Earth Day Poem Freebie!

I am having an Earth Day theme this week to teach my first graders about the importance of taking care of our Earth. I am also trying expose my first graders to more poetry this month in order to celebrate April's National Poetry Month.

In my pocket chart center, students will be using this activity. I found a poem online at this website. Students will use the poem and put the words in order to build a poem match. Once the poem has been put in order, students have a fill-in-the-blank recording sheet to find the missing words of the poem. I have done this activity several times over this school year and my students are becoming very good at it.

Hope you enjoy this freebie! I will take pics of my students using this activity this week and upload them to give you a better idea of how this center works.

Have a great week!

My TPT Store!

I am excited to say that I have officially sold my first item on TPT! I am soooo thrilled and excited! I have all these thoughts of things that I can create and hopefully people can use these items in their classrooms. That has been my goal since I started teaching. I have dreamed of either becoming a librarian or to go work for an education publishing company where I could write lesson plans and make activities all day. I love writing lesson plans. I am crazy. I love it even more this year since I have discovered Pinterest and teacher blogs. Who knew there was all this great stuff out there?!

I am currently working on synonyms and antonyms in my classroom. Last week to introduce these two concepts I used Cara Carroll's ideas over at the First Grade Parade.( I have to tell you... this woman inspires me so much.) We made Synonym Cinnamon rolls and really just had a blast. I so regret not taking pictures. I really have to remember to do that more. So now that we have worked on it together as a group I am going to put reinforcement activities in my literacy centers this week and maybe for the next couple of weeks depending on how well we do with this concept.

I will be doing a quick butterfly theme this week, mostly done in centers, (since there are only 4 days this week.... who had a 4 day weekend this weekend? This girl sure did!). I created a pocket chart matching activity (told you previously... complete pocket chart junkie) that will be requiring students to look at word pairs and decide if they are an antonym or a synonym pair. Then students will be recording their answers on a recording sheet. It really melts my heart when students refer to their work as a recording sheet. (They do listen to me. Score!) So... if you would like to take a look at my little activity please click HERE to check it out on Teachers Pay Teachers.

I also uploaded a sequencing activity that I used with my students during my Laura Numeroff author study. First off I used Erica Borher's If You Give Author Study packet (which was fabulous! Loved the cupcake word problem craftivity!) for most of my center activities for the week along with my group activities. I also created a pocket chart sequencing activity where students read the big book If You Take a Mouse to School. This book actually came with our reading adoption and was meant to be read a few weeks ago according to my Treasures curriculum but I like to save it for my author study week. This activity was loved by my students. They had fun pretending to be the teacher and read the big book to the other students (or group members) then sort the story together and finally independently. I always try to have an independent practice with all my centers to make sure they know what they are doing... and to hold them accountable for that time. Please take a look HERE for this activity.

As always.... please share my information and Pin anything you like. I would love to have my followers on my blog and at my TPT store.  Happy Easter!

Good Luck Smarties!

Here in Texas it is STAAR  testing season. We just had our first round this week of 4th grade writing tests and 5th grade math and reading tests. Let me just say that even though I teach first grade... testing days are stressful for us too. The air is just stressful. We have to keep the students absolutely silent in the hallway. Lunch has to be quiet in the cafeteria (yeah right!). No recess and no specials and did I mention absolutely no break from the kids at all? Long. Days. The first day flies by and you get so much done since you have no break... but the second day drags and you think it will never end. I was not pulled to test a small group this time... Praise the Lord. I would much rather be in my own room teaching then staring down a 4th grader taking a test and counting ceiling tiles while I actively monitor.

At my school, the younger grades adopt one of the older grades classrooms and we made them encouraging posters and incentives. In years past I have had my first graders make the older kids a fun little postcard that says you are going to do a great job or something to that effect. I will be doing that the next round of testing.  But this year I was inspired by Pinterest yet again to create something a little more fun.

First I made these (My first edition to TPT!! Go download it is free!) little cards by using Kevin and Amanda fonts and Graphics From the Pond. (Both were free!). Then I took 3 smarties candies and put them in a cellophane bag, tied it with some twine, and Voila! I had a little bag of encouragement for my 4th grade smarties.

 

 We also make little posters to hang outside in the hallways and I went with my smarties theme.... Here is my little creation...

 In the past I have made posters with an elephant "stomping" the TAKS. (We no longer have the TAKS test in Texas. It is now the STAAR test. WHATEVER) I have also seen football fields where students were "scoring on the test!" 

I hope you enjoyed my first ever freebie on TPT. Please pass on the word and follow my store here.

Yee-Haw!

Sorry for being MIA lately... I got hit with the flu and then was put in charge of the school dance... my son started playing soccer... and life just got busy. But I am back and eager to share that I am on Spring Break and it is raining outside. I love yucky, rainy days. They are the best... but back on to our topic...

It is Rodeo time here in Houston. During this time of year, my district's scope and sequence states that we are to be learning all things about Texas. I personally love this time. I like pulling out the southern Texan twang with a few fun read alouds.

The reading skill of the week was Plot. I pulled out 2 of my favorite Western Cinderella stories.

 

I always have so much fun with these stories. The kids enjoy them too! The boys especially love Bubba's version. We started out the week by reading Cindy Ellen first. We charted the plot of the story by using the "Somebody Wanted But So" method inside of a boot pattern that I found in my files and traced. (I am not the best at drawing on my own but I am an excellent tracer!) 

 

 The next day, we read about Bubba and charted his plot also on a cowboy hat (but I forgot to take a pic of it). After charting the plot of both stories, my students on their own (so proud) began making connections on how the stories were the same and how they are different. I then pulled out my Venn Diagram pocket chart and we wrote ideas on boots from Carson Dellosa.

 

 Then the students used a graphic organizer to compare and contrast the two stories. I highly recommend purchasing this book from Scholastic .

In my writing center, students traced a cowboy and created their own cowboy. They then had to fill in the answers to sentence stems that were available in a pocket chart by the writing area. (I am a pocket chart junkie.) 

Thanks again for reading my blog! Please pin and share to your heart's desire. Also, please tell people about my blog. I would love to have more followers. :) I hope to post more ideas this week and hopefully a few freebies! 

Happy Spring Break!

 

Predicting with a Mystery

Last week our Treasures reading skill was to practice predicting what was going to happen in the story. I love Treasures and the way it is laid out but sometimes I give it a little more of a flare to go with our theme of the week. Thank goodness my district allows this because I read blogs where teachers don't have as much freedom. I believe the curriculum should be your guideline but it doesn't have to be the "be all end all."

All that being said....I started off my lesson by showing my students the cover of....

We then talked about the little girl Annie and how she has lost her mitten. She then has to retrace her steps of the day to find where she may have dropped it. We brainstormed ideas together based on just looking at the cover where Annie will find her mitten. Several of my students picked up on the huge hint on the cover of the story but a few didn't.

After we brainstormed ideas as a group, I gave each student a mitten to write their prediction for where Annie was going to find her mitten. Then we enjoyed the story together and were very happy to see that Annie finds her mitten..... (Nope! Not going to tell  you where she finds it. You need to read the book to find out!)

I gave the students another mitten afterwards for the students to write about whether their prediction was correct or not. We talked about how sometimes we think we know what is going to happen and that it doesn't always work out that way. Then we also went back to look at the clues in the story to see how maybe we can make a more correct prediction in the story next time.

My First Award!!

I am so thrilled about receiving my first award!! Melissa over at Awesome in First awarded me the...

Yeah!! My first award!! I am so excited!! Thank you Melissa!

Award Rules....

1. Thank the person who gave you the award and link back to them.
I already did... see above but thanks again Melissa!!

2. Tell 7 things about yourself.

• I have been teaching at a Title 1 school for 8 years now.
• I have taught first grade for 7 years and second for 1 year.
• I have two boys that are 5 and 3.
• I have a wonderful husband and he has been all mine for almost 7 years.
• I am very new to blogging but I am eager to learn and share!
• I have an obsession with Pinterest. Thank goodness for the app on the IPhone.
• I am a huge Texans fan and was over the moon yesterday when they won their first ever playoff game. Go Texans! 

3. Pass this on to newly discovered blogs (I took this to mean 100 followers or less) and let them know they received the award.

Check out these blogs that I love and make sure to follow them! They are great!

 

Also check out Jessica at Just a Girl and Her God for great 4th grade ideas!