Compound Words

I love when I show my students a new project they are going to create, because their eyes always light up! This time, they each created a member of our Compound Word Club!

First, the students chose their compound word. Next, they chose the color of their coat, folded it into fourths, and refolded it to look like a coat. Then, the two individual words that make up the compound word go on each side of the outside of the coat. The students colored a picture of the word about the correct word. On the inside of the coat, you write the compound word and color a picture of it. For example, to make a coat for "cupcake": "cup" on one side, "cake" on the other, "cupcake" on the inside.

Finally, the students got to choose their club members skin color and hair color/style. They turned out fabulously!

Synonyms

Let me start by saying, I feel guilty taking an abundance of free paint swatches from stores. Sure, I try to be sneaky or take swatches from multiple stores, but that still doesn't help my conscious!

You may be asking yourself, "Then why are you taking so many?" The answer: because they make CUTE flowers for synonyms! Take a look:

Very simple! We took 1 word at a time and brainstormed synonyms for it. The students wrote the starter word in the first box and synonyms of their choice in the boxes under it. You have a different starter word on each paint swatch. So cute and effective! 

Contractions

Thanks to all the bloggers and Pinterest posters out there who gave me great ideas for teaching contractions! My students enjoyed every minute of it!

We started with the Contraction song. If you're not familiar with the song by Cherry Carl, it goes like this:

Contraction Action (sung to Hokey Pokey)

You pop some letters out.

You put apostrophes in.

You pop some letters out.

That's the way you must begin.

You do contraction Action.

It's as easy as can be.

Come on and sing with me...Oh Yeah! 

Next, I told the students we were going to do contraction surgery. Using inexpensive painters masks I got at Dollar Tree, the students became word surgeons. They each received two thin strips of paper. On the first two thirds they wrote the two words the create the contraction. On the final third they write the contraction endings. To create the contraction, they fold the paper over the letters that "popped out." 

When students finished early, I had contraction centers they could participate in. The centers included: Contraction Lace-Up cards, Puzzle, Memory Match, and Bingo. 

Then, we made contraction kites. The kite has the contraction written on it. The two bows on the string have the two words that make up the contraction. The cloud has a sentence using the contraction. 

Not only did the students have fun with our contraction activities, they also got great practice reading and creating contractions! The best part: watching them wear their contraction surgery masks out to the buses! 

Poetry Celebration

My students did a Poetry unit right before Spring Break. We wrote a variety of poems including: Acrostic, Cinquain, Concrete, Color poem, What Bugs Me poem, I Wish poem, and What if I Were a...poem. My students worked really hard writing their poems, typing some of them on Microsoft Word Keys, and illustrating their poems. I bound their decorated Poetry Collection cover and all of their poems into individual books for them.

To help celebrate their accomplishments, we had a Poetry Celebration! I arranged the desks into a horseshoe, and put a stool with two flame-less candles in the front of the room. During the celebration, we turned down the lights, drank tea, ate fancy cookies, and snapped our fingers when students finished sharing their favorite poem. I filmed each of the students with my Flip Video camera and included the video on their end-of-the-year DVD. The students had so much fun celebrating their accomplishments!

Classroom Service Project

This past year, I had an overwhelming desire to help my students learn to give back. After watching an award show on television for charities, I was inspired to have my students send care packages over seas to men and women in our Armed Forces.

In early December, I sent a note home to families asking them to look around their house for key items I  found on AnySoldier.com that had been requested by members of our Armed Forces. The families in my classroom overwhelmed me with their compassion and the number of donations that came rolling through our classroom door! Along with donated items, we added a handcrafted set of holiday lights we made with construction paper, glue, and glitter that spelled out PEACE. Inside the boxes, we also included cards from the students, and a card with a class picture and our return address.

In total we sent 4 care packages to 4 different locations. I suggest uses the prepay boxes at the post office, because then you can fill them completely and not have to worry about the weight. I also suggest looking at AnySoldier.com to help pick your packages' destinations. If gives you a list of men and women who have requested care packages, AND shows you which of them have barely received any packages. Those are the addresses that I request! We sent our boxes to two destinations in Afghanistan, and two destinations in Kuwait.

Months later, I received a thick envelope from one of the destinations in Kuwait. They had sent us Thank You cards, personalized letters to the students whose cards they received, and photographs of themselves including one with the PEACE lights. The students were SO excited! What a great experience this was for all of us!

Researching with iPads for the Big 6

This past year, our school purchased a mobile cart with a set of 25 iPads that could be checked out by classrooms. Honestly, I was hesitant to use the iPads with my students because I was unsure of how to use them. After attending several iPad trainings at my school, I learned a variety of applications that the students could use for fun and to showcase their learning.

To introduce the Big 6 Research Model, we researched zebras as a class. After determining questions we had about zebras, we explored the WB Animals application on the iPads for answers. The students were instantly excited to discover the answers to our questions!

I turned the students attention to posters around the room that had the titles: Appearance, Habitat, Diet, and About Zebras (other). The students each received 2 post-it notes. They had to find the answer to one of our questions, write it on the post-it note, and hang it on the correct poster. Duplications are okay! This is all about exploring the process! If students finished really early, they received an extra post-it note. Soon, our posters were filling up with facts about zebras!

Before the students arrived the next day, I rewrote the facts on all of the posters except for "About Zebras," because we needed to add 3 new poster categories: Predators, Babies, and Facts. When the students arrived the next day, we placed the post-its from "About Zebras" on the new posters and got rid of duplicates.

Next, they wrote down their favorite zebra facts they would read during their iMovie. We laid the posters of facts around the room. I put the students in groups of 2-3, and had them begin at different posters. Their note-taking packet was 6 pages long, one page for each poster. When they got to the "Appearance" poster, they would write down a fact on the "Appearance" page about what zebras look like. Later, they would record these facts in their iMovie.

Over the course of two days, the students recorded individual iMovies about zebras. We started the movies together in front of the Smart Board. Step-by-step we chose the order of the photos so our iMovie would match our note taking packet. Next, we added titles to each of the slides. Then, with a partner, they recorded their facts with the correlating slide. Finally, we viewed the iMovie together to check for audio clips that needed to be re-shot and pictures that were out of order. The students were SO excited to watch the final product! Their iMovie was added to their end-of-the-year DVD. 

Solving Word Problems

Early in the year, I established expectations for how to thoroughly answer a Math word problem. After knowing the expectations for how third graders answer word problems and talking with other first grade teachers, I introduced the 5 steps to problem solving to my students.

I don't expect all First Grade students to be masters at this right away ... it takes time. In fact, the initial response from my students was groaning. By the middle of the year, my students were solving word problems independently using the 5 steps. Sure, my struggling Math students needed some reminders about what step comes next, but overall, HUGE progress. Even the students noticed that it was getting easier! By the end of the year, ALL of my students were using the 5 steps independently. My students who needed reminders about the steps learned to turn to our reference poster for help!

The five steps are: Picture, Numbers, Word Sentence, Number Sentence, and Answer.

When it comes to teaching, I truly believe: set the bar high and make your students reach for it!

Reader's Theater

To help improve my students' fluency, we performed Reader's Theaters. I had two goals: help increase their words per minute ratio with repeated readings, and help improve their reading with expression. I divided the students by reading levels into 4 groups. Then I looked for scripts that correlated with their reading levels. Instead of reading a Back-and-Forth book nightly, they read their Reader's Theater script. I sent the script home with a CAFE Parent Pipeline about Fluency to help parents understand our goals.

To prepare for their presentation, the students made a hat for their character. We created them out of a sentence strip, a half sheet of white paper, and markers. The students write their character's name on the sentence strip, draw their character on the half sheet, and connect it to the sentence strip. I helped with the stapling of the strip to fit their head. The students loved this! They wore their hats with pride!

While they presented, I filmed their Reader's Theater on my Flip Video camera. At the end of the year, I put their Reader's Theater video on their end-of-the-year DVD. What a great memory!

Lesson Plans

I have a confession to make ... I'm not very good at writing down my lessons in a planning book. There, I said it! I'm guilty of over planning or under planning. Either way, my lessons plan book is ruined after 1 day. So frustrating.

I began the year with a very vague lesson plan book. I was good at documenting my lessons for about two weeks, then I started to drop the ball. By winter break, I was fed up with my old planning guide and recreated a new one. With my new planning book, I was able to plan ALL of my Literacy goals for the week including vowel focus, word family focus, reading strategies, etc. I will share more about my Tic-Tac-Toe Literacy structure later, but for now, this is my planning book:

Geometry Centers

Our school uses Investigations for our Math curriculum. In addition to using activities from this curriculum program, I also supplement other activities to enhance the units. For example, during the 2-D Geometry triangle lesson, I added a game using Pattern Blocks and Geoboards where students could create different types of triangles with rubber bands. In addition to these supplemented activities, students completed a triangle drawing Investigation activity in two ways: on the Smart Board and with dry erase markers on sheet protectors. My students enjoyed all 4 activities!

Rock Museum

Our School uses FOSS (Full Option Science System) for hands-on Science instruction. During the First Grade unit Pebbles, Sand, and Silt, my students collected their own rocks and displayed them in a "Rock Museum". This is a picture of our class touring the museum, but other classes also came to visit.

Setting Up the Classroom

While getting ready for the 2011-2012 school year as a First Grade teacher, I followed many Kindergarten and First Grade blogs to help set up my classroom. 

One of the first ideas I got was for my Chicka Chicka Boom Boom door and magnetic tree for a word work station. The students loved this! The tree is made from an 8" concrete form tube from Home Depot for about $8 (covered in magnetic paint and brown spray paint), a cheap umbrella, and a large green piece of felt (I laid it over the top of the umbrella and rounded the bottom into palm leaves). If I can do it, so can you! 

I used the white board next to the Smart Board for a magnetic word wall. This way it could be used during our carpet-time Literacy activities, and the students could take the magnetic words to their desk if they needed help with spelling. 

Since I use my Smart Board for just about everything, I could use my large chalkboard for displaying other things. After taking SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) training, I post my Content and Language Objectives on the board. I laminated the paper so I can use dry erase marker and wipe it off when we are working on new objectives. The parents really like this! I also have our Edmodo for 1st Grade Pocket Charts displayed. Edmodo is a free educational blog that I used with my third graders for discussions; however, with first grade we use laminated sentence strips with their pictures and names of them. Not only does it remind the students of Facebook, it is also a great way for me to use up those markers from my old overhead projector! I post a question and a sentence starter they must begin with, and they write the rest. We use this as an "exit slip" for a lesson or a chance to respond to a field trip. 

At the start of the school year, my largest bulletin board was empty except for the fabric background. This was VERY hard for me! Eventually, it filled up as we learned reading, writing, and spelling strategies. Our Reading reference posters were for Retelling a Story, Character Traits, Character Emotions, Reading Strategies, and Words Found While Reading. Our Spelling reference poster gave ideas for what to do when you don't know how to spell a word. Our Writing reference posters gave ideas for writing topics, the 3 Main Parts of a Story, and how to write a great Story Starter. 

Other helpful tricks for setting up your room:

• Covering up your file cabinets with pocket charts to make a station. Why waste that space! 
• Great, inexpensive, colorful benches from Walmart that double as storage. This is a go-to location for my students! 
• Get rid of your teacher desk. Let's face it, all it's used for is stacking papers! Now, my room is more spacious! 
• Run a decorative piece of ribbon down the front of cabinets and display students' work with close pins. Great way to save wall space! 
• Store cute kid's chairs for independent reading in a plastic hamper. Very durable! 

I'm sure there are more set-up ideas I will think of later, but for now... keep rearranging furniture until you find an arrangement that works for you!!!