Leapin' Leprechauns!

Happy Late St. Patrick's Day!

Although this fun little holiday occurred over the weekend, my team and I couldn't help but celebrate it in small but meaningful ways!

As you read in the last post, we read Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato and this week it's on to Jamie O'Rourke and the Pooka! We have had so much fun already using our Readers Response Notebooks to compare and contrast the main character's adventures! I also have to say that we have added SO many new words to our schema's! :)

   

In the Writing department  we really felt like we needed to provide our students time to creatively write. We have been working SO hard on our non-fiction reports, that a nice break was needed. So, we brainstormed St. Patrick's Day words, created a rubric for a fiction piece, and jumped right in! 

I was so impressed by the engagement of my lovely students and how much they have grown since the beginning of the year. :) **They also put together a cute little Leprechaun head to attach to their writing!**  

Here are a few! 

  

We also talked about the legend of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow! We discussed what our "Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow" would be and then wrote it out! Such thoughtful answers....my family  friends, school, grandma, horse, etc!  I also had the students engage in good ole' fashion finger painting! Our wonderful Ms. Jones had a cute idea to add cotton to both ends! Brilliant...and thank goodness Ms. Breslin ALWAYS has extra so she let me share! :)))

  

Now...I couldn't help but show this short video of a supposed leprechaun siting! My students ATE this up! :) 

Then we wrote out How to Catch a Leprechaun using transition words! They were SO funny! 

  

After the students wrote their steps out, they got to travel around the room and read their plan to two other classmates! It was a great way to practice fluency in their own writing! 

 

Last but not least, 

St. Patrick's Day would not be complete without new stained glass for the windows...

And a treat from the Leprechauns....

My students were so excited and SO thankful. :) 

Overall, I consider it all a success! 

Have a super night and thanks for reading! 

--Mrs. Hunter 

Categorizing and Class Meetings...

Happy Weekend! :)

I'm so glad to say that we had an extremely productive week, yet I'm happy to have a morning of relaxation and coffee drinking! --It's the small things!

This past week we had so much fun! My team and I have moved to the concept of choosing one mentor text a week and teaching several comprehension strategies within it, as well as integrating science and math lessons! It was amazing.

We began with reading Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato. Each day the students brought their Readers Response Notebooks down to the carpet with them and we discussed and recorded important vocabulary, story elements, idioms, and more!

At the end of the story, we also discussed what a Folktale was as well as the lessons we can learn from the story! The students came up with very brilliant responses. My favorite was "Don't be lazy--it doesn't work!" So simple, yet so profound for 6 and 7 year olds. 

Now, because the topic of the book was a man and his potato, I thought, what can I do to meet one of our science standards through the use of a potato? Hmm...

Categorizing Potato Chips it was! I bought several types of chips/snacks and as a whole group, we categorized and classified the chips as well as making a thinking/tree map to correspond. 

We began with this plate of chips: 

I explained what a "rule" was and modeled how to use the rule to separate the chips into two groups. We began with flavored and non-flavored and the plate transformed into this: 

Next, we focused on the flavored chips. The students came up with the next rule: "Sort them by color." So we did a light yellow group and an orange group. 

They decided that they couldn't break down the Ranch chips any further, but they could break down the orange chips into chips with ruffles and chips without (smooth). So they used texture as that rule. 

We concluded that the flavored chips were now categorized as far as they could be, so we went back to the larger group of non-flavored chips. 

In that group, the students decided to sort them by shape: round and rectangular. 

Now, the rest of the categorizing blew my mind! As far as I could think, the pretzels could not be categorized any further. But one student suggested that we pick up three pretzels and break them. Then, they could be categorized into broken and whole! :) Awesome. So we did! 

We then looked at the round chips (plain potato chips and tortilla chips). After we all looked at the chips for a bit, I noticed they were having a bit of trouble coming up with a rule to sort them, until I asked my sweet student from Mexico to talk to us about tortilla chips. She instantly lit up and thought of the next rule: sort by ingredients! She said, "Mrs. Hunter, tortilla chips are made from corn!" Another student piped up and said, "Ohhh....I get it. Potato chips are made from potatoes!" So cute. 

So, we broke this group down into what they were made from: corn and potato. :) 

Finally the sorting was complete! I've never heard so many positive comments from my students about how fun this was! They were beyond the moon excited! 

Here is a picture of their thinking maps!

To conclude, I had them write a paragraph explaining how we categorized the chips! I also let them choose their favorite chip to munch on while they worked! My room was instantly filled with crunching and writing. :) 

That day we concluded with a wonderful class meeting. We read the book How Full is Your Bucket? for kids and the students ate it up! 

We discussed ways we can fill buckets and what makes our buckets feel full. We passed the talking stick and all had the opportunity to share. We then wrote out our thoughts on sentence strips to create a visual reminder of filling buckets. 

  

It's been wonderful hearing them use the terms "I filled a bucket" or "My bucket feels full. Thank you". 

Now, don't get me wrong. I do not want you to think that we never have classroom challenges. Every classroom does and there is always something to work on, but I truly believe that if we expose and teach our children how to lead and interact with each other in positive ways, we are preparing them in tremendous ways for their future! :) 

So...have you filled a bucket today? :) 

--Mrs. Hunter 

Non-Fiction "Nutti-ness!"

The title says it all!

It's been nutty in the first grade halls recently, for we are in the middle of helping our students create their very own Non-Fiction books/reports! We knew going in it would be a long process, but I'm happy to report that we are half-way through and are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel!

Before the teaching, we allowed our students to explore several non-fiction books and choose an animal that they were interested it. I found it so funny that more of my girls choose the scarier, creepier animals! Go figure! Then, they received their book and a print out from the Internet on their animal to use as their resources.

We then began  teaching our students how to take notes. This was tricky in that we have spent so much time helping them create complete sentences and now they actually had permission to only write a word or two! :)

We taught them two write the note on the front and the resource on the back!

 

 

 

The next step was to allow them time to take 4 categories of notes: What it looks like, what it eats, where it lives, and interesting facts! I was impressed by the fact that they only had to research 2 facts per category, but many students wanted to keep finding more!

 

When the notes were completed, we began the daunting task of helping our students take their notes and transform them into a paragraph/chapter. A shout out to Ms. Breslin for creating a fantastic visual to help!

 

 



After modeling this once, the students took off! We have completed our first two chapters and this week we are finishing the last two and creating our table of contents! I forgot to get pictures of a completed paragraph, but here was one in progress.

 

 

 

We also took a writing break to allow our students to create their rough draft title page. They were so cute and creative. **I threw in a little lesson on alliteration and they ate it up!**

 





 

After the students finish all of the parts, they will submit the rough draft to us to be approved for publishing! Hopefully we will reach that point by the end of the week! Our plan is to present these right before spring break and help each child with a Power Point on their animal. Whew!...It can be done! :)))

On a different note, while at a conference last month I came across a book that I knew I wanted to share with my students! It's called The Juice Box Bully and y'all, every student could connect with some part of this book!

 

We read the book and discussed the meaning of a "bystander" and whether it was a positive or a negative type of person to be. We then created a new class promise with positive action words. I also let the students use water color paints to interpret their new promise! It was precious.

 

 

 

 

What a great way to keep the positivity going and enforce what we have learned about leadership and the 7 Habits! I encourage you to check it out!

 

Well, that's all for now! Have a wonderful weekend!

 

--Mrs. Hunter

Sneetch and Science Snippets!

Wow! What a crazy past two weeks it's been. I feel like its been forever since I've had a chance to share what's been going on in the classroom. Between Dr. Seuss and the Writing of our Non-Fiction reports, my kiddos have been insanely busy! I'm sure they were just as ready for the weekend as I was!

Well, let's start with our First Grade Sneetch fun!

In honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday, we read my favorite... "The Sneetches."

After we read, the students had to reflect on whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement:

 

 



I heard very interesting comments. Most students disagreed and thought the statement was false, but I had one that thought it was true....love those students who find evidence for what they believe even if they are the only one! So impressive.

Then, the students had to write why the believed what they did as well as what they learned. They also created their own little Sneetch if they so desired. :)

   

 



My team also could not resist the urge to dress up like The Sneetchs (with stars of course) for our Seussical field trip this past Thursday! You can't see it well in the picture, be we all had black feathers attached to our hair clips!

Love, love, love my team! Sorry..had to post the silly picture instead of the serious one!

Now on to Science!

We have been focusing on Motion and this past week we continued identifying the different types. This week we tried using groups with student specific jobs to investigate! Shout out to Ms. Acosta for creating this brilliant group system!

Each student had a certain job: The Group Leader, Materials Manager, Experiment Conductor, Data Collector, and the Reporter. Brilliant...they did so well!

There were also group point cards that the Group Leader carried around. As I monitored, I gave points and subtracted if need be! I've never seen them work so hard and get along so well. :)

 

Experiment wise, the students traveled around the room and used a straw to blow a ping pong ball in different directions on the foam. There were specific questions at each station that revolved around what made the ball move in the specific way!

 

 

The students have really grasped the different types of motion and I can't wait to try this system in other areas!

 

Finally, I have to BRAG on my students for just a moment. On the morning news there are always announcements about the Sunshine Book Reading program for 3rd-5th graders! My students of course said, "Well, can we read them too?" I was impressed. So I spoke with the librarian and made a list of previous Sunshine State Books that were on the 3rd grade level and made a quick chart! If a student reads the book and passes their AR quiz, they can pop their name up on the chart! While the books are a bit higher than where some of them are reading, I'm looking forward to seeing them go for it! ((I had one student read one in a day and pass her quiz! Hip, hip hooray!))

 

 

Well, that's all for now!

Stay posted for more!

 

--Mrs. Hunter