Memories Made in First

Best "How-To" Week Ever!

I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share five things we did this week in room 301.

This week, as part of a unit on procedural text and how-to writing, we focused on recipes. My favorite type of writing to teach is "How-To" writing and we had a blast this week DOing and writing.

Last week we started writing procedural text, so this week we really focused on details and clarity. On Monday, we examined some cook books and discussed the elements of a recipe. If you haven't seen Superhero Cookbook and Ballerina Cookbook, they contain fun recipes that are easy for first graders to understand. I found them at the public library.

Then, I put the children in charge of writing a recipe for my lunch. I told them I wanted to have a ham and cheese sandwich with mustard. We brainstormed the tools and ingredients I would need and I sent them off to write a recipe for my lunch. Then, I tried to followed their recipes.

Of course, the first recipe that I tried didn't provide very much clarity. It just told me to "get" things and I ended up making a mess on the desk.

But I did eventually find one that made a pretty good lunch for me!

On Wednesday, we sat around the (tissue paper) campfire and made s'mores.

We wrote, "How To Make S'mores." We were sure to include a title, list of ingredients and tools, plus the how-to steps. We made the cutest little s'more craft too (picture fail). The kids thought this was just the BEST.DAY.EVER!

Today, we fit in a little cross curricular action. We combined our procedural text unit with our study of Texas in social studies. We learned aout armadillos, the state small mammal. Then we read Armadilly Chili. So this morning we decided to make Mrs. Elvir's Class-y Chili (we voted on that title).

It was a very simple chili, but it turned out very tasty! And, of course, we wrote a recipe for our chili.

Moving on from reading class, in math we have been learning about place value. My class is obsessed with Base Ten blocks! I made a few things to supplement my district's curriculum. You can check it out HEREhttps://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Guided-Math-Place-Value-1785232.

One last thing...last year we had so much fun with a Pete the Cat themed Easter celebration, I'm doing it again! Check out last year's post HERE. Find it on TpT here.

#TBT Pete the Cat Themed Easter Celebration

Our Easter celebration was such a success last year that I plan to try to replicate it this year! Click here to read a throw back post about our Pete the Cat themed Easter celebration! Click here to check out this Easter resource on TpT.

Get Yo Math On! {Addition & Subtraction Strategies}

It's rodeo season in Houston so, .... howdy yaaaaa'lllllll! But, let's not talk rodeo just yet, let's talk MATH. My class has been learning and practicing new addition and subtraction strategies. By new, I mean NOT drawing pictures, using our fingers, or counting forward or backwards to find the answer. Don't get me wrong, couting on our fingers still works, but it's time to introduce some new (and a bit more sophisticated) strategies.

SIDE NOTE: I try really hard to think up ways (or beg, borrow, steal, or Pin ways) to start math class with an interactive hands-on lesson. Somedays what I come up with works really, really well. And, some days I wonder what on earth was I thinking when I decided to try that!??? The conversation in my head sounds something like this, "It must be a full moon...no, maybe the barometric pressure dropped...errr...maybe we will try this a DIFFERENT way tomorrow." But to avoid embarrasing myself, I'm going to limit this post to lessons that worked :-)

This week's Humpday Highlight (with Ms. Stanford's class) is all about math strategies we have been learning.

Making Ten to Add
I used masking tape to make a ten frame on the floor and some foam circles I found in a cabinet as counters. Our goal was to take an addition problem and make it start with 10, because adding anything to 10 is super fast and easy!

After the students assisted me with the floor demo, they each got a baggie of counters and a ten frame, so we could all practice at the same time.

My firsties thought making ten was fun, and almost everybody caught on quickly.

Number Bonds and Fact Families
We used one full size hula hoop and two mini hula hoops (Dollar Tree, baby!) to create human number bonds and human fact families. I gave three students foam discs with numbers written on them. The kiddos stood in the hoops to make a number bond. Next, I gave two more students a +/- sign and an = sign. The students in the hoops joined the other two students to create a number sentence. Finally, a volunteer student played "director" and told the students that were holding the numbers how to rearrange themselves to make three other number sentences that were part of the same fact family.

Related facts (Using an addition fact to solve a subtraction problem.)

I made a tic-tac-toe board using white butcher paper. Inside the squares I wrote two subtraction facts in the same fact family. The class split into two teams and sat together around the board. A player rolled two large dice and then stated an addtion fact that could be made with the two numbers on the dice, "I rolled a six and a three. Six plus three equals nine." Then I asked, "Do you see a subraction fact on the board that is part of the same fact family as 6+3=9?" If there was a related fact (like 9-6=3), then the student got to cover it with a foam dot (pink for the girl team, blue for the boy team) after he/she read the facts out loud. If a related fact could not be found, then the team lost its turn.

First team to get three in a row wins.

Tomorrow, we will take it a step further and explain HOW an addition fact can help solve a related subtration problem. I wrote related facts on cookie and milk bulletin board decor (Dollar Tree for the win!) so partners can turn and talk about a pair of related facts with each other. Then, we will play a matching game (like Memory). If a student flips over two related facts, he/she will explain how the addition fact helps find the answer to the subtraction probem. Give an explanation and the correct answer to earn a point for your team.

Happy strategizing!

Tips I Learned at the SDE Conference for First Grade Teachers

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend the SDE Conference for Texas First Grade Teachers with my fabulous teaching partner and my lovely principal. The presenters were just THE BEST. I attended sessions presented by Jim Grant, Reagan Tunstall, Cara Carroll, and Erica Bohrer. I jotted down all the fabulous ideas I possibly could (15 pages!). Soooo, I had to be picky and choosey about what I wanted to implement first, because I only remember what I implement right away. Then, my brain empties the week's excess and I can't remember anything else no matter how terrific the idea was! Anyways, I'm going to share a few ideas I have implemented in this week's Five for Friday.

If you're bored with your typical morning message routine, try this tip from Reagan Tunstall. Write a letter to your class and then do a different activity with it each day. I decided to incorporate the week's I Can...statements into my letter.

Monday - Read with gesstures! I shouldv'e taken pics of the gestures we are using. Teacher fail. But, while reading, we use a gesture each time we come to a capital letter, comma, period, exclamation mark, or question mark.
Tuesday - Read with gestures, circle capital letters
Wednesday - Read with gestures, circle punctuation
Thursday - Read with gestures, vocabulary
Friday -Read with gestures, reflection

According to my notes, Reagan suggested spending one day on capitalization and punctuation and one day on spelling and sight words. I have not incorporated our spelling words into the letter.

What I really love is how vocabulary that seems inpossible is totally understandable by the time you discuss it on Thursday after you've read the morning message four times and you've been applying the skill in class all week. Like "literary nonfiction." My kiddos actually use the word now!

I have a letter ready to go for next week. I think this tip is a keeper.

Another Tunstall tip...place four visual aids in a baggie. Each member (of a group of 4) pulls one out of a baggie and discusses the reflection question with the his/her peers. The cookie and the ketchup were not specific suggestions from the conference, I just had those so I used them.

In my notes I wrote:

Key - What's the key point?
Star - What shined the brightest?
Heart - What learning did you love?
Flower - How did yoour learning grow?

Paper clip - What was added to your knowledge?
Rubberband - What stretched your thinking?
Puzzle peice - What was puzzling to you?
Eraser - What will you change next time.

My third, and final tip, from the conference (for now) is Pick-A-Pocket. Cara Carroll had some awesome ideas for a writing inspiration station. I haven't had time to make them all, but got started with the Pick-A-Pocket sentence strip.

Pretty self explanatory...take a card from each pocket and write a story incorporating all the elements.

This week we finished a ten day unit on data. We learned to take surveys, display our data on picture graphs and bar graphs, and analyze our data a variety of ways. I managed to snap a few pics.

This Build a Pictograph sheet is from Reagan Tunstal's Big Bundle of Math Centers. We walked around and asked ten friends, "What is your favorite type of weather?" We colored their answers, then cut out the colored tiles annd created a graph.

Today we had a Friendship Party. The kiddos made mailboxes at home and brought them to school. Can you believe this one!!!??? So cute.

February CURRENTLY

I'm linking up with Farley for the February CURRENTLY.

Listening - Mac and Brady, Leila and Tanner are singing their hearts out right now. In the mornings, I ask my girls (ages 5 and 2) how they want their hair. The answer is almost always like Mac, Elsa, Anna, or Milli. I've mastered Teen Beach Movie, Frozen, and Team Umizoomi hair, people!!!

Loving - Houston has a HUGE rodeo evey March. Most of the acts (after the rodeo competition) are country music, which I love, but this year I'm trying to find my inner Latina. For the record, I'm not Latina, but I aspire to be J-Lo-esque. As if.

Thinking - I'm sooo tired by the end of the week.

Wanting - It's a real addiction, ya'll. Dr. Pepper is the enemy.

Needing - I won Teacher of the Year on my campus. Now I need to write some essays to compete for the district title. I'm very honored my peers voted for me...but essays? I think the judging committee should just visit my classroom. I'll do my best to write worthy papers, don't get me wrong...but stopping by is a better idea. Am I crazy?

Pageant Title - I dabble in a little of everything including song writing (for my classroom). This happened today. I'm planning a post on our Data Unit later this week.

Happy February!!!

Gettin' Nonfiction With It & More!

I began this week at the SDE Conference for Texas First Grade Teachers in San Marcos, TX. I had sooo much fun, and every.single.session I attended was awesome. I have pages and pages of tips, tricks, and ideas to try. I've already implemented a couple of them and I plan on dedicating a post to the new stuff I've learned after I've tried them out for about a week. You might recognize these teacher-bloggers:

Cara Carroll

I attended Cara's Putting the FUN into Your Math Instruction and Calling All Creative Writers! sessions. She covered lots of ways to keep students engaged with fun, hands-on activities.

Erica Bohrer

I saw Erica at Fitting It All into First: A Look into the Year of a First Grade Teacher. As teachers we are confined inside our classroom walls, so it was nice to "get a glimpse" into someone else's classroom and hear how she gets everything done.

I took a picture with Reagan Tunstall of Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits too, but it turned out blurry. Her sessions were absolutely phenominal! My favorite session of the entire conference was Become a Guided Math Guru! I also attended Math Centers: Hands-On & TEKS Aligned, plus Rise & Shine the Interactive Morning (which really detailed ways to make your entire day interactive). I've already tried out some of Reagan's tips and I'm lovin' 'em. Like I said, more details to come next week.

Now, let's fast forward...back to school...

This week we are learning about expository text. I used a FREEBIE from The Whole Wheat Teacher to quickly make this anchor chart:

After we learned that expository texts teach us about a topic, we worked in peanut butter and jelly partners to figure out what a particular book was trying to teach us. Then, we searched for examples of text features. (I gave each pair a book about an animal that I checked out from our school library.)

After we poured over these books and familiarized ourselves with text features like Table of Contents, labels, photographs, etc. we were ready to learn about penguins and point out the text features in our interactive read aloud text.

In math, I still have some kiddos that struggle to skip cout by twos, so I came up with this game on the fly today and the kids LOVED it! They wanted to play again at dismissal and again tomorrow.
I wrote even numbers from 2 - 36 on some foam circles and scattered them on the floor. Then, the boys and girls split into two teams. I started skip counting by 2s out loud, then when I stopped, one boy and one girl had to race to find the number that would come next and step on it first. The fastest player got a point for their team.

This week we are finishing up a unit on measurement. Today we walked the line (well, 8 different lines that I put on the floor using yellow painter's tape) to measure distance using our feet.

Each student worked with a partner. After walking all the lines, the partners sat down and compared the size of their feet to their partner's feet. Finally, the partners compared their mearsurements to see that the child with larger feet and the child with smaller feet had different answers. For example, it took one child 9 "feet" to measure Line C, but it took his partner 11 "feet" to measure the same line.

Then we reflected on our learning. I'll talk more about this next week. This is one of those things I learned from Mrs. Tunstall at the conference. My kids thought the lily pad game was the awesome-sauciest and the most puzzling too. They said is was "hard, but lots of fun!!!"

We also learned a little something about rocks this week.

The kiddos brought rocks from home to compare and study, and I found this bag of rocks at Dollar Tree. Combine that with the rocks in our science lab and we had quite a collection. I think my students' favorite part was trying to scratch their rocks with their finger nail, a penny, and a push pin.