Here is a smart board lesson I am planning on using this week. This is my first time using Scribd...so hopefully it will work. I have seen several posts on other teacher's blogs relating to sentence parts, and it just so happens to be one of our skills this week, so I thought I would adapt my previous lessons from years past on this skill into this little smart board lesson.
Parts of A Sentence
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
Updated Math Centers - Keep It Simple!
This week was very long! We had parent teacher conferences and then the rest of the day today to work in our rooms, so I am actually ahead of schedule for a second. AND today I set up our new smart board in our room. I can't wait to use it next week. I think this might be exactly what we all need in my room. Our routine needs some spicing up, so I hope the smart board will help!
Anyways, I rethought my math stations in an effort to accommodate the 2 new students I have recently received. I find that with the size of my room I can only have 3 students in each station. With our new additions, I had 2 groups of 4 and it was getting way to loud for me to focus and get work done with my small group. I am trying to work on my "productive noise" tolerance.
Here is what my station board looks like now:
The students go to 2 stations for 15-20 minutes. I have 8 stations, a change from my previous 6. I organize each station in colored baskets from Really Good Stuff. The color of the basket corresponds to the color of the number on the station board. This was a huge life-savor at the beginning of the year when my first graders were trying to figure out how to rotate during math stations.
It's kind of hard to tell in the picture below, but I have different baskets pertaining to the major math concepts in first grade. I have file folder games, flash cards and other follow the path games that I have made or bought. Here is a quick look at what is in each basket now:
# 1: Not pictured here, but the first station is the overhead projector. Currently the students can work on counting overhead coins, or tens and ones sticks. I have recording sheets for them to show me what they worked on.
#2: Pattern Blocks - cards with pictures/patterns to make
#3: Addition Station - flash cards, part-part-whole chinet plates, counters
#4: Money Station - board game, flashcards, shopping game
#5: Place Value - Who Has It, tens and ones sticks, place value mats
#6: Computers
#7: Fractions - equal/not equal sort, fraction memory, fraction fish
#8: Subtraction - flashcards, counters, number lines, Acorn Subtraction game
It worked great this week and the best part is it takes students several days to get to each station, so I don't feel like I have to constantly be changing the contents of the baskets.
Each student has a station folder where they keep recording sheets that they have worked on during stations. I check the folders periodically to make sure that work is actually getting done in stations. I love the folder system and it helps hold my students accountable for their actions during stations. I am going to post some of my math station recording sheets soon!
Anyways, I rethought my math stations in an effort to accommodate the 2 new students I have recently received. I find that with the size of my room I can only have 3 students in each station. With our new additions, I had 2 groups of 4 and it was getting way to loud for me to focus and get work done with my small group. I am trying to work on my "productive noise" tolerance.
Here is what my station board looks like now:
The students go to 2 stations for 15-20 minutes. I have 8 stations, a change from my previous 6. I organize each station in colored baskets from Really Good Stuff. The color of the basket corresponds to the color of the number on the station board. This was a huge life-savor at the beginning of the year when my first graders were trying to figure out how to rotate during math stations.
It's kind of hard to tell in the picture below, but I have different baskets pertaining to the major math concepts in first grade. I have file folder games, flash cards and other follow the path games that I have made or bought. Here is a quick look at what is in each basket now:
# 1: Not pictured here, but the first station is the overhead projector. Currently the students can work on counting overhead coins, or tens and ones sticks. I have recording sheets for them to show me what they worked on.
#2: Pattern Blocks - cards with pictures/patterns to make
#3: Addition Station - flash cards, part-part-whole chinet plates, counters
#4: Money Station - board game, flashcards, shopping game
#5: Place Value - Who Has It, tens and ones sticks, place value mats
#6: Computers
#7: Fractions - equal/not equal sort, fraction memory, fraction fish
#8: Subtraction - flashcards, counters, number lines, Acorn Subtraction game
It worked great this week and the best part is it takes students several days to get to each station, so I don't feel like I have to constantly be changing the contents of the baskets.
Each student has a station folder where they keep recording sheets that they have worked on during stations. I check the folders periodically to make sure that work is actually getting done in stations. I love the folder system and it helps hold my students accountable for their actions during stations. I am going to post some of my math station recording sheets soon!
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Guided Reading Lesson Plans
I finally finished my plans for next week! Good thing it is raining here because it took all day. That is one part of being a semi-new teacher that still gets to me. It takes me a LONG time for me to plan when I do my best job, partly because I spend the majority of my time stalking blogs instead of writing my own plans. But as I stalked blogs today I decided I would post an example of my guided reading lesson plans. These are the plans I use with each of my 4 reading groups. I typically see 3 groups a day. My two lower groups I see 5 times a week. My other two groups I see 3-5 times, depending on the skills and the week. So basically I write what you see below at the beginning of the week and then each morning I pull out books for the day based on what I noticed from yesterday's small group instruction. Then I just fill out the "New Read" part of the planner. I find it easy to plan ahead for word study and writing, but I like to plan my guided reading books before school each day. It's just something that I have found works for me.
Pets Linky Party
I didn't get a chance to post ideas from last week...BUT when I saw this pet Linky party, hosted by Ladybug Teacher Files, I figured I could take 5 minutes on this rainy Sunday evening to post a few pictures of my precious pup!
Here is Rocky...our 1 year old lab mix puppy that we rescued last July from the SPCA. He went from the worst living situation to living like a king the minute we brought him home. He is still learning (and nipping) but there is nothing better than coming home to unconditional love every afternoon!
Yes, this is totally unrelated to teaching BUT Rocky often provides great material for when I model my own writing during Writer's Workshop. Plus, I find myself having to tap into the same patience with both first graders and puppies some days.
Back to actual teacher blogging soon!
No...I am not obsessed with the dog!
Here is Rocky...our 1 year old lab mix puppy that we rescued last July from the SPCA. He went from the worst living situation to living like a king the minute we brought him home. He is still learning (and nipping) but there is nothing better than coming home to unconditional love every afternoon!
Yes, this is totally unrelated to teaching BUT Rocky often provides great material for when I model my own writing during Writer's Workshop. Plus, I find myself having to tap into the same patience with both first graders and puppies some days.
Back to actual teacher blogging soon!
Sunday, February 20, 2011
The Important Book
Our comprehension strategy for the past few weeks has been topic, main idea, and details. Typically I have read non-fiction books and then discussed topic, main idea and details by making an anchor chart with the class. After several rounds of this the kids kind of understood T, MI and D ... but I didn't think it was a deep enough understanding.
So this year another first grade teacher introduced me to The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown. This book was PERFECT and after a week of working with it, my class has a much better understanding of why we need to understand T, MI and D when reading and writing.
Here's what I did:
Day 1: We read The Important Book. I found this website that talks about The Important Book in the framework of the 6-Trait Writing philosophy. The Important Book works for T, MI, and D because it uses a specific, repetitive framework on each page, so it is easy to point out the pattern and then show students how they can write like Margaret Wise Brown. On Monday, I read the book, pointing out the patterned language on each page and then we looked at this poster together:
On the first day this chart was blank. I just copied "The important thing about _______ is ___________." Then I laminated it so we could use it all week.
Day 2: We re-read some of our favorite pages in The Important Book and reviewed how the most important part of the book is the main idea and the author gets to decide what that is! Then the author gives us details about the topic, but reminds us that despite those details there is one thing that is the MOST important thing about the topic. Together I showed the class a bag of candy and we filled in the important poster using candy as our topic. Students talked with their carpet partners about the most important thing about candy and then some other things that could be used as details. Then we came back together and filled in the poster as a class (see above picture). After filling in the poster together, each child went back to their seats and illustrated one detail about candy. I typed up the important page we wrote together on the carpet and then I laminated their writing and put the pages together to make a class book, "The Important Book about Candy."
Day 3: I read their class book to them. They love listening to books they make themselves, even though some of the pages had the same ideas! After reviewing topic, main idea, and details as presented in The Important Book, I told the students they would each be writing a page of an important book, but instead of candy, these pages would be about themselves. I modeled how my page may look:
Here's what I did:
Day 1: We read The Important Book. I found this website that talks about The Important Book in the framework of the 6-Trait Writing philosophy. The Important Book works for T, MI, and D because it uses a specific, repetitive framework on each page, so it is easy to point out the pattern and then show students how they can write like Margaret Wise Brown. On Monday, I read the book, pointing out the patterned language on each page and then we looked at this poster together:
Day 2: We re-read some of our favorite pages in The Important Book and reviewed how the most important part of the book is the main idea and the author gets to decide what that is! Then the author gives us details about the topic, but reminds us that despite those details there is one thing that is the MOST important thing about the topic. Together I showed the class a bag of candy and we filled in the important poster using candy as our topic. Students talked with their carpet partners about the most important thing about candy and then some other things that could be used as details. Then we came back together and filled in the poster as a class (see above picture). After filling in the poster together, each child went back to their seats and illustrated one detail about candy. I typed up the important page we wrote together on the carpet and then I laminated their writing and put the pages together to make a class book, "The Important Book about Candy."
Day 3: I read their class book to them. They love listening to books they make themselves, even though some of the pages had the same ideas! After reviewing topic, main idea, and details as presented in The Important Book, I told the students they would each be writing a page of an important book, but instead of candy, these pages would be about themselves. I modeled how my page may look:
The most important thing about Mrs. Z is that she is a teacher. It is true she has blonde hair. She has a dog. She also loves to run. But the most important thing about Mrs. Z is that she is a teacher.
After brainstorming with their carpet partner, each child went back to their seat and filled out this pre-writing page from the 6-Trait website.
Day 4: After continuing to conference with students about their pre-writing from yesterday, students re-wrote their important book page on writing paper. Most of my conferences were about showing students how to pick out the most important thing about themselves and then writing REALLY great details. We are still working on the final draft and once I compile the book this coming week I will share pictures!
I loved teaching topic, main idea and details this week and I will definitely use this mini-unit again next year!
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Favorite Things that Worked This Week
One of my purposes for writing this blog is to keep a running record of things that worked in my room and things that I need to keep thinking about. This week I capitalized on Valentine's Day and made heart Elkonian boxes to use in my guided reading groups. We started with the hearts in the boxes and then pushed them up into the hearts for each sound. I used clip art from DJ Inkers and found the heart vase fillers in the dollar spot at Target. It was amazing how much my first graders wanted to get their little fingers on those purple hearts! I told them if they were not listening and following the directions then they would get the regular chips instead of the hearts ... needless to say they sat right up in their seats and started their warm up read!
The second successful project for this week actually came from one of my fellow first grade teachers. Although our district uses the HM math series, our grade level regularly consults Teaching Student Centered Mathematics (K-3) by John Van De Walle. We are currently working on money in small math groups, but we are always trying to find ways to provide our students with a strong number sense foundation. This week we introduced these cards and then later moved them into a math station.
At first the cards looked daunting and I was even a little skeptical about using them, but the thinking was that if we strengthen our students' mixed skip counting skills then it would be easier to count a mixed group of coins (dimes, nickels, pennies). Van de Walle points out how abstract counting money is and that it is hard for students to make sense of why each coin is worth an arbitrary amount.
The front of the card looks like this. I taught my class that when you see a 10 you count by tens and then when the numbers switch you have to count on by ones. The last number you say is the answer. So for this card you would count "10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74."
Then they flip the card over to check the answer. I also put out a game board with these cards so when the students get the right answer they move their piece up one spot on the gameboard.
Not only did the students get it, but they thought it was challenging and thus when they got the answer right they were hooked. I am not sure how effective this game will be in helping students count money because we have not assessed counting with mixed coins yet, but I am hoping to see a difference!
The second successful project for this week actually came from one of my fellow first grade teachers. Although our district uses the HM math series, our grade level regularly consults Teaching Student Centered Mathematics (K-3) by John Van De Walle. We are currently working on money in small math groups, but we are always trying to find ways to provide our students with a strong number sense foundation. This week we introduced these cards and then later moved them into a math station.
At first the cards looked daunting and I was even a little skeptical about using them, but the thinking was that if we strengthen our students' mixed skip counting skills then it would be easier to count a mixed group of coins (dimes, nickels, pennies). Van de Walle points out how abstract counting money is and that it is hard for students to make sense of why each coin is worth an arbitrary amount.
The front of the card looks like this. I taught my class that when you see a 10 you count by tens and then when the numbers switch you have to count on by ones. The last number you say is the answer. So for this card you would count "10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74."
Then they flip the card over to check the answer. I also put out a game board with these cards so when the students get the right answer they move their piece up one spot on the gameboard.
Not only did the students get it, but they thought it was challenging and thus when they got the answer right they were hooked. I am not sure how effective this game will be in helping students count money because we have not assessed counting with mixed coins yet, but I am hoping to see a difference!
Friday, February 11, 2011
What a week!
This week was exhausting. It didn't help that it was the first full week of school we have had in a few weeks. Needless to say, I am very happy it is Friday.
As I was leaving school today, I took a picture of the Virginia quilt my class made for the district Social Studies fair. Each first grade teacher made one and we have them hanging up in our first grade hall. They look great and really seem to have helped the students recognize the shape of their state and understand that our city is in our state. Plus, it was great to do a project with the class and watch their reaction when it was all put together.
As I was leaving school today, I took a picture of the Virginia quilt my class made for the district Social Studies fair. Each first grade teacher made one and we have them hanging up in our first grade hall. They look great and really seem to have helped the students recognize the shape of their state and understand that our city is in our state. Plus, it was great to do a project with the class and watch their reaction when it was all put together.
We used scrapbook paper and a stencil to make the Virginia cut out.
Then we wrote the title, "Virginia." We added a compass rose and a map legend before gluing all the quilt squares together on fadeless.
It was great to take the time to do this project and watch the students work together!
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