Gilbert the Pig

Have you seen the book series "Gilbert the Pig" by Michele Dufresne?  Our first graders love Gilbert!  One day, I gave two of my students Gilbert Goes on a Picnic to read to me during guided reading.  It was the first "Gilbert" book they had ever seen.  When they got to the end of the book, one of them noticed that there was a list of other books about this character, Gilbert.  After reading the list of titles, they asked me if they could read some of these other books.  I told them we didn't have any of the other titles at our school, so they asked if I could please buy them.  (They REALLY wanted to read more about Gilbert!)  I told them that would be a good question for our principal.  ;)  We quickly set to work writing a letter and creating a pic collage to send her by email.  The boys were SO excited when she wrote back to them, letting them know she WOULD be purchasing more Gilbert the Pig books for us!  She was thrilled with the way they reached out to her to request more books.  Within a month, the boys were reading all the extra titles they'd been wishing for!!  

This was NOT the lesson I had planned for that morning...I had no idea they were going to be so excited about Gilbert...but this lesson went far better than I could have ever planned!  The boys worked on reading, developed a love for a certain book character, wrote a letter of persuasion, and created a multimedia project with technology!

The best part was the excited looks on their faces when they found out their principal was actually going to give them what they asked for! Priceless!

How Do You Feel?

In our 1st grade writing workshop, we have been begun discussing what good writers write about.

Good Writers Can Write About:

*Things that happen to them

*Things they've done

*Places they've been

*How they feel

How they feel?!?  Oh, no!  This is where EVERYONE is going to write, 'I felt happy when...' or 'I felt sad when...'"  Ugh!  Those boring words...good, happy, sad, bad...  

But then I began thinking, why not combine two great lessons together; writing about feelings AND making better word choice?  PLUS, I have a lot of ESL students in this class with low vocabulary.  How can I make it easier for them to understand words like "disappointed" and "nervous"?  That's when I came up with this chart:

I had all the photos hidden away in a bag as I came to the carpet to teach my whole group lesson.  As I pulled out each picture, the kids helped me read the word.  As one student attached the picture to the chart, the others acted out the feeling.  They did a great job showing me what each "strong feeling" meant.  I could see it all over their faces!  :)

Once the chart was created (over the course of 2 days), I modeled writing and drawing about how I was feeling this morning after being woken up by my dog barking several times throughout the night.  I was SO tired when I woke up this morning!  I just HAD to write about it!

I asked the kids to put their thumb up by their heart once they had an idea of what they were going to write about today.  Then I sent them off to get started.  Those who still needed time to think of an idea, remained on the carpet with me.  I quickly talked to them about how they were feeling when they woke up this morning or how they felt when their mom dropped them off at school today, and off they went to write, as well.

This anchor chart now hangs in their first grade classroom to help them remember not only that they can write about their feelings, but also to remember those "strong" feeling words (and how to spell them).  It especially serves as a great scaffold for my ESL kiddos.

A New Adventure!

I haven't posted anything on my blog for over a year.  Geez!  Well, it's about time because I'm beginning a new chapter in my teaching life.  I've been in the general ed. classroom for the past... hmmm...18 years?!  Wow!  It's been longer than I thought!  When I began in 1995, I never thought I'd EVER want to leave my fun kindergartners.  I loved the developmentally appropriate curriculum that I was teaching.  After 7 years of teaching 5 year olds how to hold their scissors and walk in a line, and then giving them to the first grade teachers reading, writing and walking (almost) perfectly in the hallway, I decided I wanted to continue on with them to 1st Grade.  I wanted to see how much further I could actually take them.  I was ready to move up to 6 & 7 year olds!  Well, the last 11 years have been spent getting those 6 year olds reading and comprehending liking champions.  It's amazing how much progress they make by the end of first grade, especially where reading is concerned!  There were also 3 years in there where I tried out k-2 multiage (that was an interesting experience.  Wish I could go back and do a better job on that...) 

Anyway, after 18 1/2 years in the classroom (I started midyear my first year), I am giving up the control of my own classroom and working as an intervention teacher for English Language Learners (ELLs).  I am SO excited about this new adventure!  I still get to work in classrooms with kids and I get to help other teachers by co-teaching with them in their classrooms. 

So...I'm going to try to document this new challenge on my blog.  I've been searching for another ESOL blog, but there aren't a lot of them out there.  I'm hoping to post pictures and ideas from my experiences this year in my new position.  I'll be growing a lot this year and I am up for the challenge!

We've been busy this month!

Happy Earth Day!!

We made these cute little owls out of scrapbook paper today...
"Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute!" 
They look so cute hanging in the window of our classroom.  Tomorrow we're going to do some writing about how we can help take care of our Planet Earth.  The kids will be tearing blue and green paper and creating their own little earths.



We've spent the last few weeks reviewing the many strategies that good readers use to help them with their comprehension.  These posters include thinking stems to help the kids remember what kinds of things good thinkers may be thinking as they're reading.  Each student has a baggie of color-coded bookmarks (cut from construction paper) to go along with these posters.  The bookmark can be written on, much like a sticky note, without having to spend all the money on sticky notes. 
For example, if a student is at independent reading and has a question about their book, they take out a green bookmark and write their question on that bookmark, then place it in the page where they had the question.  This is done for any of the other thinking stems as well:  orange/visualizing, yellow/connections, purple/characters, blue/feelings, red/predicting.



These "Adjectives About Me" were so cute, I had to hang them in the room and take a picture of them all together.  Since we've been talking about adjectives, they helped each other think of good describing words for each other and then wrote them down and glued them around their little cutie pie self-portraits.









These are the adorable giraffes the kids made after we went to the zoo.  I got the cute pattern from Mrs. Jump's Class.

Early this month, we returned to "Features of Nonfiction".  I've done various anchor charts for this over the past few years, but I really liked this idea I got from this fabulous website:  www.julieballew.com.









This is another awesome idea I got thanks to pinterest and the various blogs I follow!  I just love how this retelling ribbon turned out!  After hearing a story, we bring the retelling ribbon down and go over how to retell the parts of the story. 

Castle:  Where the story takes place
Sun:  When the story takes place
Owl:  "Whoo" is the story about  :)
Boot:  What kicked off the story
3 Star Buttons:  3 main events
Bow:  What tied up the story

See these blogs for more info:
Castles and Crayons
Spotlight on Kindergarten

Coins...Determining Importance

Each of these coin webs was made by 5-6 students that met with me in small math groups.  First, I passed out real coins to each of them to touch, compare and look at closely.  They each took a turn sharing one thing they knew or noticed about their specific coin.  They then wrote their observations on the chart.

Once we had all of the coin webs finished and hanging in the window (the only place left in my classroom to hang anchor charts...lol), we discussed how some of the information was really more important for us to remember than other information.  We had just finished a reading comprehension lesson on determining importance titled "What's in My Teacher's Purse".  In that lesson, they had to determine and sort whether the items I pulled out of my purse were "Important" or just "Interesting".  They got pretty good at this, so I thought it would be a good comprehension lesson to pull over to math.

I asked the students to tell me which things they thought would be the most important to remember when they are trying to tell the different coins apart.  Then I circled what we felt were the most important differences.

Math Strategy Posters

These are some strategies we've been working on when solving story problems in math.  I may have to repost if/when I make them cuter.  ;o)

Math Problem Solving Posters

Reading Genres

Here is the reading genre bulletin board I made last week.  When the kids are at independent reading, they take a sticky note and a pen with them to write down one of the books they worked on that day.  When literacy stations are over, they put their sticky note on the right "cloud".  The genre choices are "Fantasy", "Nonfiction", or "Realistic Fiction".  I plan to add more genres in the future...for sure "poetry".

Here is a close-up photo of the "Realistic Fiction" cloud with a few sticky notes attached.  In order to avoid "overcrowding" with stickies, I told them that when they put a new sticky up, they have to take their old one down.  That way each student has one book represented on the board at  a time.