Summer Is Here!

     Summer has arrived!  It's hard to believe, but I was so ready for it at the end of the school year.  I finished packing the classroom on Friday.  Things have been so busy lately that I haven't written anything.  I'll update what's happened most recently.

     Author Study

  We had been reading lots of Tomie dePaola books lately.  The kids weren't familiar with his books.  His books are some of my favorites.  I just love teaching about Tomie and his books.  About 13 years ago, I took a class on our State Inservice Day taught by a local teacher about Tomie's books.  She had met him and had permission to write materials about his books.  I received materials such as posters, a video, and even a rubber stamp of Strega Nona.  Since then I just love to teach about him.  We spent a couple weeks reading and learning about his personal narrative stories.  We read Tom, The Art Lesson, and The Baby Sister.  While I was teaching about Tomie and his books, I actually found a blogger who had just written a unit on Tomie's books and put it on TpT.  I was in the midst of writing one.  I bought her unit, but may still write and finish my own.  Her name is Linda Kamp and her blog is called Around the Kampfire.  You should check out her blog and store on TpT.

Here's a chart I used from her unit about Author's Point of View.  We did this chart while reading the book The Art Lesson.  Tomie's books are wonderful for teaching about point of view.

We spent another two weeks on Tomie dePaola's fiction books.  We specifically read and learned from his Strega Nona books.  I read Strega Nona, Strega Nona:  Her Story, and Strega Nona Takes a Vacation.  I made a chart by drawing Strega Nona.  The kids gave adjectives to describe her.  (They were so impressed with my drawing telling me that I'm an artist!  I am not very good at drawing.  I have a video where Tomie gives directions on how to draw her.  About 3 years ago I watched the video over and over and drew out steps on how to draw her.  I'm even impressed with myself since I usually can't draw very well!)  I usually end the unit by teaching the students how to draw Strega Nona and then having them write a little bit about the Strega Nona books or character.

We watched two videos.  The first was Tomie speaking to a group of children and their parents.  He read two books on the video to the students:  Tom and Strega Nona.  This is the one where he teaches the children how to draw Strega Nona and a lamb.  The second video was Tomie giving a tour of his home and art and writing studio.  He gives some very good lessons for the students.  This author study was a fun way to end our reading lessons for the year.  If we had more time, I would have taught much more. 

Penguin  Reports

     We were busy finishing up our penguin reports.  Due to time and that the students are only in first grade, I put the students in groups of four.  Each group wrote about one type of penguin.  Each student wrote only about one topic such as Body, Food and Eating, Babies and Young, and Interesting Information.  It took a long time to write because I wanted them to use all of the steps in the Writing Process.  I met with all of the students to edit their writing with them before they published.  At another time, I'll show pictures of the forms we used in the research and the students' writing.

Thoughts About Summer

     Since it was Father's Day only on my second day of vacation, I went to visit my dad on Sunday and stayed until today.  I'm actually needing to load my car and leave soon.

Here is a family picture from when I was only 2-1/2 with Dad.

Later one more brother was added to the family.

         What are my summer plans?  First, I want to relax and get rid of the stress in my life.  It's been a difficult year and I just need to enjoy a stress-free life.  I want to read some books:  some books about teaching and some books that are just fun.  I plan on spending time with family and friends.  I like to make crafts but I don't find much time during the school year.  I do like to rubber stamp and make cards.  I hope to find time to do that some.  Maybe a little vacation -- definitely to the Oregon coast and possibly somewhere else.  No plans yet, though.

        I've thought of dabbing into selling on TpT.  I do like all of the things I see there and would like to see if my creations are things that others would like.  I think summer would be a time I could find time to work on things.  I also want to explore more in the blogging world.  I've had this little blog and only have 26 followers.  I know I don't have exciting things on here.  There is still so much I don't know how to do.  I hope I can do some research as I read other blogs to learn more about how to post things that would interest others, participate in a link (something I don't have the slightest idea how to do), or offer freebies (I did two last summer, but I don't remember how to do it).  Somehow I'll figure things out.

        Enjoy the rest of your day and I'll be back soon!

What's Been Happening?

     I started this post a couple of weeks ago, but things have been so busy lately.  I'll post this before I get busy again.  I'll have more to add later.

     This week seemed to be a very busy and exhausting one.  I'm so glad that the weekend is here to catch up on some needed sleep.

     My first graders were in their first music program.  All three classes were practicing their songs with the music teacher.  Thursday they performed for the entire school and in the evening for their parents and grandparents.  They were so cute!  The theme of their songs was Under the Sea.

     Here's a couple of pictures of the students waiting to enter the gym.

All of these extra practices and knowing the performance was almost here made for a tough week.  It was so hard for the students to follow the rules in class.  Every student had either a solo or a small speaking part.  Our music teacher did a wonderful job pulling this altogether.

     What have we been learning?  We changed our focus in our reading lessons to Poetry.  This is an exciting genre to teach.  The kids really like it.  We began with making a chart about what we know about poetry.

We started reading a book that I saw focused on another blog.  I don't remember which blog.  It is an excellent book for kids.  The book is called Shout! Little Poems That Yell!  

We also read from other books like Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends.  We will continue to study poetry, but will read other books, too.   Last week I read Tom by Tomie dePaola to the students as our mentor text.  The next couple of weeks our focus will be on books by Eric Kimmel.  He is a local author and will be at our school on May 15th.  I'll write about it after his visit.

We had a special guest to our classroom this week.  We had a guest from the local Humane Society.  She will be here 4 times to present Pet Club to the students.  The kids were so excited!  She will be teaching the kids about dogs, cats, pocket pets, and other pets and how to show kindness and take care of them.  The kids enjoyed this and are looking forward to the other visits.  

Well, I'm off to finish my lesson plans.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend and have a great week!

Spring Break and Penguins

      I am way overdue in posting.  I'm sorry that I've been missing lately!  It's been a difficult Winter Term, but I made it to Spring Break.  My Spring Break began on Friday and I'm off until April 2nd.  This is a much needed break for me.  

     We had conferences on Wednesday after school until 8 p.m. and then on Thursday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.  Those were exhausting, long days.

     The students have been learning all about penguins.  They just love learning about this!  One Russian student told me one day as we lined up to go to PE, "I just love penguins!"  This boy doesn't talk a lot.  This was cute!  My modeled reading has been using books about penguins.  This quarter, in first grade, I have been teaching about nonfiction and the students can tell the difference between nonfiction and fiction.  

     The students have gained so much learning through our penguin study.  We have been learning some penguin poems.  Below is one that the kids have enjoyed about the Emperor penguin.     

Below is one of our first charts which shows what the students have learned about penguins.  We used the book Penguins from National Geographic Kids to get the information.  

We also labeled some of the main parts of the penguin.

     This past week we began a Pictorial Glossary to illustrate and define the new words that the kids are learning.  This helps the students understand one of the text features:  glossary.  It also helps them learn the new words.  I have 9 ELD students in my classroom.  Using pictures is a great way to help them learn.  I am amazed that I can even draw things like this!  They picked the word regurgitate to include in our glossary as our first word!  I told them that I would draw it after school while looking at a picture.  I'm not artistic at all, but I was able to do it by looking at a picture.  The kids loved this when they got to school the next day.  

Here is the full chart with two glossary words chosen by the students.  These are two words that they learned through the books that I have read them.

We will be adding more pages and definitions to our Pictorial Glossary.  The students are making their own Pictorial Glossary to include in their All About Penguins book.  I didn't think about taking a picture of a student's glossary page.  I'll have to do that when I return to school. 

Our ELD lesson included learning about verbs.  The book, Busy Penguins, is a board book but is excellent in showing verbs with penguins.  

I scanned the pictures and blew them up to  8-1/2" x 11" and this helped as the students learned verbs and used sentence frames to show how penguins move.  These pictures are now on our walls.

Last week I read The Emperor's Egg to the students.  This book shows and describes the Emperor penguin.  We discussed whether this book was fiction or nonfiction looking at our standard.  It was confusing at first because of the pictures, but as soon as I began to read the book they knew it was nonfiction because it gives information.  This was a new book to me, but a great one to teach with.

I read another excellent book, Penguins, written by Gail Gibbons for our modeled reading lesson during our second week of learning about penguins.  I didn't take a picture of the book and it's at school.  You can see that book on a post about penguins from last year here .

     After Spring Break the students will begin researching and writing a small report on one type of penguin.  On our last day before the Break I told them what penguin they will study:  Emperor, King, Rockhopper, Chinstrap, Gentoo, or Macaroni.  This will be their first report.  They will finish with presenting a speech to the class.

     When we return to school, we will also read some fiction books about penguins.  There are a lot of books out there, but we will read just a few.

     I've been enjoying my Spring Break so far:  sleeping in (when the cats let me), cleaning, and getting together with friends.  My car is in the shop today, so hopefully it will force me to concentrate on cleaning.  I do want to print some things for school that I want to make.  I will be leaving town (Salem, Oregon) tomorrow to go visit my dad.  While there, I will get together with friends in Portland.  It will be nice to get away for the remainder of the vacation.  I'll probably work on some school things while I'm there.  That's why I'm trying to print things now.

     I was without a printer for about a month.  That was awful!  I can't print things in color at school.  My printer was only a year and a half old, but the color wasn't coming out right and one day it quit in the middle of printing.  I had to wait until pay day to buy another one.  I was convinced to get a printer that cost a little more, but I was told I will spend less on ink.  Well, so far I haven't replaced the ink.  The black is getting low, though.  I really like this printer!

     I will try to write again during the Break!  I hope you are all having a great week whether you are teaching or are on your Spring Break!

December News and More

     Hi Bloggie Friends!  Did you all have a nice Christmas?  I imagine you are enjoying your Winter Break like I am!

     I am way overdue in writing on this little blog!  Life has been so busy lately especially at school.  I'll try to update on what we've been doing.  I'm sorry it has taken so long!

    December

 We learned about Holidays Around the World.  I've done this for many years, but we were told this was the only thing we could do relating to Christmas.  I have a book that I used that I've had since I began teaching (the book is now out of print).  The book has information and a picture of a child in the country's traditional clothing plus some of their symbols.  These can be used for the students to color.  I also used Rachelle from What the Teacher Wants' unit titled Holidays Around the World.  I was excited to see that she added some additional countries this year.  I have a book that I bought from Costco several years ago that has stories from many countries and how they celebrate the holidays.  I read  about England, France, Mexico, and Germany.  I wish we would have had time for more countries.

I also read to the students a book about Mexico titled The Miracle of the First Poinsettia.  This was an excellent book. Many of my students are from Mexico or their families are, so they thoroughly enjoyed this story.  I bought the book new from Amazon for  $16.99 just before Thanksgiving.  I see it's now $899 through another party.  A used one is $39.  I'd wait until next Thanksgiving or earlier.  That's crazy!

Gingerbread

We finished with learning about Germany and focusing on gingerbread.  This way my one student who couldn't celebrate Christmas could be involved with us.  I read Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends by Jan Brett to the students for our Modeled Reading.  We worked on learning about characters, setting, problem, and solution.  We haven't talked much about problem and solution before.  Here's a chart that we started:

  They loved these books!  We made a paper gingerbread using "Flat Gingy" Gingerbread Buddy creativity project created by Christie Berlener from First-Grade-Fever.  The kids finally were able to make an art project on our last two days.  I turned it into a glyph so as to involve some math.  Here is a sample:

This one was made by me since the students already took theirs home.  I gave them the writing assignment that Christie put in the unit.

Every month the students get a topic to share with the class that I call "News".  During January, the students will share with us what they do with their "Gingy".  It should be fun!  We started doing "News" at the beginning of November.  This is something I used to do in my teaching.  The kids are enjoying this and it only takes a few minutes each day.  Three students share 3 days a week.  The other two days the V.I.P. shares.  I'll share more pictures when they return with their News.

     November

We read a variety of books about the first Thanksgiving.  I found that most students in first grade know nothing about the first Thanksgiving.  One book that we really enjoyed is based on the first Thanksgiving with a fictional character was The Littlest Pilgrim.

I followed a chart that I saw Cara from The First Grade Parade use.  Here's the chart we made:

We worked on learning about adjectives as we described the main character, Mini.

Sadness

     I have been very sad after to hearing about what happened in the school in Connecticut.  I am praying for all those kids and families involved as they grieve for their loss.  Just days before that happened we had a similar experience here in Oregon at a shopping center near where I grew up and have spent many hours shopping in that mall.  At the time when the gunman was shooting, my 25-year old niece was there at a restaurant with an outside entrance.  How scary!  She is a substitute teacher currently as she waits to find a teaching job.  This was too close to home!

Furlough Days

    Our Winter Break is longer than normal -- 3 weeks!  We have two weeks of Winter Break plus 5 days for our Furlough.  It's nice having a long vacation, but it's hard losing 5 days.  I think it will be hard to get the students back in the swing of things.  We don't go back to school until January 9th.

     Until next time . . . I hope it won't be so long!  I should be able to write again while on my Winter Break.  Enjoy your weekend and have a Happy New Year!

Ladybugs, Pumpkin Patch, and Pete the Cat

It is so nice to have a three-day weekend.  I spend so much time during the weekend on lesson plans that an extra day gives me a little bit of time for myself.  I drove to Portland to see my niece in a play.  She had one of the three female lead roles and was in most of the play.  She is such a great actress!

We have been learning about insects through our Bridges math curriculum.  I've added to that and have been teaching about ladybugs.  I read the book, Ladybugs, by Gail Gibbons to the class.

This book is full of wonderful information and great pictures.  The students first learned about the parts of a ladybug.  Here's the chart that we labeled.  This picture is from the book.

The students also learned about the life cycle of a ladybug (insect) using the following chart.

The students shared about this during ELD using sentence frames.  We recently started using Deanna Jump's Chit Chat to review topics that the students learn about.  The kids just love this.  It is such a great way to work on reading and writing skills.

The students have worked on labeling a ladybug on paper and describing the four stages of a ladybug.

We went to the pumpkin patch.  I had been out sick for one week and our field trip was my first day back.  We had a lot of fun!  We learned a lot about pumpkins in class.  We made a chart showing the life cycle of a pumpkin.

This past week we were reading and learning about the first Thanksgiving.  I asked the kids if they knew about the first Thanksgiving and all they knew is that they eat turkey and have dinner with family.  This week we will be continue our study about the first Thanksgiving.  This is our last week of school before Thanksgiving.  Parent-Teacher conferences take place in one week for two days.  The kids will be off school for one week.  I will do two 12-hour days of conferences and then be off for 3 days plus the weekend.  It will be nice to have a 5 day break.

I'll have more pictures and information about what we learn this week about Thanksgiving and how I teach them.

Of course, we have spent some time reading and learning about Pete the Cat.  The kids just love him.  I read all 3 books to the class, sang the song, and did several activities.  We made Pete the Cat from Deanna Jump's unit and wrote a sentence.  Last week we started our V.I.P.  The V.I.P. gets to take home the book, Pete the Cat, the stuffed Pete the Cat, a poster to fill out about themselves, and a binder to write about their time with Pete.  The kids are so looking forward to this.

I guess I better think about going to bed soon.  Tomorrow I hope to finish my lesson plans for the week of Nov. 26 - 30 since they are due on Thursday.  I finally figured I can complete them on time if I work on them the weekend ahead of when they are due.  I will drive back to Salem.  I hope to print some things and go to school for a little while.  I need to do some things to be ready for the week.

Enjoy your Veterans' Day!  I'm so thankful for the men and women who have sacrificed so that we can have freedom, including my dad.

Back to Blogging

Boy, it sure has been a long time since I have added a post.  This is the first one for this school year.  

The year started off full force ahead.  

This year I have a great group of 29 first graders.  This group does very well following the rules and working when they are supposed to.  It is such a change!  

Here's a few pictures of the room:

 The new alphabet letters from Queen of the First Grade Jungle.

I really like them with the purple background!

 I used Kim Adsit's Reading Workshop unit.  These mentor

charts were great to help the kids learn about reading.

 Number Corner is our Calendar Math.  I updated it a little this year by making a title, making days of the week with turquoise background.  I like it better than the white ones.  My calendar and carpet were moved to the front of the room which really opened the room up.  So, part of the white board is used for Number Corner.

Here is my Clip Chart.  Because of how I arranged the carpet at the front of the room, I don't have a place to put the Clip Chart hanging down.  It's too heavy for the white board with magnets on the back and clips.  So, I came up with a different idea.  I found these round circles with numbers this summer on a blog and love them.  I reduced the size some and  put magnets behind them.  Now, they are used and we can slide the numbers up or down.  I like this change.

       Friday, I worked at a movie night at school.  On my way home, I started noticing a sore throat.  Then, a fever began.  I was wondering if I had strep throat again.  I could hardly swallow and had a constant fever all weekend.  Yes, I do have strep.  I had it near the end of July.  The doctor said the opening to my throat is very small.  I believe it!  It is so painful.  I'm slowly improving.  I'm not very understandable when I talk, though.  I can't go back to work until I can talk normally and people can understand me.  

     I know that I got sick because of the stress that I'm under plus I work with first graders now.  This is the fourth time that I've been sick in the past year.  

I hope to return to work on Monday, but it does depend on how I feel and if I can talk where others can understand me.  I'm not there yet.  

Friday is our Statewide Teacher Inservice Day.  Our district is taking it as a Furlough Day.  So, I have 3 days to get better.  Tuesday we get to go on a field trip to the pumpkin patch.  Hopefully, all the permission slips have returned.  I sure hope I get to go to the field trip.

I had so much more to share telling about specific things we are learning.  I'll save that for another day . . . maybe tomorrow.

I've noticed I sure have lots of people reading this blog but a small number of followers.  If you have ever thought of becoming one of my followers, I sure would appreciate it.  I will try to write more often and have more freebies.

Happy Friday Eve!

My Friday Freebie

I've decided that I actually have something ready to share for the Teacher Week at Blog Hoppin', however, after spending part of my evening on this, I have no idea how to link up.  Instead, I'll offer  my second freebie on my little blog.  I'll have to do some reading to see if I can learn how to participate in a link.

I recently have worked on a new Home Reading Log.  I have the students and/or their parents (depending on their age) record how many minutes they read at home.  This year I'm adding a place for the total of minutes that the parents read to the students.  I want the first grade parents to see how important it is to read to their child.  This freebie includes a second Reading Log which the students track only their reading.  Click on the words Reading Log  here or below the picture to download these reading logs.

Reading Logs