Five for Friday - September 26

Whew!  Another week down.  This was such a great week.  I felt like routines were FINALLY taking shape and my kids were rocking it all week long.  Could not have been more proud of them and what they accomplished this week.  They were finally digging in so deep to their learning and it was fun, exciting, and rewarding to watch. 103 is the place to be - let me tell you. :)  Here's my Five for Friday for the week!  I haven't done a linky in a while and felt I needed to get back on board - so here goes!

We dove into beginning, middle, and end this week in reading and I integrated it with being a good citizen.  We watched lots of Franklin and Arthur videos to help us describe what a good citizen is - responsible, respectful, fair, caring, and honest.  We read some nonfiction books and then we did lots of describing, BME, and what not with some fiction books.  One day, we did an "impromptu" lesson that popped off the top of my head with major vs. minor events in a story.  I think it was super beneficial for my kids - they were really into it and fixing their papers to have more important events and not ones that didn't matter. Does any other teacher think that impromptu lessons sometimes go the best?

We began our geometry unit this week and my kids are eating it up.  They love messing with the pattern blocks and making shapes.  My big focus this week was really getting my math workshop to how I wanted it.  I took time on my writing workshop and it is running like an well oiled machine.  I did the same thing with Daily 5 and now felt like I could focus on math.  This week my kids helped me accomplish my goal - they were fabulous mathematicians during workshop time.  They were so engaged and on task.  We did lots of filling in shapes with our pattern blocks and then adding up how many blocks we used.  They did so well during math workshop that I got though my whole class math testing that I needed to get done so I can start small groups next week. Go me!

Last weekend I ordered my first set of Jamberry nails.  I am so excited for them to come - I've been putting on nail growth stuff all week so that they are ready to go next week!  I'm still waiting and hoping that they show up tomorrow.   I'm ready to get them on this weekend!  Through all my blog searching and reading over the summer they seem to be a teachers dream for not chipping and such with our busy hands during the week.  I'm up for whatever works because when my nails chip I immediately start peeling it off - hoping that Jamberry changes my nail life!

Our first grade team has decided that our Student Learning Objective for the District this year is for 100% of our students to improve their AVMR score in math on Backward Number Sequence and Numeral ID.  With the new Common Core changes lots of our kids are behind in math and continue to fall behind as the year goes on.  Does anyone else use AVMR at their school?  It's a great intervention tool and it's quick to do for the kids.  I usually squeeze my meeting and groups into our math workshop time. Since we're focusing on backwards number and numeral ID I whipped up this Bingo game last night that I'll be introducing to my kids next week.

I sent it home with my kids today to play with their parents over the weekend.  It's easy and quick and what kid doesn't love Bingo?  We also use this app a lot in our room to help with numeral sequencing and it's adjustable to help my higher students too!  It's free. :)

Nothing makes me happier then arriving home to new clothes in the mail.  I'm a sucker for Abercrombie and Fitch clothes lately.  They are so comfy and look great for casual weekend styles but can be spiced up for the work week too.  Today, I came home to a huge bag that my husband and I ordered over the weekend when they were having their 50% off sale.  I squealed - literally out loud. I love new clothes - especially when they can be purchased from my couch.

There's my Five for Friday!  Tonight, I'm planning a date night with the husband with a weekend of relaxation to follow.  Naps, grading, creating, and cleaning are on the agenda.  Monday is inservice day in our District - so while I am dreading Monday, I'll refuse to think about it all weekend. :)

Until next time!

Squealing & Predictions

If think that the weekend goes faster and faster when your a teacher.  Yesterday I was waking up and breathing in crisp Saturday morning air, and didn't have anything pressing to do.  This morning was about the same - got some things done around the house (laundry, cleaning, meal prep, you know - the wife things). We had a leadership meeting tonight at our church for a few hours and now I am convinced that when you are a teacher your weekends go by faster than anyone else.  I'm feeling the Sunday Night dread as I watch some football on the couch and play with my sweet puppy.

Anyways, enough of my whining - this week in 103 we did so many things and our week went by fabulously!  I love my kids personalities and what they challenge me to do everyday as a teacher.  I love their hearts, hugs, individuality, and creativity.  I could brag about them all day.  Since last week we were really struggling with describing characters, we took another week to work on it.  We watched short movies of our favorite characters to help us better describe characters using inside and outside traits.

I am a sucker for Franklin.  I loved him as a kid and think he teachers some really good lessons to kids in short little clips that they can understand and my kids adore him.  We watched one about Franklin's big soccer game and then we had to describe Franklin with a partner.  I got the worksheet from Peterson's Pad by coincidence when I was searching for graphic organizers.  My kid used this all week and all I had to do was switch out the picture in the middle.  At the end of the week they had to describe Piggy or Elephant (they could choose) and they actually did really well - hooray my teacher heart!  Next week we will work on being a good citizen and describing major events.  I am really trying to integrate my science/social studies and reading time since I do not have a separate scheduled science or social studies in the day.  It's been working good so far and it's nice to really focus and dig into two topics at one time.

We've been doing lots of work with bullying and being a good friend in our classroom - watching videos and reading books to help us understand what bullying is, and what we can do when we need to help our friends.  Our counselor came in this week to give us a little lesson on "Not Squealing Unless it's a Big Deal".  She read the kids a funny and cute little book, and used a puppet to help us talk about when is a good time to get a teacher for a problem, and when it's just a kid problem that they could try and work out together.  Bullying is such a hard concept in first grade - I've really been emphasizing the difference between a "disagreement" with a friend - something that happens every once in a while with the same or different people, and "bullying" which is repeated each day by the same person.  Since it's something our school really emphasizes at the beginning of our school years, I'm happy to help my kids understand it better.

We also added predicting to our CAFE wall this week - and we got really good at making prediction sentences during our Read to Self time in Daily 5 and with a partner during Read to Someone.  We used many books to help us and did little activities with pictures and animals to help us make prediction sentences. Here is the poster we made together to help us with sentences when predicting!

Next week I'll be sharing more about our citizenship and major events in reading!  I'm off to do some creating for the classroom and to look around TPT.  I love buying products from people I know!  My really great friend Kayla started her blogging and TPT journey with me this summer.  We've been friends since we were in 2nd grade and even though she lives in Texas and I here, we are still super close.  I'm so thankful for her!  She posted a new product today that I am excited to head over and buy for my littles.  You should check out her store here, and her blog here! She's fabulous.

Until next time!

Routines & Dreambox

My own personal goal is to have a blog up once a week - I've been slacking!  Since last year I didn't take many pictures of my class, I keep having to remind myself to take pictures of our activities for all you lovely people to see!  We have been moving and cruising along in 103 and are heading into our 5th week of school already.  Holy cow!  I'm loving my kiddies and their personalities.  They are hard working and so caring - however, this week we have been REALLY working on our chattiness and tattling.  We are planning to read the book "Don't Squeal Unless it's a Big Deal!" with the counselor this week to hopefully bring the tattling to a minimum.  Any teachers out there agreeing with me?  Our talking has been great during partner work while we focus, but my kids are turning into such good friends that they just want to talk all day long.  We've had to refocus on being "First Grade Fast" so that we can get everything awesome done in the day.  I think it's a problem for every first grade teacher - or any teacher for that matter so I'm aware it's just going to take time. :)

This week we got really good at "Read to Someone" in our Daily 5 literacy time.  We are up to 15 minutes of work on writing,  and our read to self time is SHOOTING out of control.  If I let them, they would do read to self our whole literacy block. Guided reading groups are up and moving in our room so 20 minutes is spectacular!  We've been working on reading to someone by sharing a book together,and I also introduced reading to someone where you sit by a friend, but read your own book and talk to each other about our reading strategy for the week.  This week, it was all about characters and setting. Setting was pretty easy for them, but describing characters is proving to be more of a challenge - we'll spend another week on it really dig into character traits and describing words. If anyone has specific resources they would recommend send them my way!
Here's a few pictures of my kiddies reading:

They are so cute together.  I just love watching them being engaged in each other's books.

In math, we've been focusing on comparing groups of numbers.  Our math curriculum does a lot of focus on games to teach concepts - my kids LOVE math workshop time and working with others.  Sometimes our days can get a little out of control so we have had to do a lot of stop and go, stop and go, the last few weeks to get our math workshop time the way I want it as a teacher.  The game they were playing required them to compare 2 numbers and decide which 2 were bigger. They busted out their math toolkits and built the numbers with cubes to help. Some of them even began writing number sentences all on their own.  They are so smart! :)

One of the things our district has put into place is "Dreambox Learning".  It's a online math program - kind of like a game that helps address "gaps" in our students math curriculum.  My kids adore it.  They think it's the coolest game and often ask to play it as a reward.  It lets me see their progress and identify needs so I can pull them into small groups for common core skills.  If there is something my kids need to work on, the site has them play games to work on it and then I can continue to pull small groups.  This also allows my gifted kids to get harder math and challenging problems to help them grow.  As a teacher, I love it.  And, it's a plus my students like it too!

One last day of my weekend before another week of learning.  Weekends always go by so fast.  In the summer I never noticed because I was in a permanent state of "weekend". But now I'm like what? It's 1:00 on a Sunday? I need to start getting ready for Monday! Eww.
So, in my last hours of weekend I'm watching some football (Go Broncos!) with some great friends, my adorable goddaughter, and my sweet sister.  Here's to eating and not counting calories! :)

Hope your weekend and week were as good as mine!