Elf Antics: Day 1

Boy were we in for a surprise this morning when we got to the classroom! Look where we found our crazy elf Dash!

 The kids were quite literally shrieking with excitement! As each new student walked into the room the ones already there were shouting out to show them where to look. I love seeing that excitement in their little faces!  Dash left us a note on the computer (which I totally forgot to take a picture of, sorry!) explaining that he was excited to be here, reminding everyone he cannot talk to them or move but is happy to listen all day, and that he hoped I didn't mind but he took the liberty of moving all the clips up to green to start the day. Hey, who can argue with one of Santa's magical elves?!?

We got to work right away on our morning work journal. One of the kids suggested that Dash was on a zip line (good schema!) so we included that in our description of what we saw:

The rest of our morning was spent diving in to our week long gingerbread unit. Today we read the original version of The Gingerbread Man. After reading we added cards to our gingerbread house to describe the different elements of the story. Each day this week we will be reading a different version of the story and adding to this chart.

To finish the morning off the kids used pictures of the story to sequence and write sentences. We sure are getting good at using our sequencing words to write sentences!

Check back tomorrow to see what trouble our crazy elf gets himself into!

Pumpkin Day!

Yesterday was Pumpkin Day in first grade! I absolutely LOVE pumpkin day; it's so much fun for the kids every year!

This year we started off our morning by carving our big class pumpkin. We sat in a giant circle on the carpet and the kids helped me figure out the order of steps I would need to take to carve it. It was obvious quite of a few of them had some schema on this subject, because they knew exactly what to do. We took off the top, checked out the goop inside, cleaned out the pumpkin, carved a face, and then lit it up using battery powered tea candles.

After we had gone through the steps to carve the pumpkin, I challenged students to use a flow map to record the steps we took. I encouraged them to use the words first, next, then, and last to help them describe the order.

Once students had a completed flow map, I gave them a piece of handwriting paper to transfer their work. Thus they created a how to paragraph on carving a pumpkin.

To finish things off students used their watercolors to paint a pumpkin. Their paintings turned out fabulous! I love any day at school that we get to paint. Everyone works so hard and their work turns out amazing every time.

Once the paintings were dry we put all the pieces together. Here is an example of the finished product:

When the students went to Ms. Coburn's class in the afternoon they got to use their own mini pumpkins to do a variety of pumpkin day activities such as a sink or float experiment, measuring, and comparing. What a fun day in first grade!

Sleeping Bag Campers

All last week we had been reading fiction stories about camping to build up our schema on the topic. As a fun activity to tie all our learning together and show me what the students have added to their schema over the course of the week we did a writing project about camping on Friday.

We started off our activity with a thinking map. We used a flow map to write about what we would do first, next, then, and last if we went camping. This was our first time being introduced to the flow map for writing and everyone did great!

Then, we created these cute little campers in sleeping bags and used them to write our final sentences about what we would do if we went camping.

I think the finished products turned out super cute!

This week we are continuing our camping theme, but moving into our nonfiction unit. We'll spend some time comparing fiction and nonfiction texts as well as researching some of the different animals you might find while out camping. Should be a fun week!

Schema Makes Your Brain Light Up

Today we did a really cool lesson on schema. I have taught the kids that schema is a fancy word that means "what you already know in your brain". Since we are starting a new unit today on camping, I thought this would be the perfect time to introduce this lesson.

We started out by reviewing what schema means. Then, each student used a sticky note to write down one thing they already know about the topic: camping. After a few minutes I called each student up one by one to add their schema to our schema chart.

As they were adding their information I asked them how they knew what they know. We found that we have learned things from a lot of different places including movies, tv, friends, family, books, school, experience, computers, etc. As students told me how they learned their information, I used puff paint to add some squiggles to that area of our brain.

After everyone had a chance to share we talked about our brains and how using our schema makes our brains light up. We turned off the lights and watched our brain "light up" with all our schema. The kids went crazy! What a good visual to help them understand what happens in their brain when they use their schema.

We read the book Just Me and My Dad by Mercer Mayer and I challenged the kids to "make their brains light up by thinking of a connection to the story". Everyone was then asked to use a second sticky note to write down their connection. As they finished the placed their connection onto their spot on our ticket to leave chart and then were dismissed to their daily 5 rounds.

We were lucky enough to have Mrs. Allen visit us during this lesson and she told me later she was really proud of how hard the kids were working, and what good listeners they were. What a great group of kids!