Proud Teacher :-)

Two of our kids were chosen to go on the morning show to read their individual sentences for last week's Top Dog Word of the Week; proficient. I was so proud to have an overwhelming response from my kids; a number of them participated and they were excited that they were able to use the word.......well.........proficiently!

 

Another student made me super proud today. He came in this morning SO excited that he could read the first poem from his poetry journal. (Just having him excited about the poem was enough for me to be proud of.) This afternoon I had him read the poem to the class and he read it beautifully; I could hear the rhyme and flow of language. After he finished reading, he informed me that he could also read it without holding his journal. He memorized the poem! Wow.  I love when children are excited to learn.

 

Box-Tops, Campbells, Etc.

We collect a lot of things to raise money for Central Ridge. If you have any of the following, please collect them and send them in with your child (preferably in an envelope or ziploc bag that is labeled with my name and your child's name).
The following are examples of things we collect: BoxTops, Campbell Labels, Tyson Rewards (Support Your School), Coke Rewards, and soda can tabs.

You can find labels on many snack products, such as Goldfish and Pepperidge Farm Products.

Every bit helps our school!

Chants, Movement, and Songs!

See if your little can recall the chant and movements we've been doing!

Chant and Movement: When you have one vowel in a consonant-vowel-consonant, or a vowel-consonant, the vowel will (usually) say its short sound.
(vowels that are closed in by a consonant will say their short sound - like cat and at)

Movement:
Good readers Activate their Schema to understand what they've read.

Metacognition Song:
I think I can think about thinking
Do you understand what I've said
It's all about Metacognition
What's going on in my head!

Schema Song:
Schema, Schema
Schema, Schema
What I know
Watch it Grow
I can read a new book
I can take a good look
Schema grows
Schema grows

Schema, Schema, What we Know

This week we were metacognitive about our schema! Schema are all of the things we know. All of our experiences help define what we know and how we feel. We looked at how our brain works like a file cabinet; housed with many individual file folders full of information. (You'll see a orange file in one of the pictures - that housed all of our Schema about spiders.) I wanted them to see how their schema helps them in many ways . One of our next steps was to use what they know about spiders (their spider schema) and predict the vocabulary that would be in the text. They came up with words like: venom, fangs, brown recleuse, black widow, poisonous, jump, bite, insect, etc. The next step in the lesson was for me to show them what happens to our schema while we read/learn. I showed how sometimes our schema is wrong and other times it just needs to be updated/changed. I told them we had to not only take stuff out of the files, but we had to be prepared to add stuff to the files. So, while we read, we were sure to stop and record new schema about spiders. At the end we went through our first round of Spider Schema (that was in the Orange File) and sorted through it. We needed to see what could stay in the file and what needed to be shredded (those things are our misconceptions). The misconceptions were put in the spider web - hopefully being trapped there forever. Some of the misconceptions were: spiders are insects (new schema:they are arachnids), spiders are black (new schema:some spiders are black - we have to be very specific), and spiders are poisonous (new schema:many spiders are poisonous and few are dangerous to humans).

Finally, we wanted to fill our web of understanding. I wanted the children to understand that we now all have new schema (and some of our old schema) but we all walked away from the text with different thoughts. We all had to share something new we learned from reading and with each new fact, the yarn was handed to the next person to form our Web of Understanding!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Observing Rocks. We used our Inquiry Skills to Observe Properties of Rocks and recorded them in our Science Journals.

Cozy Writing Spots

The adorable kiddos finding a perfect writing spot

Target is giving back to the community!

Target is running this awesome community support event through their Facebook app!  If you go through Target's Facebook app you can vote for a school of your choice... once that school gets to 25 votes they receive a $25 Target gift card!  You can vote every week and the campaign runs July 26th through September 8th.. just think if you get 50 votes a week over the next 5 weeks that's $250!  Please help us reach out to our friends and families!

Write on!

Now that routines and procedures are looking good and running smoothly we are able to start more of the "fun stuff". We are in the introductory stage of Writers' Workshop and the children are enjoying themselves. My hope is that they develop a passion for writing - instead of becoming masters at writing a set number of sentences or write just because they "have to". Writers' Workshop is so wonderful because children can develop as writers and make progress at their own rate; while taking certain mini-lessons and applying them to their current skill level.

The anchor charts above touch on the following Essential Questions:
-Why do Writers write? (plus: things we want to write about this year)
-How do authors generate ideas to write about?
-How can we use our imaginations as writers?

A crucial part to Writers Workshop is the teacher's model of writing. Of course, we aim to write as close to our students' level as possible. There will be times in the future where I include a number of errors in a writing piece in attempts to have successful editing mini-lessons.

First Day of our First Full Week!

Wow - I can not believe how much the kiddos have absorbed since their first day of school.
They are an incredibly enthusiastic bunch; I love their energy and how eager they are to learn.

Today we looked at what clues help us to make predictions. We concluded that the title and cover help us make predictions, as well as the pictures and words in the text. Our predictions changed while we read; while the title and cover clues can tell us a lot - they leave too wide of a gap because we all have different experiences (schema). As we get into the story, our schema helps us make predictions - but we're really using our knowledge of fictional text/stories.

I wanted the children to look at how their predictions changed and how their initial predictions were important because they were thinking about the text, but they were very likely incorrect. It is difficult to admit your prediction was "wrong" in first grade - so we just make sure to celebrate thinking (and of course being able to prove your thinking).

The littles were excited to start borrowing some books from the classroom library.

Penny, Penny

Easily Spent

Copper Brown

and worth one cent.

Today, we talked about manipulatives in math. We won't be learning about money in depth right now, but money will be a useful tool in counting (one-to-one, and skip counting using nickels and dimes). The children were excited to explore pennies. We didn't do much with the pennies; the lesson was really a lesson in manipulative exploring. We looked at how we put the manipulatives on math mats, how we sit side by side with a partner, carefully empty the bags out on to the mat, and keeping the bags as flat as possible while sealing.

Some of the students shared their Me Bags, today. They did an exceptional job - there were some very clever things inside of those bags. Thank you for helping them put the bags together!

Now Showing in Our Class....