Writer's Workshop: Pre-writing and Drafting

This week we started setting up writer's workshop in our classroom.

I love writer's workshop when it is all set up because the kids are really able to work at their own level and their own pace to create stories, however I always forget how much time it takes to get them used to the routines and set up the procedures!

First I introduced the idea of writer's workshop. Each student got a writer's workshop notebook and we talked about 5 page narratives. The idea here is that they think of something that has happened to them that they could write 5 pages about. We practiced thinking of an idea using our fingers to help us stretch it out to 5 pages, then shared our ideas with our friends.  After sharing, I had each of the kids record their thinking on a brainstorming page in their notebook.  The prewriting step looks something like this:
Next we talked about drafting. We discussed how authors do not just write their ideas one time and then publish, but that there are a lot more steps involved. We talked about how the first step is to get your ideas on paper. They do not have to be perfect, and you might want to add more later, but first you have to get your initial ideas down.  We looked back at our prewriting page and took some time to start drafting the first page of our books.  I told the kids to strive for 3 to 5 sentences on each page, but this can be adapted for kids so that it is on level with their individual writing ability.
We spent a couple days working on drafting our ideas and having some time to catch up before moving to the next step. Not everyone was ready to go on just yet, so we took some time to play catch up.  Students who had finished drafting their first page spent some time writing in their treasure book. Our treasure book is sort of like a diary where students can record their "treasures" or important things that happen to them.

Next week we will be talking about revising to make our writing more exciting and detailed, as well as editing and publishing. After that, students will be able to move at their own pace to complete their stories. Lot's of exciting things ahead! I'll have pictures to post as we begin publishing pages next week.

Post Delay

I have a lot of great things to post this week ... unfortunately, my camera batter died JUST as I was taking pictures for the blog today, and I left the charger at home. So ... a new post about our week will be coming first thing Monday morning! Sorry! Check back soon. Hope everyone has a great weekend! :)

www.raz-kids.com

I am SO excited to announce that raz-kids.com is set up and ready for the kids to use!

Students will be expected to read AND take the quiz over 3 books each week to receive credit for homework.  Please note that they must pass the quiz in order to receive credit.

For a better understanding of how the website works, please see the directions below:

1. Log in to the student account
Teacher Name: kmccormackb
Password: your child's student ID number

2. Choose a book to read - When you log in it will show the level I have assigned to your child. Click on the book with the eye to read the book.
Students are expected to READ the book, they will not receive credit for simply listening to the story (the book with the ear).

3. After reading, select the quiz

4. Complete the quiz.
Students must pass the quiz in order to receive credit. If they get a message saying, "good job" then they have passed. If it says "read the book again" they must re-read the story in order to take the quiz again. Remember, they must pass the quiz to receive credit. They can re-read the story as many times as is needed.

5. Check to make sure the quiz is complete.
Looking back at the home screen you can see a green checkmark under the book AND the quiz when both have been completed.

When your child has completed each book on the page, meaning they have read and passed the quiz for every book on that level, please let me know and I can go in and move them up to the next level. Students are welcome to read more than 3 books per week, but they must read at least 3.

Starting today your child will be bringing home a yellow reading folder. This folder should stay inside their backpack at all times when not in use. Inside you will find their first grade reading log. After your child has read a book and completed the quiz they (or you) are to record it on the reading log. You must initial next to each book they read showing that you have checked and know they have done the required work. We have done the first one together in class as an example. I will be checking reading logs each Monday to see their reading from the week before. Please note that I will also be logging on to the website to verify what has been read.

Remember, the more they practice reading, the better readers they will become! As always, if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

This is such an awesome resource for your children; I am so excited for them to get started using it!

The Desk Fairy

This week the desk fairy came to our classroom for the first time. The desk fairy comes every once in awhile and rewards students who have kept their desk clean. In order to receive a prize from the desk fairy, the kids' desks have to be in a very neat and orderly condition. I think it's important to start teaching kids how to stay organized and be responsible for your own things and this is a great way to go about it.  We had a mini lesson on how to organize your desk and what to do to keep it clean all the time. After a few days, the desk fairy made her first appearance.

Students who had a clean desk arrived in our room to find a small trinket and this note from the desk fairy:

You never know when the desk fairy will be back. Everyone has been working really hard to keep those desks clean in anticipation of her return!

And I can't leave this post without sharing the cutest quote ever.  Upon seeing the note from the desk fairy, I overheard one student say, "wow, I can't believe there is a desk fairy. First the tooth fairy, now the desk fairy. Who knew there were so many fairies?!?"

I love first graders; everything is always so new and exciting to them.

Colors Continued!

We had another fun week in first grade! How has a month of school already passed? Time sure is flying!

This week we continued working on our color unit. Using simple books that are familar to the kids led to a lot of great connections throughout the week. We also took the opportunity to add some reading strategies to our CAFE wall. When we learn a strategy to help us become better readers we add it to our CAFE wall, which is sort of like a reading menu. This stays on the wall all year so the kids can reference it to help them when they are stuck with something in a book. More on this in a minute ....

On Monday we finished up with the color orange by reading New Socks. This simple, yet fun, book was a hit with the kids. We practiced making connections to the story by creating our own version of New Socks. Each student cut out two orange socks, illustrated the rest of the picture, then wrote about what they could do in their new socks. These turned out super cute! I love all the creative interpretations of the chick in the book.

On Tuesday we moved on to the color green and read Go Away Big Green Monster. This is a GREAT book to practice visualizing! Next year I want to do a lesson similar to Harold and the Purple Crayon and have the kids draw what they see as I read. After we read the book I realized that lesson would have been perfect! Oh well, there is always next year.  We talked about how the author used adjectives to describe the monster, which helps the reader see in their head what the author was thinking. After reading, the kids each made their own big green monsters (so cute!), and during writing we practiced adding adjectives to our sentences to make our writing descriptive and more exciting!

On Wednesday we looked at the color yellow and read School Bus. I took this opportunity to add a bunch of accuracy strategies to our CAFE board. I find we are always talking about comprehension and strategies we can use to better our understanding of stories, but in whole group we rarely touch on accuracy. Usually that is saved for small guided reading groups. This year I wanted the whole class to have the same background knowledge about each strategy before I ever introduce it in small group and this book was perfect to discuss these. The text is short, with only 1 to 4 words on each page so it was a really easy way to introduce strategies for figuring out how to read unknown words. Here you can see what this looks like:

After we finished the book each of the kids made a page for a class book about school busses. I gave each of them a bus printout that they had to color and glue on a page. Then they had to use the rest of the page to draw where their bus was going as well as complete the sentence, "My school bus is going to ______."  I stapled these together and it made our very first class book. I LOVE making class books with the kids each year. It is something fun for them that they helped create which really keeps them engaged in reading.

On Thursday, for the color brown, we read the book Who Took the Farmer's Hat and practiced retelling events in the story. After reading, the kids had to turn their hat into something else, just like in the story. The kids completed the sentence, "My hat is a ______" and illustrated the picture to go with it. We reviewed one of our accuracy strategies from the day before, "Use the picture" and talked about how it is really important to have a good illustration because that is what helps the friends in our class read our page. I am always impressed by how creative the kids can be!

 Hard to see, but it says, "my hat is a home for bugs".

 "my hat is a ice cream cone"

"my hat is a rocket"

One thing I was most excited about this week was getting started with Daily 5. We spent the last 3 weeks learning about each of the five choices: read to self, read to someone, word work, work on writing, and listen to reading. This week we were finally able to put it all together and do 3 rotations a day. I was SO impressed with my firsties this year! They did such a great job rotating and doing their job at each station. It's nice to have some structure to the daily schedule and I'm excited to be able to start pulling small groups for reading in the coming week!

Next week we will finish up our color unit by doing a variety of activities surrounding ALL the colors. I'm looking forward to rainbow week already!

Thank You!

I just wanted to take a minute to thank all the parents who came to Open House last night.  I sincerely appreciate your dedication to your child's education!  It's going to be a great year in first grade. Hope you enjoy reading all about it and keeping up to date here. Feel free to leave a comment on a post and let me know you were here! :)

Color Week

What a fun week!

This week we started our three week unit on colors. Over the course of the next few weeks we will choose a color a day (or every couple days) and use books about that color to aid in our learning in reading.

We started off the week with the color purple. On Monday we read Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevein Henkes (one of my favorites!). After reading the kids made connections to the story by making their own purple (paper) purses and filling them with labeled pictures of different things that are important to them. The boys were given the option to make purses for their mom if they didn't like the idea of making one for themselves. Here's an example:

On Tuesday we continued with the color purple and read Harold and the Purple Crayon. Before reading, we discussed using mental images to aid in comprehension. To practice this, I read the story without showing the pictures and the kids had to draw what they heard using only a purple crayon. Their drawings turned out great! I took a few minutes to show off each of the kids' drawings and we talked about how they were similar and different. The kids learned that when you make a mental image it might not be exactly like someone else's, but that doesn't mean it is wrong. Then, to finish off the lesson we watched Harold and the Purple cCayon on Discovery Streaming. The kids were so excited to see their mental images come to life on the screen. This activity was definitely a keeper! I think the kids have a pretty good understanding of the importance of mental images in reading.

On Wednesday we took a break from our color work to catch up on our daily 5 practice and get some things ready to start writer's workshop next week. We learned about the last two daily 5 choices, read to someone and listen to reading. We did a little practice with rotating though choices, and I think the kids are ready to dive right in on Monday! I'm excited to get daily 5 up and running so I can start meeting with kids in guided reading groups.

For writer's workshop we made a heart map. I found this idea from The First Grade Parade and fell in love with it. The idea is that each child fills their heart with things they love. This heart map can then be used to give the kids ideas for writing when they are stuck. I glued them down to the front of the kids' writer's workshop folders and we are ready to begin learning about the steps in the writing process on Monday!

On Thursday we moved on to the color orange and read The Orange Splot. We practiced retelling the story then made connections by coming up with our own original house that could be an extension to the story. The kids had to come up with a creative house, glue on the big orange splot, then complete the sentence, "The orange splot landed on my ____ house.". I loved all the creative ideas the kids came up with and I was quite impressed with some of their artwork. It was hard to choose just one or two to post here since they were all so good!

Today we celebrated Carrot Day since we were focusing on the color orange. I wish I could post pictures for you from today because the kids were so cute with all our fun activities! We started off the morning making carrot day headbands. I meant to take a picture of one, but only managed to get pics of the kids wearing them, sorry! We used a sentence strip to make the headband and the kids glued on construction paper carrots and used crayon and marker to draw more carrots. Super cute!  After our school patriotic sing-a-long in honor of Patriot's Day, we got to business handing out carrot awards. Each student was asked to bring in a carrot to use for the daily activities. We handed out class awards for smallest carrot, longest carrot, biggest carrot, and funniest carrot. After we had awarded class awards all the first graders got together and we compared the winners from each class to hand out grade level awards in the same categories. What fun! When the kids went to Ms. Coburn's room in the afternoon they got to use their carrots in both math and science so it was a fun day all around.

Next week we will continue our unit on colors and have some fun activities planned. I am also looking forward to diving in to Daily 5 as well as Writer's Workshop. Should be a busy week!

Second Week Update

Wow, it's only the third week of school and I am already behind in blogging! I promise I'm going to try harder to at least post once a week.

We had a GREAT second week of school, and I am excited to share some of the fun things we did with you!

We just finished up our All About Me unit, where we spent some time learning about each of the members of our class. This is a great unit to start off the year because learning about eachother helps build a classroom community.

We started out the week reading How I Spent My Summer Vacation. After reading, we shared with some friends all the fun things that we did this summer. Each student was given a t-shirt pattern and was asked to draw a picture of something fun they did over the summer and write a sentence about it.  Here you can see our clothesline of shirts hanging in the hallway:

Here's a close-up:

Next, we read Chrysanthemum. We talked a little bit about names and how everyone has a name that is special for them. For homework, the students were asked to talk to their parents about how they got their name and we spent some time sharing with the class. I loved hearing all the reasons why the different names were chosen! After we shared about our names, we worked on making a piece for our class name quilt. I wish I could show you the finished product with all the names together, but you'll have to settle for just my piece.

Another fun activity we did this week to get to know eachother a little better involved reading the book Family and then creating a house with a portrait of each students' family. After drawing the members of our families, we wrote some sentences describing the people who live in our house.  Here is my example:

The kids loved sharing about the different people in their families. We learned that families come in all shapes and sizes!

We finished off the week reading Jessica by Kevin Henkes. In the book, the main character has an imaginary friend named Jessica whom she spends all her time with. That is, until she starts school. When she starts school she makes new friends with a girl in her class named, you guessed it, Jessica! After reading the book, I paired the students up and they worked on completing a Venn Diagram about themselves. Students were challenged to find 3 things they had in common, and 3 things that made each of them special. I was so impressed with the conversations I heard from the pairs trying to learn new things about eachother.  Here are a few of the finished products:

I got this idea from Just Add Clipart. It was definitely a keeper! The kids all realized quickly that it was almost easier to come up with things they had in common than things that were different. We learned a lot about each other and found some common ground with our new friends.

Week 3 is already underway and is off to a great start! Check back in a few days to see what we are working on.

First Week of School

We survived the first week of school! It was a long, exhausting week; but I just love my new firsties so far!

We started out the week with magic playdough. I found this idea on pinterest and it was a total keeper. Basically, you make playdough, roll it into balls, make an indention in the center, add a few drops of food coloring, then close the ball up. When the kids get the ball it looks just like white playdough. We read the poem together as a class then the kids started to squish the playdough. As soon as they start to play with it the food coloring starts to mix in and the playdough changes colors. You should have heard the squeals as the playdough changed colors. The kids LOVED it! They kept yelling things like "the playdough IS magic! It says first grade is going to be great!" so cute :)

We spent A LOT of time going over class rules and practicing routines. I found this cute idea on Fall into First's blog. We read the book David Goes to School then brainstormed some rules we felt were important for our class. The kids went back to their seat and made their own version of David and copied their rule on handwriting paper. I LOVE the way these turned out. I was so impressed with how well everyone followed directions and learned to use a tracer!

How cute is this?!? Gosh I love these kids!

 We spent some time talking about ways to be a good friend, and everyone made a key listing one thing we can do to be good friends. I taught the kids what a play on words means and we created this "the key to being a good friend" poster.  I hung this up to remind us ways to be good citizens in our classroom.

Another fun activity this week involved one of my favorite books for the start of the year, The Crayon Box that Talked. This book is so great for teaching the kids about how everyone is unique, and when we all work together we can do so much more than we can do alone. We made a circle map about ways to be a good helper, then the kids used their crayons to create a colorful "helping hand" for our display. 

And finally, I saved the best for last. To help kids learn where all the important places are in the school, we read the book Corduroy. In the story, Corduroy loses one of his large white buttons and is searching for it. In the end, he never does find it, but a little girl decides to take him home and give him a new one. The kids and I decided to take a walk around our school to see if we could find the lost button for him. As we were walking we stopped to talk to some important people in the school such as the librarian, art teacher, nurse, etc. We kept our eyes open for the button, but alas, it could not be found. Upon returning to our classroom, who would have thought, the button was laying behind my desk on the floor! Everyone was so excited so we decided to write a letter to Corduroy (that everyone got to sign - names have been blurred out) and make a map for him so he could find his way to the classroom.

The next morning when we got to school we found this letter waiting for us:

What an exciting way to start the year!

I'm looking forward to many more fun adventures with the students. It's going to be a great school year! :)