The First Few Days in Photos

We are officially in the swing of things in room 132. It's been so exciting learning all about the kids and seeing them discover new things. I will try to be better about blogging but until then...he is a look at a few pictures of our first few weeks. You can follow us on Instagram for lots of photo updates- @mrsroberts1227

A Look Into Our SUPER classroom

I have taken a blogging hiatus for the summer months. I'm excited to be back at it. We kicked our year off this Monday with the theme "Be Amazing" and ran with an awesome superhero theme. I must say our entire school looks awesome decked out in  the superhero theme. Here is a peek inside our superhero first grade headquarters:

 Desks all ready for the students.

 Our amazingly cute reading couch that my in-laws recovered for me. Perfect for the reading center!!

Mr. Roberts warming up my rocking chair for me. ;) This is our rug area where most of our learning (and dancing!) takes place! 

 Guided reading area! Love the dry erase dots on my table this year!!

                                                   

"This looks like a job for..." Job chart. Restroom is behind this door.

                                                            Cozy little writing center


I can't wait for all the learning that is going to take place in this cozy room. I'm so pleased with how it turned out! Here's to an AMAZING school year!

All About Plants!

We are gearing up for spring break in room 134. Me and my firsties are super ready!! We are learning all about plants...plants are so much fun. There are so many hands- on learning opportunities. We began our unit this week with a lot books and a fun anchor chart.

The kids helped label the parts of there plant. We also used this chart to discuss the needs of plants. Ignore my lack of artistic ability!! 

To go along with the unit I put together an all about plants book. We are been working through it a little bit everyday. The kids love having their own book full of activities. 

We also put together a Lima bean observation project. Each child got a zip-lock bag, Lima bean, and a damp paper towel. We taped the bean down to the paper towel. Before we taped our beans into the windows, the children drew what their beans looked like on day one. 

My first graders have has a blast checking their seeds progress everyday. We're on day 7 of this project and haven't seen much growth yet...here's to hoping the sun will shine and let our sees grow!! 

First Grade Researching...Can it be done?

I just spent my day in professional development...I love learning from other educators! We went to a session with Rebecca Harper, who is a writing expert. She was absolutely wonderful and so inspiring. One thing she said that really stuck out to me was, "First grades CAN do...if you have the high expectations for them, then they WILL perform. If not, they won't." How simply is that? So many times we think.. "Oh these kids are little...they can't do that." But, THEY CAN!! This was somewhat my attitude at the beginning of the year when shuffling through the common core standards. It is intimidating to see the words RESEARCH. I was one of the very ones that thought, "They seriously expect first graders to do RESEARCH!!!?" Yes, they do and yes first graders can!

We have been working with informational writing and I felt this would be the perfect time to incorporate in some researching. Each student was able to select an animal. Our awesome media specialist pulled some first grade non-fiction text for my students to use for their research. It was so interesting how well they did this and how much they loved it!! Hearing those sweet voices telling me facts that had learned from the text was awesome. 

After getting our information done, we discussed how to put facts into our own words. I modeled this using chart paper. Have y'all learned that chart paper is my best friend yet?! The final products to these animal informational writings were amazing. There are NO limits in first grade. I've learned to challenge these little minds and they will find success. How do you teach your students how to research? 

Dr. Seuss Week

Last week was one of my favorite  weeks of all in first grade. Dr. Seuss is so much fun and there are so many great learning opportunities. Each day we looked closely at a famous Dr. Seuss book. On Monday we read the biography of Dr. Seuss. We learned so many great facts. The kids found it super interesting that Dr. Seuss didn't really help people when they are sick!

We also read Cat in the Hat. After reading, we did some creative writing. "What would I do if Thing 1 and thing 2 came to my house." Reading these were hysterical!! We also did a super adorable craft to go with this writing. All it took were some googly eyes, red and blue paint. So easy!

The rest of the week we worked on reading Dr. Seuss' other hits! We did Wacky word problems with the book Wacky Wednesday. All of our centers this week were themed around our favorite author and his books! We did a "green eggs and ham write the room." Words from the book were displayed around the room and the students went on a word hunt. We also spent a TON of time on rhyming and nonsense words. 

We also had a fun visit from some wonderful fifth graders this week. These sweet friends came and read Dr? Seuss books to my kids. I wish you all could have seen their faces getting to hang out with the "big kids!" It was a sweet day!!

We wrapped up our week with a Dr. Seuss themed Freaky Friday of course! 

We made our very own "cat hats!"

Experimented with Oobleck! 

Used pattern blocks to make the Lorax's mustache.

And read some of our favorite books! 

All in all it was a "Seusstastic" week in first grade! 

Freaky Friday--President's Day Style!

This blog is of course slightly delayed. The Roberts family has been super busy and I completely forgot that this blog was promised!

We celebrated Presidents Day by learning all about some of our favorite guys: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. One of the coolest things that I think we did this week was the virtual tour of Ford's Theater, where Lincoln was shot. I'm not sure why but the fact that Lincoln was assassinated is always the most interesting facts to the children and they really enjoyed seeing the place it happened at.

Two great books we read this week were : A Picture Book of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Me. 

We celebrated all week and learned so many great and interesting facts! We concluded our study with a President's themed Freaky Friday!

My favorite center for this week was the measuring Abe's Hat station. The kids measured this hat I made out of poster paper using paper clips, Popsicle sticks, and unifix cubes.

We have sooo many Math standards for this nine weeks, so Freaky Friday this week was all about incorporating Math in with our favorite presidents. The next station was working President Word Problems.

Click here to check out this worksheet. 

The last station was our snack station. We created log cabins using pretzel sticks. This reminded us of the place Abe Lincoln and George Washington were born. 

There you have it! This week is all about Dr. Seuss... look for my next blog all about our "Seussicall" good time! 

"Snow" Much Fun!

South Carolina has officially been "shut down" this past week due to a major (to us) snow storm. Thus, we have been out of school for the past 7 days. I was very thankful for the unexpected break, but I am anxious to get back to my sweet firsties tomorrow. We still have so much to learn and are truly running low on time.

One of my favorite things is currently going on: The Olympics! I took this opportunity and definitely turned it into a "teachable moment." I've gotten my kids interested and they came in last week wanting to tell me all about the events they watched and what they saw. It is so much fun hearing their commentary! "Ya know, that long car without wheels that they jump into and go really fast..." 

We read a non-fiction text about the Olympics: Then and Now from Reading A to Z. This book taught us SO many great, cool facts. We compared and contrasted the Olympics of the past to the present-day Olympics. Also, we used some of our non-fiction text skills to practice questions and finding details in the text. 

Non-fiction Questioning

Click the link above to check out the worksheet we completed with our sweet non-fiction Olympics story. 

We also incorporated some fun Olympics stuff into our writing as well. This week I wanted the kids to really focus on using their imaginations and thinking outside the box. We pretended that we were going to be a part of the Winter Olympics. Each student chose what Winter sport they wanted to take part in. They divided up into groups and learned a little more about their sports. I wish I had a picture of this part. 

Throughout the week the children tool their writing through the entire writing process. On Friday, we made these cute little Olympic athletes that I found on Teachers Pay Teachers. They turned out super adorable, but were NOT easy to complete. 

I can't wait to hear the kids Olympic thoughts and recaps when we finally return back to school this week! We'll be having "FrEaKy FriDay" this week so I look forward to posting about our fun. 

100th Day of School!

What a crazy past week it has been! We had our first "snow" of the year, causing two short days and one full SNOW day! Needless to say, first grade was WILD this week. Tuesday we spent the morning celebrating our 100th day of school. I can't believe this year is flying by so fast.

I love to decorate the door. The children get so excited over something so simple. I just use regular bulletin board paper and cut it into strips.

When the kids arrived, they just stood outside the door! They weren't sure how exactly to come through. It was adorable! 

Our morning message was all about the 100th day, too! I'll eventually get around to doing a post all about my morning messages. :-) This is one of my favorite ways to start the day and it truly builds a sense of community in the classroom.

We spent the morning in 5 super fun centers all "centered" around the number 100! 

We made 100th day of school books. Each page had a different, brief writing prompt. 

The children wrote what they would buy with $100. There concept of money is so great! They think $100 will buy anything. I wish!

We write 100 sight words and wrote our numbers to 100. Our super cute crowns say," 100 Days Smarter!" As a group, we made a trail mix of 10 different groups of 10 food items.

The kids truly have learned so much over the past 100 days. It is so much fun being their teacher!

To round out our super exciting week, we took a field trip to the Ringling Brothers' Circus. My sweet firsties had the best time!! It was so cool seeing their little faces light up! I must admit, I loved every second of it! 

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!