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!