Kolton's Post on Friday, April 10, 2015 Reading Groups

I love that Kolton says, "This is where our teacher helps us to read." It makes me so happy to teach them to read. I am absolutely loving the student blog posts!

Erin

This is what you do at at reading groups.

Ciara A.'s Post on Thursday, April 9, 2015

This video makes me so proud! Not only can the girls explain how read to self works in our classroom. They captured the rest of my students enjoying reading. I couldn't be happier. I love this class!

Erin

This is how we read.

Ciara N.'s Post on Thursday, April 9, 2015 Daily 5 in our classroom.

Ciara chose to show everyone what Daily 5 looks like in our room. I used to use a clip chart but the clothespins were always breaking and it drove me nuts! So I made this rotation chart in Smart notebook. Students move counter clockwise around the chart. You might notice I added "Games" so I could incorporate literacy activities that matched our targets for the previous week as well as "Poetry". In poetry, students read and build poems that we have practiced in calendar. Students are find word patterns in the pocket chart and then they glue the poem into their poetry notebook and illustrate. After they finish those tasks, they love to create movements or dances to go with the poems. You'll see two girls working on movements to an Easter poem in the video. If they have taken time to rehearse, I'll let them perform in front of the class. They love it! 

Comment below of you have any other questions about our Daily 5 (or would it be Daily 7?😉).

This is daily five where we work. this is how we get to be a better reader writer speller😃

Jacob's Post on Tuesday, April 7, 2015 Research!!!

We learned about desert animals. first,we researched them.  Next, we answered questions about them.  Last,we drew a double bouble map.


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Before I explain this project Jacob is sharing, let me back up for a minute.

We just spent the last two weeks studying the Sonoran desert. As we studied different plants and animals, we added to our desert lap book. The kids loved making these books and begged to take them home when we were done.

After we finished the lap books, I asked students to choose two animals. Their choices were:
Javelina
Coyote
Kangaroo Rat
Horned Lizard
Gila Monster
Elf Owl

Once they chose their animals, I made them each a copy of the texts I wrote for each animal. They highlighted important information and found answers to text-based questions. After they researched both animals, I had them compare their two desert animals using a double bubble map. Pretty difficult stuff for them, but so many had great connections!

Now that Jacob and the rest of the class have researched and compared their animals, I am going to make them choose one of their two animals and write an opinion about which animal they think is better, more interesting, etc. using reasons from their research!

If you're wondering how my 1st graders are creating blog posts, check out the Easy Blogger App! I love it!!

Adriana's Post on Monday, April 6, 2015

This is Adriana's post showing a song the first grade teachers and I wrote about volcanoes for our Earth Science show. The students haven been practicing the songs and choreography. This is a few of the students practicing reading the lyrics during daily 5 read to someone time. Adriana thought this would be good to show other classrooms learning about volcanoes. 

I love that she shouts, "Excitement!" At the beginning! 

Erin

We are going to sing a song called,great balls of fire

Kolton's Post on Friday, April 3, 2015

Today we had an Easter egg hunt. It was so fun!!