How's reading coming along this school year? By now I'm sure you're in full swing with guided reading. I recently went to both Indiana and Tennessee for the SDE Kinergarten and 1st grade conferences. I had the opportunity to talk a lot about guided reading (a hot topic!!) and reading comprehension in several of my sessions. If you're looking for some great guided reading phonics activities for teacher table, check out this resource full of tried and true activities I used in the classroom and read about how I used them HERE. If you already have this resource, be on the lookout for Volume 2!!! … [Read more...] about Reading Comprehension
reader's response
There’s SNOW Time Like Winter!
Just stopping in for a quick minute tonight to share a few things that have been keeping us busy this week. Write the Room has been keeping us up on our feet and moving around. This is my kids’ absolute FAVORITE activity so it’s no surprise that I have to change these out quite frequently. These last couple of days my kids have been identifying word families and writing CVC words {from my January Write the Room packet}. In our sight word center, the kids have been digging through the snow to find words. Once they find a word they know, they count out the number of letters in the word and use the … [Read more...] about There’s SNOW Time Like Winter!
Pumpkins EVERYWHERE! And Making Connections
We’re learning all about pumpkins this week and the kids couldn’t be more thrilled!! I thought I’d share some of the fun we’re having incase you’re knee deep in pumpkin seeds, too! We started the week activating & growing our pumpkin schema. We read a few fun non-fiction pumpkin books, gathered new learning, and added our little fact seeds to our pumpkin chart. Did you know that pumpkins are fruit?! That was a “are-you-for-real?!?!” moment for the kids. We followed up our new learning with a little apples vs. pumpkins venn diagram. We reinforced a few key vocabulary words {similar, contrast, … [Read more...] about Pumpkins EVERYWHERE! And Making Connections
Hey, Little Ant!
I’ve been slacking on remembering to bring my camera to school, so I keep forgetting to snap some pics of what we’ve been up to! We’ve been goin’ buggy these last couple of weeks and I just wanted to quickly share some of our writing “ant”ics :) We started our little insect unit learning about our favorite little picnic pests. We read a few little non-fiction books about ants and then followed it up with one of the cutest fiction stories, “Hey, Little Ant” by Phillip and Hannah Hoose. LOVE this book!! We did a little response to text writing craftivity to pull it all together. Y’all…these crack me RIGHT up!!!! … [Read more...] about Hey, Little Ant!
Cloudy and the 50th Day
So, my plans to post last week were thwarted when I was thrust into becoming a CSI detective. Let me just tell y’all that I would make an EXCELLENT investigator should anyone ever need a private eye. For real. I successfully caught someone impersonating someone else & TOTALLY trying to scam one of my friends on Facebook! I SO felt like I was living in a Lifetime movie last week!! I had NO time for anything other than sleuthing. Now that that whole saga is over…*I think for now anyway*…I’m ready to play catch-up. We learned all about clouds and the kids had a BLAST!!! Actually, I think I might’ve … [Read more...] about Cloudy and the 50th Day
Celebrating St. Pat’s Day!
The Irish in me is ALL.OVER St. Patty’s Day!! I LOVE IT!!! I especially love celebrating it with the kids! I don’t have many pictures to show you, but with St. Pat’s right around the corner, I just wanted to share a few things I’ve done in the past to make it fun for the kids! Here’s a fun little writing we did today. This is one of my favorites!! You can download the Loopy Leprechaun craft patterns HERE. First we read this book… Then we talked about luck and feeling lucky. Afterwards, I had the kids write about what makes them feel lucky using the prompt, “I feel lucky when…”. I got some darling responses! After they were … [Read more...] about Celebrating St. Pat’s Day!
Place Value, MLK, and Snowmen!
Here's a fun little place value activity I made for my kids to do in their math tubs last week. It’s a snowman place value spinner! Graphics courtesy of Digi Web Studio Last week we were working on place value with teen numbers, so that’s what this particular activity reinforces. The kids spin the spinner on the middle portion of the snowman and collect that amount of ones cubes...or whatever kind of counter you want! Then they spin the spinner on the bottom portion of the snowman and collect the same amount of ones cubes as well. Then they count their cubes and see if they can make a set of ten. I always tell them, “If you can … [Read more...] about Place Value, MLK, and Snowmen!
Happy New Year!
Happy new year, friends! It’s been a busy week! Isn’t the first week back from break…and every week thereafter…busy?! HA! We started the week talking about goals and resolutions. I told the kids my resolution was to be healthier this year {aka: lose about 10 lbs. of holiday weight. MERCY!} I had my kids make goals for themselves either at home or school. They LOVED this activity!! I used the lined paper from a new year template one of the teacher’s on my team gave to us. I found this super fun scrapbook paper and used that to make the hats, glued on a fun little pom pom, and busted out the Dollar Tree party blowers for some sass! … [Read more...] about Happy New Year!
If Take A Mouse To The Movies
One of my favorite holiday books… And there’s SO much you can do with it! We had a little “If You Take A Mouse To The Movies” day the other day and the kids had so much fun!! Of course, we started out reading the book. After reading, we talked about cause & effect and made a diagram to show the chain of reaction. I also assigned each kiddo to a story event and had them illustrate it. Then we came together as a whole group and I had the kids work together to sequence the events on a giant filmstrip! I really wanted a text to self writing activity, so I gave them the prompt, “If you take me to the movies, I will ask you for some…”. … [Read more...] about If Take A Mouse To The Movies
Gingerbread & Christmas Stuff
Okay…still SO behind…but here are just a couple of things we’ve been working on! We’re still going strong with fact families, so I had my kids make fact family gifts. They rolled dice to get the numbers to add together for the sum. I also had them roll the dice twice and add those numbers together to practice working with higher numbers. As you can see, they made their own bows…but real bows would have been a great “addition” too! ;) Speaking of gifts, this is one of my most FAVORITE writing activities. I started doing this my third year of teaching and have been doing it ever since! I think it’s so precious and sweet and really gets … [Read more...] about Gingerbread & Christmas Stuff
If You Sailed On The Mayflower…
Today we celebrated “Mayflower Day”!! Okay…so I made that up…but I thought that sounded pretty fitting for our day today :) We started by reading a non-fiction book about the Mayflower. I can’t remember which one, but I checked it out from our school library and it was really good!! It was a great book to review Table of Contents also :) Each “chapter” was only a page or two long. After each page, we stopped to jot. During our stop to jot time, the kids gave me a few facts they learned from that chapter. We learned a lot of really cool facts!! Did you know that the water was so unsafe to drink that everyone on the Mayflower…children … [Read more...] about If You Sailed On The Mayflower…
Pumpkin Fun For Everyone!
Such a FUN week!!! I absolutely LOVE this time of year!!! We had a pumpkin themed week and we learned SO much!! We started the week out with a pumpkin shaped KWL that the kids helped me fill out. They are SO into non-fiction and loved helping me fill out the “What we Learned” part of the pumpkin :) {No pics…BOO!!} We were working on sequencing this week, so I put a little sequencing activity in the pocket chart & they had to sequence the life cycle of a pumpkin. They loved it! I found the real life pumpkin photos HERE & they matched them to sentences that I typed up on the computer. After they matched the pics to the words … [Read more...] about Pumpkin Fun For Everyone!
Skeleton Hiccups
For a little reader’s response fun, we read this book… SO darling! And then we got to problem solving. The kids had to write using the prompt, “I would get rid of a skeleton’s hiccups by…”. Their answers were pretty dang cute! I drew the skeleton face & hips and had a mom cut them out. Then the kids decided how the rest of the skeleton would look! LOVE IT!! My favorite part is how different each of them look. Too dang cute! This might be one of my most favorite writing activities of the year…I’m just sayin’. I’ve done this for the last 7 years and I always look forward to it!! And the kids love it, too!! … [Read more...] about Skeleton Hiccups
Where’s My Mummy?
We had our annual Fall Book Fair a couple of weeks ago and there was the most darling little book on the shelves… Now, this book has probably been around for a while, but it’s the first time I saw it. One of my sweeties from class bought it for me and I fell.in.love! SUCH a cute story! {And it’s since become a favorite of my two boys, too!} I immediately knew I wanted to use this story for a writing activity and here’s what we did… For a reader’s response, I had the kids use the sentence prompt, “When I get scared, my mummy…”, and they had to write about something that their Mommy does to help them when … [Read more...] about Where’s My Mummy?
What’s The Weather?!
We’ve been studying the weather the last few weeks in Science and it’s been FUN to say the least! I love hearing the kids talk about the clouds when we’re outside… “Look Mrs. Carroll! That’s a stratus cloud!!” They’ve become such awesome little weather watchers, SO very interested in anything and everything weather!! Here are a few little things we did for this fun little unit! We watched a really neat video about the different types of weather and read some pretty cool non-fiction books, too! We made a little word web to show what we learned… We added weather poems to our poetry journals {no pics, but you can download them below.} We … [Read more...] about What’s The Weather?!
Reader’s Response – A Chair For My Mother
We’ve been discussing Wants vs. Needs this week and used the book A Chair For My Mother, by Vera Williams to talk about the topic. After reading the book, the kids really led their own discussion about buying things they need rather than what they want. They were so precious and sweet talking about what they thought they needed. I might’ve heard one of them say “Rip Stick”, so I was quick to interrupt and remind them how needs are different than wants :) Here’s a little peek at their entry… As usual, the kids wrote the title & author and completed the sentence prompt, “I will use my coins to buy…” This sweet little love said that she … [Read more...] about Reader’s Response – A Chair For My Mother
The Very Busy Spider
I love starting the month of October learning about spiders. We read several non-fiction books that the kids adored, but they also LOVED this Eric Carle classic…The Very Busy Spider. After we read the story, I gave the kids a writing prompt to complete… “I am very busy____________________________________ in First Grade!” Their responses were cute and some of them were downright hilarious!! Apparently we spend our time running away from girls and coloring all day?! Hmmmm… I cut out a class set of large black circles and a class set of smaller white circles to fit on top of the black {for a spider body}. I also … [Read more...] about The Very Busy Spider
Apples, Apples, Everywhere!
My kids this year are SO very much into non-fiction stories. I LOVE IT!!! We started our week of apples with a KWL. I set out this little KWL and fill it out with the kids as we go along… After reading a few short non-fiction books about apples, we filled out the “What You LEARNED” apple and had the kids complete their own KWL to keep in their Reader’s Response Journals. They LOVED this activity! I told them to choose 1 thing from each apple to write down.KWL Printable: APPLE KWL And we labeled the parts of an apple… I also had the kids fill out their own version. I found it on Mrs. Nelson’s Apple Unit Page. We also start out the week … [Read more...] about Apples, Apples, Everywhere!
Reader’s Response ~ The Big Orange Splot
What a random little book find! Have you ever read The Big Orange Splot by D. Manus Pinkwater?! I never had until one of the girls on our team was telling us about it a few weeks ago. It’s a cute little story about people who live on a street where ALL the houses look EXACTLY the same until one day a guy spills orange paint on his roof. SO…he decides not to “fix” it, but paint the rest of his house instead. Everyone tries to get the guy to change his house back to being “normal”, but he encourage people to embrace the differences! SUCH a cute little message! After we read the story, I passed out a little house template and had the kids … [Read more...] about Reader’s Response ~ The Big Orange Splot
Reader’s Response – The Napping House
We’ve been talking about families this week one of our favorite books to read is The Napping House, by Audrey Wood. After reading the story, we talked about different things that we like to sleep with. CLEARLY, we’re not sleeping with a snoozing granny and a wakeful flea…well, I hope we’re not…so we talked about different things that we take to bed, or things we took to bed with us when we were "little”. I told them how my son sleeps with 5 Mickey Mouse dolls and they thought that was the funniest thing! HA! Here’s a little peek at their entry. One of the teacher’s on our team had this cute little … [Read more...] about Reader’s Response – The Napping House
Reader’s Response Journal ~ All About Me
Today we read the story, I Like ME!, by Nancy Carlson. I’ve had this little “all about me” template for years and knew it would be perfect for today’s reader’s response journal entry. Here’s a little peek… … [Read more...] about Reader’s Response Journal ~ All About Me
Reader’s Response Journals ~ Chrysanthemum
Today we read Chrysanthemum, by Kevin Henkes. For our Reader’s Response, we did a little compare/contrast activity using our names and Chrysanthemum’s name.Here’s a little peek… The kids compared their names to Chrysanthemum’s name, writing both along with the number of letters in each name. … [Read more...] about Reader’s Response Journals ~ Chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemum…Not Just A “Name” Book
When I taught Kindergarten, we usually used Chrysanthemum to introduce names. Of course, it’s a great book to discuss what it means to be unique and special, too. There are SO many different ways you can use this book! During the first week of school, we used Chrysanthemum to discuss the impact unkind words have on our hearts. I cut out a giant heart using red butcher paper. Before I started reading the story, I handed the heart to one of my kids and gave them instructions to crumple the heart every time they heard something unkind, and then pass it to the next person. By the time I had finished the book, … [Read more...] about Chrysanthemum…Not Just A “Name” Book
Reader’s Response
Every kid in our classroom has a Reading Response Journal. Depending on the entry, we’ll usually work our Reader’s Response into the writing station OR we’ll etch out a little time during Writer’s Workshop to add to our journals. I usually complete an entry under my ELMO so that they can watch the process. I talk my way through it as well. This is a great opportunity to reinforce various writing/reading skills…neat handwriting, use of capital letters at the beginning of every word in the title, underlining the title, author/illustrator, two-finger spaces, punctuation, etc. This is an awesome way to document their … [Read more...] about Reader’s Response
