Freebie Friday

Welcome to my first FREEBIE FRIDAY.  I found this idea on Pinterest last week, several blog’s were linking up and sharing.  I thought this was a great idea, that is the main reason I blog,  I enjoy exchanging ideas with other teachers for free. 

 

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This week I am sharing a poem I did with my students the last week of First Grade. 

It is from the book, You Read to Me, I'll Read to You.

I am trying to buy the additional copies of the book every change I get.  I think I have 6 copies now.

I introduced the poem to the children on Monday.  They LOVED it.  They colored the mice and added it to their poetry notebooks.  Later I read more poems from the book as well.  That is all I needed to do and they were off reading for the week.  There are several other books similar to this as well.  I showed the first graders where they could find the basket with the poem books.    

This was a favorite among the boys.

They enjoyed buddy reading with their friends all week.  They just loved the books. I don't think I had to remind anyone to read.  They were all buddy reading!  Amazing! 

A Fresh Coat of Paint

When I taught Kindergarten I made some classroom improvements.  One of the BIG projects I did was paint the lockers in my classroom white.  I loved how cute my lockers turned out.  My friend Cheryl and I painted the polka dots on the top of the white lockers.  I thought they were fun.

We even continued this fun pattern on the bench under the big windows.  

So when I left kindergarten I have to leave my beautiful classroom.  My new classroom had lockers again.  However they needed some love.  You can see some of the rust spots and the wear and tear from lots of use throughout the years.

So my partner teacher and I decided to paint them.  We sanded them, washed them and repainted them with almond paint.  

Now they look clean and fresh for the new year.  I need to decided if I want to but a pattern of the top go them.  

Chapters 3 & 4 Teaching in the Digital Age

I am reading Teaching in the Digital Age for part of my professional development.  This week’s chapters were about Projectors (i.e. Smartboards) and Using Audio Recordings to Capture Powerful Moments.  Two things I have in my classroom so I was very excited about the chapters.  I have had a smartboard in my classroom for about six years now and sometimes I tend to do the same activities.  I have i-pads in my classroom as well and I know I am not using them to their fullest potential.

Chapter 3  Rethinking Projectors

If you do not have a smartboard this chapter is for you.  B. Puerling gives lots of reasons why you need a smartboard in your classroom and you can use those points to write a proposal.  He gives some basic suggestions of how to you the projectors in the classroom without much training.  He writes about placement of the projector in your classroom as well. Great chapter for beginners.   

Chapter 4  Using Audio Recording to Capture Powerful Moments

B. Puelring provides several ideas of how to use audio recordings to support learning.  My time is always precious to me in first grade.  I pack a lot into my learning day so I am looking for ways to enhance what we already do, one idea I found in this chapter was enhancing the listening center.  This year my listening center was stories on the ipad.  However I know I could do more.  I do have stories on CD and believe it or not cassette tapes too.  First graders could handle it.  I think I will set that old school stuff up.  B. Puelring wrote about a website, www.onemorestory.com.  I went to check it out and it looks cute and easy to navigate.  I am thinking of buying a subscription for the year. 

As I read this chapter it reminded me that I did have the children record themselves reading on the ipad when I purchased my first one.  However it was hard to do, I ended up spending a lot of time during recess helping children record themselves.  I noticed the children did not watch the videos.  So I am not sure it was worth the time. 

Another cute idea was publishing class songs.  That is something I may want to investigate more.  Actually I would like to find out more about posting reader’s theater.

So those are my thoughts for this week’s chapters….something to think about. 

My Favorite Ideas from this School Year

My Favorite Ideas 

of 

My Year Back In First Grade

1.  My absolute favorite idea this year was the REWARD COUPONS.  My students would earn five bonus stickers on their folders and then they would pick a surprise coupon.  It was the highlight at the end of the day.  The students wanted to know who earned a coupon and then they would all stand around to see what coupon the student would pick.  It made the end of the day fun and exciting.  I plan on two new coupons for next year:  1.  Pick any book in the classroom to take home to read.  2.  Pick your own reward!

2.  One of my favorite art projects this year was the self-portraits and rainbow names the students made at the beginning of the year.  I hung them above the lockers and it made the back of the room colorful and the students loved having their pictures hanging up all year.

3.  The poetry notebook was something I worked on all year.  I was searching for new poems that went along with our curriculum each week.  At the end of the year I had the students add a self-portrait they made for a religion lesson and decorate the covers.  We moved our poems from our 3-prong folders into 1-inch binders.

4.  Each week I had the students record the books they read in class.  The reading log started out with them telling me if they liked the book and transitioned into the students making a text connections.  I loved reading how they connected to the book.

5.  Our school participates in the Accelerated Reading Program.  Each week the students picked one book that they would focus on one book for their independent reading.  They practiced at school and at home.  At the end of the week they wrote me letters.  We started slowly as I introduced the different parts of the letters.  At the end of the year their letters included:  title, characters, problem, events, and the author purpose. 

6.  Each month I tried to put together Challenge Activities.  Many of my activities came from Doodle Bugs Teaching and Moffatt Girls.

7.  I was looking for an easy no fuss Mother’s Day gift and this is what I found on Pinterest.  I think they turned out adorable and I will be doing these again next year.

8.  At the end of the year I found another great idea on Pinterest.  I took pictures of the students by the classroom door the first day of school and the last week of school.  I used photo shop to add some of their favorite things next to their photos. You can see that Grace grew a few inches next to the door.

9.  At the beginning of the year we made a giant map of our community.  It was one of my favorite activities.  So many parents and teachers gave positive comments about the map.  

10.  I loved my reading area.  I moved my room around towards the middle of the year and I loved how I expanded the reading area.  It gave the students room to spread out and read.   My students love sitting at the table and chairs and reading to one another.  They also love the red benches.  I think the reading center always had students in it.  They even begged to read during recess.  Really I am not joking!   

Chapter One & Two Teaching in the Digital Age

I have had this book on my shelf for several years and not cracked it open.  I decided to read it for a couple of reasons:  1.  My new principal is all about technology and what classroom teachers can do on their own with it.  2.  Our computer teacher/support person has taken a principal position at a new school and will no longer be there to bail me out.  (And I don’t think we are getting a new computer teacher and I may have to teach my own computer classes.)

3.  Yes, I did write down improving my knowledge of technology for my professional goal and now I have to do it.

So it is time to read this book.  I have to admit I found several good ideas to incorporate into my first grade classroom right away at the beginning of the year. 

Chapter One is a lot of information about the importance of using technology in Early Childhood Education the author provides lots of quotes and evidence that give pros and cons.

The author, Brian Puerling, provides a lot of forms that you can use to assess your knowledge of the technology in your room.  The form I liked the best was the form about how to implement technology through the school year. It is a basic chart that anyone can make on word. 

Month	Skills	Technology
September
October
November
December
January
February
March
April
May

 Chapter Two has a lot of great ideas of how to use photographs in your daily lessons. 

Idea 1:  Use photographs to help student develop schema.  I thought this was a great idea, in fact I have done this in the past with some of my own photographs from vacation.  However you could google a photograph and use it as an opener. 

 

google image

One idea I had was the ducklings in Boston’s Public Garden.  I was telling the boys and girls I went there however I could not find my photo.  Several days later one of my students brought in a picture of when he was three and he was sitting on the mama duck.  This was a great way to connect to the book, Make Way For Ducklings.

This year I showed my students for photographs I had from my visit last summer to Laura Ingalls Wilders Schoolhouse.  We used this as a stepping-stone to compare and contract our classroom with schoolrooms of the past.  I projected the pictures on the smartboard so that all the students could see them.  I gave them some time to observe and process the photographs.  Brian Puerling writes that “when children are given time to observe, think and reflect, they are giving the time they need to build background knowledge necessary for a unit of study.  It was interesting to talk about why they needed buckets in the classroom.

Idea 2:  Use Photographs to Facilitate Conversation in the classroom.  As the students look at the photographs they will be able to “share connections and pose questions.”  As I read this part I thought, wouldn’t this be a great way to introduce the expectations of “Read to Yourself.”  I have photographs of my first graders reading and I thought I could put them together in a slideshow and show my new students some good readers and we could discuss what it means to be a good reader. 

Idea 3:  Put together a slideshow of the students for different purposes.

I thought this would be a good idea for several things:

·      Our First Day of School (Post on Website)

·      For Parent Night (Pictures of their kids in action on some of the things I am discussing.)

·      Open House (Something for new families)

·      Grandparents Day

Idea 4:  Have each student bring a photograph of their family.  This photo can be used for several lessons, getting to know each other, recognizing similarities and differences in families, have the students speak about their families..common core.  I generally have the students hang up the pictures in their lockers however we could make a class book out of them.

Idea 5:  This is one of my own ideas I did in kindergarten but I want to do it again in first grade.  At my school we have church/reading buddies.  The first graders buddy up with the fourth graders.  We get together twice a week, once we sit together for Mass, and second is reading or whatever you want to plan with your buddies. 

In kindergarten I made a book with the pictures of their buddies and their names to help them remember the names.  I also used the sight words, I am, to re-enforced reading.  I am going to do something similar however expand the sentence. 

 

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Idea 6:  Use photographs to learn about Authors.  This is on my areas to improve for next year…..Author/Illustrator studies.  By showing photographs of the people who write and illustrate books you make them because real people.  You can find pictures on their websites or google.  

 Next week I'll let you know about Chapters 3 & 4.