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!

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!

Penguins and ELD

     This week I was teaching an ELD lesson that I wrote up after taking a Systematic ELD class. I was evaluated one day from my coach and it went well.  I wasn't able to teach the whole 5 day unit because I ended up getting sick.  I'm home sick today.  I went to work on Wednesday with a fever.  I don't know how I did that .  It helped that I had 7 kids absent.  It was more like a regular class with only 23 kids.


     The ELD lesson was using the book Penguins by Gail Gibbons as my mentor text.  I taught them about verbs looking at the action that penguins do when they move or do other things.  This was our first introduction to verbs.

     We continued a chart that we started on what we know.  This week we added what new learnings we knew using verbs.  Those are in pink on the chart.  I took pictures from a book called Busy Penguins that showed penguins doing things.  These were great illustrations for the students.  There were examples such as penguins bumping, penguin sleeping, penguins sliding, etc.  

     We used sentence frames to have the students partner up and share.  This is so good for the ELD students, as well as, the English students.  I think the students learned a lot about verbs.  

Penguins:  What We Know and New Learnings using Verbs

Sentence Frames using verbs
and adjectives

Since I've been out sick, I haven't been able to finish my 5-day plan.  It appeared the substitute yesterday didn't teach the writing part, which is the next step.  Today, they should have done a shared writing using these sentence frames and using verbs and adjectives.  Next week, we will finish by having each student write their own paragraph and putting it into a class book.

     Now, I need to start thinking about my next ELD lesson.  This quarter we are to teach Realistic Fiction.  I think I'll start an author study on Tomie dePaola, one of my favorite authors.  My third graders last year just loved learning about him.  He has so many wonderful books.  I think the first graders will like his books, too.  We read one book a week ago called Stagestruck.  It was great because Tomie got in trouble for not listening, a problem many of my students have.  I'm not sure which book we'll do next.  Maybe The Art Lesson.  That's always a good book!

     Well, I better get ready to go to Urgent Care.  My doctor is in Portland, an hour away.  I called yesterday and she told me to go to Urgent Care since she doesn't work on Fridays.  I hope they can give me some medicine.  I have a 3 day weekend and I don't want to be sick the whole time.