Work on Writing: Using Drawings, Food, and Our Five Senses to Add Details to Our Writing

One of the first things I taught my firsties to do as we set up our work on writing notebooks is start with an illustration. 

Think of something you want to write about.

 Make a mental picture.

 Do a quick pencil drawing on a square of white paper. 

It's a form of brainstorming.

At the very beginning of the year, most of my class writes one sentence and considers themselves done.

I beg to differ. 

This is where the drawing comes in handy. We compare/contrast the drawing with our writing. Here's a typical conversation from the first week or two of school. 

"Please read me your sentence."

"I have a dog."

"That's an awesome sentence. I see you remembered to start it with a capital letter. Let me look at your drawing. I notice in your drawing your dog has spots."

"Oh ya, my dog is white with lots of black spots."

"That is a detail you can add to your writing. Try adding a sentence about your dog's spots. I love when students add details to their writing." 

Over and over we talk about if our drawing matches our writing and vice versa. We use the drawing to add details to our writing. And, if we think of a detail to add that is not already in the drawing, we write it and then we add it to our drawing. 

This is how we wrote while launching Daily 5: Work on Writing.

I know. I know. It sounds like a lot for the very beginning of the year, but I'm a jump "write" in and try it kinda teacher. 

Currently we are in our fourth week of school. Last week in science (or was it the week before?) we learned about our five senses in science, so I decided to incorporate that into our writing lesson when we learned about adding labels to our drawings. 

The five senses make me think of food. So Monday I did a quick drawing of a cupcake. The drawing is in black and white. It always starts that way. Then I made a mental image and went about adding labels to the cupcake as the kiddos reviewed for me our five senses. 

Looks like: pink icing, colorful sprinkles, cherry on top, blue wrapper

Feels like: soft, warm fluffy cake with sticky, squishy icing

Smells like: sweet, sugary, strawberry

Tastes like: sweet, sugary, strawberry, strawberry filling in the middle, delicious

Sounds like: My class decided cupcakes do not make noise, so we skipped it. You could label what you sound like when you eat it :-)

Then the kiddos hurried to their desks to make their own mental images about food. One student drew pizza. A few drew donuts. There was a pie and a few cakes too. One little guy drew an ice cream cone. And some friends drew a cupcake very similar to mine. We added our labels and saved our work for the next day. 

Tuesday I demonstrated how I used my labels to help me add details to my writing. You may notice I color coded each label with where that detail is in my writing. I did this for demonstration purposes, but it couldn't hurt for the kids to try it a few times as it provides a visual connection between the drawing and the writing. 

We always go back and color our drawings at the very end. 

Today we did some interactive work on writing. We used real mini cupcakes!

My firsties had so much fun completing this writing activity!

Summaries, Diphthongs, and Acrostic Poems

Happy Friday!!!

This week was crazy! A third child withdrew from school. Three of my kiddos have moved since Christmas. On top of that, three were absent yesterday and three were out today. After lunch another kiddie went home with a fever. We're dropping like flies! I'm NOT complaining about the student-to-teacher-ratio, I'm just saying...

Anyway, this week we were focused on vowel dipthongs, summarizing, and poetry during our reading block. Here's how it all went down. I found this big book in the library:

I chose this book because it is a poem, and it had examples of the vowel dipthongs that we are focused on this week (and for the next two weeks too). There isn't much text per page, but the text is rich with all kinds of blends, diagraphs, diphthongs, and more. 

Just these four words contain a vowel diphthong (oo), a L-blend (fl), a S-blend (sc), a silent e, and rhyme. Whatever your working on is probably in there!

We picked out words in our big book that contained vowel dipthongs and wrote them on sticky notes.

Then we also did some dipthong work at the beginning of guided reading groups. 

This worksheet contains OW words. Color words that sound like COW red and words that sound like BLOW blue. We did not complete the entire worksheet during guided reading. I just got them started to make sure everyone understood the directions and knew what to do. It is part of my Vowel Diphthongs Word Detective Packet:

Be a Word Detective: Vowel Diphthongs

After practicing our reading strategies, we found words with diphthongs in our guided reading books.

Next week, we will probably look for dipthongs during Read to Self one day and I've got another big book full of diphthongs. I think it is called Beetle Bop. We will also work on some more of my Word Detective packet. 

This week during interactive read-aloud we were focused on summaries. We learned that good readers use information they learn to create a summary, and that a summary pulls together info we learn about a topic so we can share it with others. We read a book called Eruption! and recorded important information on our anchor chart.

 Actually, we didn't read the entire book. One day we read about how volcanoes are formed and lava. The next day, we read about different types of volcanoes and ash. Finally, we used our listening, thinking, and writing skills to write a summary. 

Today I decided a little craftivity was in order, so students copied the summary and then topped off their work off with a paper volcano. 

If you're a Texas teacher you know that next week is STAAR testing. If not, the acronym stands for State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. My class adopted a 5th grade class and made them a poster to show them a little support. We will deliver the poster on Monday. Testing begins Tuesday for 5th grade. 

The books in the pic are just holding down the poster. My firsties love Pharrel Williams' Happy. On YouTube there is a video with the minions from Despicable Me dancing to the song. I tried to play off that. It's hard to see in this picture, but I attempted to draw a disco dance floor and a mirror ball using colored chalk. 

This week we also started learning about poetry. We made an anchor chart detailing our schema about poetry and we are adding our new schema as we read more poetry everyday. This week during Work on Writing, we practiced writing acrostic poems. Most of our attempts were spring themed, but we also wrote an acrostic name poem. This is what the kids helped me write:

Here are the poems a couple of kids that understood that they were the subject of the poem: 

This student likes racing games, is active, loves to yo-yo, prefers hot weather, enjoys the Aflac commerical, and wants to join the navy.

This student loves her mom, her dog likes her, enjoys running, loves dogs, and has dark eyes. Many students lost sight of the subject after the first few letters of their name. Well, they couldn't think of anything about themselves that started with that letter, so they just wrote something else that begin with the letter. We'll get better ;-)

Are you going? I am! So excited. 

Your turn...link up!

Five for Friday

Open House and Clip Chart and Blends...Oh my!

Hello again.

Five for Friday time. Let's do this!

This week was Open House.  My firsties acted as tour guides and led their parents on a classroom scavenger hunt. I stayed outside the door to greet and chit chat most of the evening, so the kiddos really had to read the scavenger hunt and complete the tour with their parents. In short, this is what what was on their list:

          1. Tour your desk. Read your parents one of your writing samples in your writing folder. 

          2. Show your parents the Daily Five schedule. Explain to them what you do during each rotation.

          3. Get your book box and read a Meet with Teacher book to your parents. 

          4. Show what you know at the word wall. Read all the sight words you know to your parents. 

          5. Show your parents how many jewels you have on your clip and explain how to get on the Behavior           to Hoot About Wall of Fame (more on this later).  

         6. Guess the bobblehead. Can your parents pick out your self portrait? 

         7. Take a work walk. Show your parents all of your writing and craftivities on display in the hall. 

         8. Visit the Book Fair. 

This collage shows some of the kiddos' bobblehead self portraits, the D5 schedule, the jewels on the clips, and the bald eagles hanging from the ceiling. Somehow I managed to leave school and not take a picture of all the work in the hallway. :-(

About those bejeweled clips. I've been meaning to take pics and I finally did! 

When a student makes it to the top of the clip chart, I hot glue a little jewel on their clip. It takes 13 jewels to fill a clip. When the clip is filled the clip gets retired to the Behavior to Hoot About Wall of Fame. This worked like a charm from August til Spring Break. I didn't hand out a reward coupon or treasure box all year. These jewels are COVETED!!!! And, they're inexpensive. I purchased two bags of these mini jewels at Wal-Mart in August and I'm just now running low. Total spend = approx. $6. I may finally bust out those coupons now some of us are getting Spring Fever. 

The wall of fame is nothing fancy. I'll definately make the wall nicer next year. Sadly, this year all I did was use the cover page of the coupon catalog and staple it to the board. I can do better. :-) My mistake was not prepping the board til school started. I waited until a child's clip was filled. By then, it was low on my list of priorities. But, the kids beemed with pride at Open House if they had a clip of the wall of fame to show their parents!

My clip chart comes from Lindsay Griffith. The jewels were a Pinterest idea. But the resource comes with tons of really neat-o reward coupons.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Behavior-to-Hoot-About-Clip-Chart-Discipline-Coupon-Reward-729419

This activity was a real winner! One of my fast finishers got to start working on her "Spot the Final Blend" activity before anyone else. You get to use a hand lens for this, and hand lenses are a big deal in first grade! Not a firstie in sight could focus on what they should have been doing because they all had to stop and stare at this one student with her hand lens and highlighters. Several forgot rule #3, "Raise your hand for permission to leave your seat.", to wander over to me and ask if they got to do that too. Of course! 

This sheet and more can be found here:

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Blends-Be-a-Word-Detective-Initial-Final-Consonant-Blends-1170330

It was such a hit I'm making a version for vowel diphthongs. If my kiddos like it as much as this one, I'll upload it to TpT too.

I found these little yellow punch cards at Dollar Tree (a teacher's best friend). When a student submits work that is his/her best writing you punch the card. I also, display the work with the card as seen here:

When the card is punched 10 times you get a prize. 

Are you going to the the TpT Conference in Vegas this summer? I am!  And, some K and 1 teachers on campus are coming up with ways to raise money for the I Teach K or I Teach 1 conference the same week. Soooo excited! Love to meet ya.

Till next time :-)

Resource Rewind: January

Hiya friends,
I'm back. I'm a BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD BLOGGER! I know. I think about blogging often, but I don't actually sit down and do it. But, I resolve to be better. And, fingers crossed, I'm going to take some pictures that I can use on my blog....errr...for next time :-)

I was thinking about all of the wonderful resources that I buy or download for FREE from Teachers Pay Teachers. TpT is my go-to resource when I need/want to supplement the district resources that I am given. My district has really awesome reading and math resources, but I often supplement writing and social studies resources. I thought it would be a cool idea to showcase the resources that I used and really, really liked and may use again next year. Actually, this could be a really cool linky party too! What do you think?

Resource Rewind: show & tell the resources created by other teachers that are proven winners in your classroom.

Here are some of my January faves and the links so you can find them easily.

MLK Bingo by Jasmine McClain

This make-your-own BINGO board was a huge hit with my firsties! After reading a book about MLK Jr. and brainstorming some adjectives to describe the civil rights leader, we talked about some of the adjectives students could cut out and paste onto their BINGO board. Then, the following day we BINGOed til we were blue in the face. The kids just didn't want to stop! When I called out a word, I would use it in a sentence to help make a connection to our story. For example, "Equality. Martin wanted equality for people of every color." Some of the words are difficult for first graders, so I projected the words as I called them out loud. Winners got a mini tub of playdough. Students begged me to play again the following day during social studies.

What the Teacher Wants

Another resource that I really liked was this 3 sounds of -ed resource from What the Teacher Wants. In my district, very detailed and scripted lesson plans are provided for reading/language arts. The plans focus on reading strategies and reading comprehension more than phonics. But, when one of my guided reading groups is having trouble reading words that a quick phonics lesson will fix right up, I teach it. My kiddies reading at a level D/6 were having a tough time with word endings, especially -ed. They had no problem with "wait" or "skip" or "smell" but they struggled with "waited" and "skipped" and "smelled". I did a quick mini lesson whole group using these anchor charts and the word cards. Then, when I met with the guided reading group, I had the kiddos look through their books for words that ended with -ed. We discussed the root word and which sound of -ed the word made. It really helped! I struck gold with this resource.

All About Snowman Writing by Primary Paradise

We've been working on All About...writing for the past few weeks. The kids did some cross curricular writing, "All About My Rock", when they described the attributes of the rocks they brought from home for our science unit. Then, we painted and pasted and hot glued to create pet rocks and wrote, "All About My Pet Rock" during Work on Writing. My class had a blast creating and writing about their pet rocks, and I didn't think I'd be able to come up with something else they would enjoy writing about as much as those rocks. But, we had a couple of snow days, well...ice and sleet days, recently and we are reviewing weather in science, so I decided to work with that. I found this snowman glyph writing craftivity from Primary Paradise and the kids loved creating a snowman to write about. This resource has a variety of hats, scarfs, buttons, etc. to choose from so each child's snowman is unique. We are in the middle of this little project, but I plan to display the snowmen without the writing attached. Then, students will share their writing with the class to see if their friends can figure out whose snowman is whose. We are working on adding details to create a mental picture for the reader. If I remember to take some pics, I'll update this post with some pictures of the snowmen later on.

It just so happens that each of these resources are FREE!

Stay warm,