Informational Writing

I'm already behind on blogging...of course! We have just kicked off our third nine weeks and our hot topic this quarter is non-fiction. We have been diving into exploring non-fiction text and using non-fiction text to write.

That being said, our writing standard for this quarter is informational writing. Writing has been one of those things that I have had to learn to teach one day at a time. Writing is hard. Plain and Simple! A student teacher also in first grade came to me a few days ago and asked me for some writing tips because she heard I was the team "expert." Hmm... A few tips I gave her were:

1. Model every single day! Let the kids see you write. Let them see you make mistakes in your writing, too. They will correct you, I promise! 
2. Practice! They have to practice writing EVERY single day. Let them come up with topics on their own, too. If they can't think of any ideas, I do have a basket of writing ideas available to help them get their brains moving. 
3. Conference. Even if it's for two seconds. It's important to meet with your kids about their writing one-on-one. Tell them how to improve and tell them what they loved.
4. Author's Chair. Let them share. Give them time to share what they wrote as often as you can. Make them feel proud of their writing. 

More specifically, I was asked "how in the world do we teach the concept of informational writing to first graders?" That's tough! I introduced this style of writing by creating an anchor chart. 

After defining it, we practiced a little! I split the kids into groups and assigned each group an animal. They were instructed to write everything they knew about their animal. They ended up coming up with some pretty great stuff. 

The next day, we took a closer look at how we could organize our informative writing pieces. Click here to download my informative writing organizer. This tool was excellent. It laid out exactly what was expected of them. Each of them chose their own animal and filled in their own facts. 

I spent Wednesday meeting with every student about their writing. Crucial. 

Hope my writing tips were somewhat helpful. Writing is always the best time to get to know my students. I love it!

Tomorrow is the 100th day of school.. more on that later this week!

Freaky Friday

Freaky Friday is a first grade favorite. We have been working super hard to finish up all of our end of the nine weeks assessments for our report card, so getting to have "Freaky Friday" this week was an extra special treat.

I usually pick around 4 centers and give the kids about 15 minutes at each station. Our theme for this "Freaky Friday" was penguins. 

We made a penguin snack. This was made up of Oreos, M&Ms (for the eyes), and candy corn for the beak and feet. Sorry, I didn't get a picture of the snack.  I am always running around crazy during "Freaky Friday!" 

The second station was a blubber experiment. We discussed this week about how penguins adapt in their environment and how their blubber works. Today the kids got to see (well..feel) this concept first hand. 

First, the kids stuck just their hand in the ice water (for no more than 3 seconds!) After this, they wrote on their experiment sheet what happened. Then, they put their hand in a blubber glove (just Crisco) and into the water. Their little faces during this experiment were PRICELESS! 

Onto the third center…Penguin blend sort. This was just a simple game I downloaded from Teachers Pay Teachers. The kids matched the beginning blends to the corresponding pictures. 

They wrote down their finds in their Reader's Workshop journals. I use these journals for almost everything!! 

My last center didn't go with the theme, but I always love when I can incorporate technology. They kids worked with the iPads during this station. They practiced math fluency with the IxL app. 

We had so much fun! 

The Kids First Attempt at Blogging

We have recently talked a lot about different forms of writing and ways to express ourselves through writing. Of course, blogging came up. Over the past week or so, I've let the first graders look at some different blogs and see how these people use writing in what seemed to be a fun way. The kids absolutely fell in love with looking at blogs. They loved reading my sister-in-laws blog, The Moose Chronicles, they ask to read it almost everyday now! Their love for the blogging world is what somewhat inspired me to start. I thought it would be really neat for them to express themselves on a blog and a great way to expose them to technology.

Today was our first blogging attempt. Let me start to saying that it was rough! It was amazing to me that in a technology-filled world, these kids didn't know where to find a period, space bar, or how to make a capital letter on a keyboard. We simply take these things for granted. I think blogging should be writing what you want, but to help them get started today...I gave them a topic. To celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday, we did a little "blogging" about him. Below are the sweet firsties exact blog entries. Keep in mind: we are still working--I promise these kids don't write quite like they type! Ha!

Enjoy their posts--(Bonus points if you can read some of these words.)

• Martin Luther king jr. separated the white and black people. He also gave speeches and his birthday is January the 15th. 
• Dr Mar tin Luther king. Preacher. 
• He gave speeches. And he got erstide.
• martin Luther King, jr. got shot. and wit to jail.
• Got shot and went to jail. He told speech to
• dr martin luther king jr wos a good prestint to peple blak and wit pepl did not go to the same skool.
• TODAYs martin Luther king; jr. birthday hes is 85 years old. 
• He got sot. He wet to jel. 
• Martin Luther king jr was a good man. HE WINTED BLACK AND WHITE PEPLE TO BE TGETHRE. 
• Martin Luther king jr got shot one day and he did win sum boty shot him all of the pypl it blyv him woos sad et sum boty cild him.
• Dr martin luther king jr. he helped pepel. he gav speckisz. He was nics to plepil. He ckast the world. he help cat and dog. He was a preckr. 
• Martin luther king, jr got shot. and got tooke to jel. 
• He help people with jobs. He was nice. We will saelbrat his birthday and he is 85. 
• I miss you, Martin Luther King. I love you.
• he was a good man and he help people to. He is vary nice. 

Well, there you have it- Martin Luther King's life (or something like it!) straight from the mouths' of babes! Hope you enjoyed! 

Graphs, Brain Breaks,and a little MLK

Monday... A teachers least favorite word. But, with a sweet bunch of  first grade babies ...Mondays aren't always that bad.

We began our unit on graphing today. This is one of my favorite units to teach. It gives a lot of opportunities for the kids to move around. They love collecting data! We worked out of our new math series today My Math. This math series absolutely ROCKS! Here is a photo of my kids collecting some data to create their own bar graphs. 

We also began talking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We began by completing a simple K-W-L anchor chart. 

After talking about what we knew or what we thought we knew, we watched a quick video on www.brainpopjr.com. If you haven't used this website before...USE IT! It is wonderful! After discussing the video, the kids wrote about what they learned about Dr. King. 

Lastly for today...BRAIN BREAKS! Let me just say that these are crucial! Not only for my sweet firsties to get out those wiggles, but to keep this teacher sane! Our favorite brain breaks are ones in which we can get our grove on! Here is our favorite one...

Happy Monday!

-Mrs.Roberts

New Year Fun!

Each year I think through what I would consider a good resolution for myself. I usually try to come up with a personal goal, professional goal, and a spiritual goal. Well, this year I've decided this blog is going to be my accountability for my "professional" goal. I don't plan on blogging everyday, heck, I may not blog every week. But, I am hoping to use this as a tool to make it a priority to do an activity in my classroom at least once a week that is worthy of putting on a blog. 

Here's to hoping this blog is going to make me a better teacher & welcome to my first grade world!  

This week we have been studying penguins. Today, we read a non-fiction story on penguins. We discussed facts vs. opinions. The children wanted to argue that there was just NO WAY you couldn't prove that penguins are cute. They swore it just HAD to be a fact. Whew! 

                                                           We completed this hand-out. 

In typical New Year's fashion we made some first grade resolutions. We discussed what it meant to make a resolutions. I got a good laugh out of some of the firsties calling it a "New Year's Revolution", ya know like from those adorable Alltel commercials?! We read the book Squirrel's New Year's Resolution. After reading we put all of the resolutions from the story on an interactive writing chart. Then, we brainstormed some of our own. First graders can come up with some of the best resolutions. I love the way they think! We made this super cute craftivity to add to our resolution writing. 

Happy New Year!