Promethean Board.  

Everyday I have a quick mini lesson (which are broken down by day with teacher notes in the flipchart).  My mini lessons focus on adding details and how to write a good story.  Then my students write for about 30 minutes before we share at the end of the block.

How do you run writers' workshop?

Five for Friday 10/11

Follow my blog with Bloglovin 

Things are finally getting into a routine at school so hopefully I will have more time to blog, but for now here is my five for Friday!  I love linking up to Doodle Bugs for their weekly linky party!  It has been quite a week!

First, the past two weeks haven't been the easiest.  My grandmother, Nanny, fell last Tuesday and we have been on hospital watch since then, knowing that she wouldn't recover :(  She passed away to join her husband and daughter last Saturday night.  This week we were able to celebrate her life surrounded by friends and families.  I wanted to share this photo of her at my wedding last year.  How lucky I was to have her at our wedding, but I wish she had just smiled at the camera!  We tried so many times and she kept turning around to talk :)  She will truly be missed.

I am loving math this year... as I feel like I have mentioned before.  Below are a few pictures of my kiddos at math centers:

At this center, the are playing "guess the number"  This was a great activity to help them describe the numbers!

This activity had them cut out different formats of numbers and decide if they were odd an even.  I had a cheat sheet for them to refer to, but they did a great job!

Here is the game Abracadabra!  They need to roll two dice and add them together.  They then remove a marker off their board that is in the column of that sum.  The first person to make their board disappear wins!

This is a fun fall activity.  They simply roll the dice, add them together and the color in the fall item.

At the teacher table this week, we worked on tens and ones.  We made the numbers using cubes and then compared them.

They loved counting by fives by stacking the cups in order.  They liked to see how fast they could do it.

All of these math centers, plus two more weeks of centers are available in my TPT store.  It is my Number Sense Unit.

I took today off to recover from the week's events and happened to have time to finally put my sight word units up on TPT.  I have been using them in my classroom and they have been ready, but I hadn't finalized them for sharing.  You can check out my whole sight word unit at my store, but you can also see there are 18 smaller units.

Here are some screen shots of what you would be getting:

It's on sale for the weekend!  Head over and get it!  My math unit is also for sale!

Who watches Homeland?  That is the highlight of my week right now!  I love that show!  We  also just found Brooklyn nine-nine with Andy Samburg.  If you need a good laugh, check it out :)

Its been raining in Virginia for three days now... and it looks like it will go on for the rest of the weekend.  I do love rainy days, its relaxing and soothing I think.  Hopefully the sun will come out soon though!  Until then, I plan on enjoying the coziness of a rainy day!

Have a great Columbus Day weekend!

Annie

Five for Friday

Well another week went by where I FAILED to update this blog!  Six hours of tutoring and the loss of an hour of planning time this year is really taking its toll on my blogging.  Maybe October will be my month!  Here is my Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs!

Even though I am not blogging about it, there are some great things happening in first grade:

1. Word Study
All of my word study work for the summer is really paying off.  My kids love the word study choices this year!  Here are some snap shots of each of the games I have for each word study sort:

These are available in my TPT store

2. Weekly Science Experiments
This year I am trying to do a science project on a weekly basis to try to implant the scientific process into them a little bit at a time.  These are super simple science projects, but we go through the process and ask questions, make hypotheses, make observations and record results.  The kids are loving it!  I am happy that I have actually stuck with it this year.

3. Testing, Testing, Testing
Test 1 is done, Test 2 starts next week.... Is there anyone else out there who just wants to start teaching reading?  Its so hard with all of these tests.  My goal is to get it ALL done this coming week!

4. Kevin Henkes
We just finished up our Author Study for Kevin Henkes.  My kids loved everything about him and I am amazed at how much they retained about this awesome author.  I am also really proud of my kiddos for using comprehension strategies already with my daily read alouds.  I have a rock star class this year!

5. Football
A non-teaching thing.  Anyone else's team 0-3 this year?  My poor Redskins just can't get it together!  I am hoping for a W this week!  Go Skins!

Have a great weekend everyone!
Annie

Five for Fraturday!

Of course I am late for the first Five for Friday I have actually sat down to write, but here it goes anyway :)  I have been dying to share some stuff about my class this year.  So I am linking up to Doodle Bugs for the first time this year!

1. Math Centers

I have always loved the routine of our morning literacy block and started the second half of the year last year trying to duplicate it for math.  I HAVE IT DOWN!  I am obsessed with my math block because it runs so smoothly.  

We have a one hour block for math which starts out with Problem of the Day.  Each day, we work on a math problem that was given to us by the math department.  This is a nice start to get us focused on the math time.

After the problem of the day, we do a quick mini lesson.  Here is a screen shot from a pattern/sorting unit:

After we do the mini lesson, we break into centers.  Here is a screen shot:

Each day, my kids attend two groups.  Depending on the centers, they either stay there for 15 or 20 minutes.  I ring the bell when they are done and then they rotate.  They are getting really good at this.  I have 8 units/week and then on Friday we either assess or do something fun.

We end our math time with Number Talks.  I have to be honest, when we were told we had to add number talks to our daily math routine I was feeling a bit overwhelmed, but I LOVE them.  For the past two weeks, we have just been working on identifying numbers in ten frames:

We talk about how we see them.  For example, this would be I see two and two which is four.... or I see five in all, but one is not filled in so I see four.  I think it will really help their number sense when we get to adding and subtracting especially since we do it on a daily basis.

We finished our patterns/sorting unit this week.  I have posted the entire unit, including mini lessons, assessments, center printables, number talks and guides on TPT.  It has everything you need for a 10 day pattern unit including 12 centers.  Enjoy!

2. My Class

I love my class this year.  I am blessed to only have 16 kiddos and they have a great personality!  They are hard workers and are really trying their best :)

3. Fall Weather :)

Fall weather has arrived in Northern Virginia.  I am loving the pumpkin spice lattes and boots weather!  Since we have had such a mild summer the leaves are already changing too!

4. Travel Fridays

I love to travel and bring that into my classroom.  This week we went to Spain!  We made castanets too.  I have a lot of ELL students in my class so they were thrilled to share their spanish with the other students.  When we travel on Fridays, we pretend to fly to the country and then we talk about what we can see, hear, taste, smell and touch in that country.  We talk about landmarks, food and fun activities.  They really enjoyed Spain, even though our visit was cut short because of the weekly fire drill!

5. Life Outside of School

On Monday one of my best friends came to town from California.  I was so excited to have her and her hubby and 10 month old baby spend the evening with us.  It was so fun to have a baby around and to catch up with her :)  It was a great way to start out the week!

Have a great rest of your weekend!

Annie

Motivate Me Monday

Hi friends :)  I was thinking last week to use my five for Friday for pieces of motivation that I have come across as the school year has started... but in typical form I did not get to post for five for Friday (those little first grade germs got to me quick this year!)  Anyway, I was thrilled to see Motivate Me Monday over at First Grade Buddies so I thought I would link up!

I have two things.  At the beginning of this year, we watched this clip:

I also came across this on facebook this past week.  I know it has been circulating so you may have seen it already, but really puts things into perspective:

http://mychannel957.com/mother-of-sandy-hook-victim-write-powerful-letter-to-teachers/?trackback=fbshare_top

Happy Monday!  I hope to not neglect this blog this week - there are lots of fun things going on in my classroom I want to share!

Annie

First Day Jitters

Yesterday was my first day.... and I still had first day jitters!  I would have thought by year 6, those would be gone, but I did read a fellow teacher's facebook status that said the same thing.  She had decided that getting first day jitters is a good thing because it means we are still excited about teaching.  I will have to agree.

But back to those first day jitters.... I love that book, but alas didn't have time to read it to the kids!  Anyone else overplan for the first day?  Like didn't get to half of the things they wanted to?  Guilty!

I had so much I wanted to do yesterday, but we didn't quite make it.  I reflected on Day 1 last night and decided I still did too much.  Today I want to slow down and really make sure those procedures and rules are in order.

My biggest success for yesterday?  Getting the kids on the right bus!  This is my biggest fear every year, but they all made it where they needed to go at the end of the day.

I also found my math time to be extremely productive, although... again, didn't get to everything!  This week I am implementing full math time procedures.  Our county is implementing Problem of the Day, which is great!  We are also implementing number talks. I really wanted to get our math procedure down this week so we started with our problem of the day and then rotated through three centers (just playing with our math tools this week) and then finished with number talks.

I think I have math planning down to a science this year and I am thrilled.  I make a flipchart for each unit.  In the flipchart, I have the daily problem of the day, a whole class mini lesson, the centers for that day and the number talks lesson.  This way, the whole unit is done and I can adjust year after year.

Well, I need to start getting ready to head back for Day 2....
Annie