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

Final Week of Summer Vacation

I've returned from my short trip to the Seattle, Washington area.  I was visiting my cousin and her family who live about 40 minutes from Seattle.  We took a ferry ride to Seattle and spent some time at Pike Street Market.  It was one of the hottest days all year and very hard to be walking around town!  It was fun, though.  I hadn't been that way in several years.  We drove through the city my grandparents lived and saw the house.  This is where my mom grew up and I spent many years visiting twice a year.  We also went to a Barnum & Bailey circus.  That was fun!  I haven't been to a circus in many, many years.  It was a fun-filled 3 days.

 

I'm at my dad's house in Portland for a few days.  I'm getting together with a friend to make the teacher's toolbox.  I'm looking forward to that.  On Thursday, Dad and I are going to the beach just for the day.  I always love going to the beach and it will be a good way to end my summer vacation.

I can't print anything until I get home which is driving me nuts, but I am working on many projects.  Last night I worked on my welcome door.  I'm not much of a theme girl because I like too many different things and don't want to spend money on all new things every year, but I am going to use some cupcakes in my decorations.  I used some clipart to make cupcakes with the students names on them.  Here is a sample:

I put in some sample names to see how it would look.  I don't know who is in my class or how 

many students are in my class.  My first official day at work is next Tuesday.  I'm just not ready to return, so I may not go back until then.  I might possibly go in for one day on the weekend.  I'm not sure yet.  I may use Pete the Cat in some decorating since my class last year just loved him and I'll be reading his books and doing a variety of activities with them beginning on the second week of school.  I'll be working on that soon plus using activities that I have bought on TpT.

I'm off to Michael's!  I need some colored cardstock and some scrapbooking paper since I didn't bring it with me.  I should have a picture of my toolbox once it's done!

What's Happening?

     I'm sorry it has taken me so long to write again.  I just haven't had anything school related to write about or any pictures to show.

     First of all, I finally got over the strep throat.  That was such an awful experience especially during the summer.  It sounds like it is going around this summer!  I'm sure the stress from my last school year didn't help.  I'm thankful that I went to the doctor and got some good medicine.  I'm back home now in Salem.

     I looked at the calendar and couldn't believe how little time I have left of this summer.  Yikes!  I have to be at school in on the 28th.  Time is sure flying by!  I had thought of going in a week early to get the classroom ready, but now I don't think that I'll be doing that.  I'm trying to squeeze some things in (see friends that I haven't seen in awhile)  and have quite a bit of cleaning at home yet to do.  I'm leaving for a few days beginning tomorrow night to spend with my cousin in Washington.  We may spend some time in Seattle.  I haven't been there in quite a few years.  Amazing since I used to be there every year when my grandmother lived there.

     I've been busy creating things for my classroom.  Once they're done, maybe I'll have another freebie.  Here is a sample of one of them:

I think I even learned how to make a screenshot today.  Wow!  It is hard to teach yourself how to do things.  I'm thankful that I can find some tutorials on Ladybugs Teacher Files.  I've even spent some time working on lesson plans for the first three days.  It would be nice to get those done now.  Usually, I spend so much time on the classroom that I just don't have the time to do more than one day of plans.  I'm thankful for blogger teachers like Erica Bohrer and others who have shared their lesson plans.  Last year was my first year in first grade, and I know I really wasn't sure what to do on those first few days.  I need to place an order for some books with Amazon soon.  

     The weather here has turned HOT!  Most of the summer has been nice and comfortable - in the 70's and low 80's, however, the last couple of weeks we have been having some 90 degree weather.  Even one day hit over 100.  I don't like weather like that especially since I live in an upstairs apartment.  I'm thankful for my ceiling fan and my regular fan.  The trip to Washington state will be nice since it's usually a little cooler there.  It's supposed to be 100 for the next two days.

     Did you all have fun shopping at the TpT sale?  I waited until near the end to purchase since I found I had put too much in my shopping cart.  I had to limit it.  I did find some good things.  This evening I went off to Office Max to get some printer ink.  I had a $60 reward from using my Teacher Reward card, which was nice since I had a some other things I wanted.  I haven't bought any ink all summer, but it's now time to print things so that I can get things ready for the school year.  Tomorrow I'll go out and find some white card stock.  The card stock at Office Max didn't look like it was a clean white.

     Well, I'm off to do some house cleaning since the house is slowly cooling down.  In the morning I'm going to a card making gathering using Close to My Heart stamps and scrapbook papers.  I'm looking forward to that.