Apples… apples… apples!

Goodness, I l-o-v-e teaching and doing this fun-tastic unit! We started our week off with apple patterns. The kids did this while I made our first taste-test for the week (apple butter).

We did some apple measuring which you can find here. The kids really enjoyed this… although I must be honest and say that I was a bad teacher and was unprepared for this fully. I went to look for my scales where I have kept them for the past 4 years and they were not there!!! I had to borrow from a fellow teacher and none of my other co-workers had one! AHH!! So my kids had to do this with only one scale—it got a little noisy (again, b/c of my lack of preparing). So I took it up so we could do it later when I got some balance scales from our math lab—low and behold, I FOUND my balance scales (after school) in the same spot they had been in for the past 4 years but in a NEW BOX! Yikes! I had moved them into it over the summer to organize it better and totally forgotten. Oopsie! Sorry kiddies! Anyway, here are a few pics of them measuring their apples.

 

Our next taste-test activity was these a-stinkin’-dorable apple frogs. I made these with my kids last year and they just “ate them up”—okay, okay, bad pun!!! :)

Super easy to make… just need sliced apples, peanut butter, grapes (cut in half—I use scissors to make it go faster), and chocolate chips (for the “pupil” as one of my genesis’ informed us today!) After chowing down, my kids asked for these “every day for snack” and “when we learn about apples again!” Haha… gotta love it! *Peanut allergy substitute: Shared this with a co-worker who has peanut allergies in her class and we modified it with cream cheese instead' of peanut butter.

“Apples” Poem I wrote… we used it to find rhyming words and chunks we know (or as my kids call say, “I see a chunky monkey!”) We found –ing, –th, –it, –all, –ap)

They got a copy of their own and put it in their writing journals to illustrate what the poem means to them.

Thought this one was cute…

This one was creative… you can’t see it too well but she cut it out in a circle and then added a stem and leaf for the top. I told her how creative and awesome it was and she said, “it’s cause I’m a genius!” lol… guess I’ve said that once or twice this year ;)

We made this cute Johnny Appleseed using tracers. I thought Bayleigh’s was fun and creative! Never had a kid label his pot with a J for Johnny (but this student has really taken to our labeling our pictures mini-lessons so it’s not shocking that she did this!)

Cara’s KWL chart… we will finish Monday. I like finding out what they want to know (how apples get sour/how they “git rottin”)

Parts of an apple… The kids made these with tracers and labeled the parts while I tended to our yummy applesauce! They then put them in their science journals.

 

Deanna Jump’s Who Took the Apples from the Apple Tree? class book:

         

           

Can you tell that I don’t like white space?!? haha… I just love Trista’s “surprised” look on her face! Priceless!!!

We wrapped up this week by eating our applesauce and theeeen… bobbing for apples. (had one of my kiddos from last year swing by this AM and he saw we were learning about apples and said, “I remember Johnny Appleseed and it was so fun bobbing for apples,” luckily; none of my firsties heard it this year. So this was a total surprise for them! yay! Two of them actually got apples (and of course it was literally the NEXT person after I switched off my camera!) 

Didn’t get to, but will do this next week:

Life Cycle of an Apple Tree in their science journal. I have my own and have already made copies but I think this one is a LOT cuter! Thanks Cara for posting it for me and everyone else who emailed you!

Apple word puzzles using short a words (-ap, –at, –an, –am). Kids will use a spinner to create words and put them on their puzzle. They’ll cut it out and create their own word puzzle.

Next week… community helpers! Isn’t late September/early October just the *best* time of teaching?!? Kick-starts all the fun units for the rest of the year!!!

Reading groups

We start our reading groups this week and since I have 6 non-readers, I realized I needed a new way to document them instead of just putting it in my 5 subject spiral that I use for each of my groups. So after searching the web for a guided reading/running records sheet and not being able to find one like I had in mind; I made this. It's pretty self-explanatory and I'm hoping it works for me the way I envision it going. I will keep track of their progress as they move levels, each book we read that day, the date, and I personally like to keep track of how long I met with each group. The skill box is for what we worked on during our meeting. And then there are 6 boxes for each students name to be placed on--which track accuracy, wpm, and comp. I figure this will be easier than keeping track of 6 papers for each student during the group and can be transferred to one page as our intervention team needs. In the past, I was having to go through and copy each page out of the spiral and then mark out the other students names for documentation. Not fun.

These next sheets are our district standards. Our Reading Coach gave us these at the beginning of the year. I just made a smaller document so I could tape it in my binder for quick reference as I am reading with kids. I used post-its last year but our levels and fluency changed this year (they were WAY too high!) so I made these. You can get them here and here.

 

I will have 6 groups this year since I am planning to break up my non-readers into two different groups. Our literacy library is huge and has what appears to be a wonderful resource book that I plan on using to help these babies along. We'll be starting with letter recognition, then letter sounds, and work our way up from there. I will meet with them every day of the week during our FOCUS time (15 min each) and then during our reading group time (which I do during our independent math work--I find they are much more independent during this time and there are not as many interruptions. I personally like to walk around during their independent reading work that we do in our Response Journals and help students and check their understanding.)

Anyone out in blogger-land care to share how they track reading progress/interventions? Or share how they do their reading groups?!? I am always wanting to get better with this.

reading levels

Happy "hump day" blogger friends! Hope your week is going well! We are in the full swing of things and I'm getting super excited to see my little ones start to get some things! I heart when the light bulb goes off or when you see kiddos using strategies you taught them--all by their lonesome! 

So we've been testing like crazy and I finished reading with all my babies... I've got my work cut out for me this year as I have the lowest class in the grade. 13 out of 20 are under where they are supposed to come in from kinder... 6 non-readers y'all who just aren't pumped to be at school and don't have the best attitudes about learning things just yet--praying I can reach them and spark some interest. 

Anyway, documentation is something that is always fun to try and find forms for, so I thought I'd share what I use for tracking my reading progress throughout the year. I color-code my reading groups so I can visually see/change them quickly. I typically have 5-6 groups each year. Our district requires us to track our accuracy, reading level, fluency, and comprehension. The column for PSI is to help with interventions and targeting what to teach (beginning sounds, vowel sounds, ending, blends, digraphs, etc.) so if you don't want that column, just delete away. (here is a screen cap of what mine looks like... it's uploaded in Google Docs with Excel, so the fonts and stuff were removed... you can play around with it and make it fit your needs though!) Anyway, click here to download the document.

 

quote of the day from Dacoda, "Ms. Prince, is this like center time or something?" (as we are playing a math game for our lesson)... "Kind of Dacoda, this is how we learn in math..." He runs back and tells his group, "Guys, this is like center time, but we're learning!" haha... gotta love it! 

prayers and froot loops...

Happy Wednesday... and boy am I glad it is! Woo-these kids have me tiiiiired this week for some reason. I spent my awesome 3 day weekend with the bestie taking 6 month pictures of her sweet baby boy, Issac! He is too dosh-garn cute for words... don't cha agree?!? :)

 

Anywhoo--If you are the praying kind {and even if you're not} PLEASE send some prayers up for some RAIN! and the people here in Texas who are losing their homes and everything they know to these crazy wildfires that are breaking out. The other day 22 fires started and there have been so many people whose lives have been turned upright because it's too dang hot here. We're not even allowed to park on the grass anymore for fear of starting a fire in the grass. In my town there have been at least 7-8 families who have lost their homes. In a town called Bastrop (about an hour and a half) over 300 people have lost their homes to the biggest wildfire in Texas HISTORY! God bless those sweet people. I couldn't imagine... anyway, we're gonna be writing to our volunteer firemen tomorrow to thank them for all their hard work and for being heroes in our community. With no rain in sight for at least 10 days and temps heading back up to the 100s, it looks like they're still in for the long haul.

Wanna leave ya with a little mid-week pick me up for 1-to-1 correspondence... my favorite way to teach math-- with FOOD! :)  *edit: just realized that I spelled Fruit Loops wrong in the title... if that bothers ya, shoot me an email at kristanp03@gmail.com and I will spell it FROOT Loops in the title for ya!

Don't forget those prayers... they are heard and desperately needed! Thanks y'all! 

creating young writers

Almost two weeks down... can't believe how fast time flies! I have definitely been WAY over-prepped and haven't gotten to half the stuff I made copies of or half of the fun ideas I had planned... but I guess that's not a bad problem. I'm still trying to get the hang of our schedule and when to stop/start different subjects. We switched our recess time from 2:30 to 2:15 so that I could come back in the room and not be all flustered about trying to get our new planners that the entire school is implementing into the kids backpacks with notes from the office and all that in their Take-Home Folders. Stressed out teacher is what that equaled. Today was better with going to recess earlier. Me likes.

We're off to a good start in our writing process. Last week they did a free write before I taught them anything (so I could evaluate where we are in the process) and I was a little uneasy about it after day one. We read Arthur Writes a Story and then worked on starting the writing process by thinking about what we know. *great book for this concept b/c Arthur starts off with his own idea and then changes his story based on other peoples because he thinks it will make it better. In the end, it turns out that his story was not really believable and his class/teacher liked his original idea better.

After reading Arthur and discussing our own ideas/trusting ourselves, I modeled how this works for the kids. I brainstormed ideas that I know about, we talked about creating an image in our mind and then drawing it on our paper. After a day or so of that, we switched our focus onto really labeling our illustrations and writing a short one/two sentences about our picture--then going back to adding more pictures/labels/sentences when we think "we're done--we've just begun". (this was pretty neat because I got to share my story about hiking in Yosemite this summer and then got to show the kids video of the waterfalls/river there when they asked if I went swimming in it--all of them were so amazed since they had never seen one before! Way cool to share that experience with my kiddies).

We did circle maps about ourselves and today we discussed different topics we can write about and why we write. Made this for a visual for the kids to reference whenever they are at the, "I don't know what to write about stage."

 

Happy Friday to all you amazing teachers out there! :)

learned a new trick :)

Hey Blog land... I have a few things that I wanted to share that I've made over the past few weeks. I have modified some ideas that I found from some blogs out there. The first thing I wanted to share with you was inspired by Cara's clip chart system she made over at the the first grade parade. She has a precious Hollywood theme and her chart looks ah-may-zing for her room. Our theme this year is 'Going for the Gold' at our school, so I wanted a chart that matched our theme. Thus, I created this (mine looks a little different. I added texture on my bgrounds and they kept showing up in a square box when I tried uploading them to google docs to share with y'all):

To go along with the clip chart, we use this rewards binder. After the kids earn five 'Olympic Gold Medalist' or {outstanding} they can pick a reward from our Rewards Book--and I can not for the life of me remember where I found this idea. :( The book and some of its rewards are below. I reeeeallly like this system better then giving them something that will more than likely satisfy their interest for a few hours and then is forgotten. And not to mention, I don't have to pay a penny for any of the rewards! BONUS! :)

 

Hopefully the links work and everything is smooth for downloading/viewing. It's my first time uploading things... so please be patient with me if they don't work! :) Will try to post a go-fish numbers game and recording sheet later this week that I made for our math tubs. And possibly some pictures of my classroom--tried to take them today but my bestie (who sadly moved grades on me this year to 3rd) swung by my room and was ready to leave, so I didn't get a chance to take pics. What can I say? I miss talking with her :/

Happy Tuesday! Home stretch after tomorrow!