Happy LOVE day!

I am getting so much better at posting more regularly on here! Yes!

As a new teacher, I normally dread holiday 'parties' because they are, simply put, a hot mess - a management nightmare. Which is why I am a little extra proud of how our Valentine's Day celebration went yesterday.

I have 5 teams - they each have their own color - so we had 5 centers.

Art

Art - 2 turns to work on the Valentines's Day art - I love you to pieces cut and glue activity

Write - I love you to pieces because....

 

 

 

Front

Back - Zaniyya wrote to my son Cruz <3 adorable!

You can download the writing prompt paper and heart cut out HERE

Deliver - I taped baggies to their desks and had only one group at a time delivering their treats and Valentines cards.

Enjoy - This group was the only group allowed to start enjoying their treats and gifts (all other groups could enjoy once they were finished with their activity)

Now, for my gift - I definitely didn't want to give them even more candy! Here is what I came up with for about $3!

 

 

Love,

Mrs. Marshall

Daily 5, all figured out and working its magic

I don't know what I would have done this year without the Daily 5, thank god for all that blog stalking I did over the summer. I bought the sisters book online and read the entire thing cover to cover in about 2 days, easy. It is now November and my class is in full Daily 5 mode, and I might add they absolutely love it!

So here is my routine: I teach a 15min (or so) focus lesson - in this order: Vocab, Comprehension, Grammar, Word Work (spelling/phonics) and Work on Writing. In between, I say it's time to check in, and the class rings in "for Daaaaily 5" it's so frieking cute, I love those kids!

After scouring blogs, sites, and teachers pay teachers for every type of check in imaginable - I'm talking pocket charts, clips, signs, etc etc etc - I ended up doing the simplest thing, pretty much what the book suggests, I use a simple check list I made (I WILL ADD A PICTURE AS SOON AS WE GET BACK TO SCHOOL NEXT MONDAY!) for each check-in I color the Round number with a crayon and then check student choices with the same color crayon. I hang the check list up on the wall during the round, sometimes little ones forget their choice 2 minutes in! haha or they just like to double check :)

After a few days of lessons/rounds that went juuuuust a little over 15 min, we never ever had enough time to get to all 5 rounds, so we brainstormed as a class and came up with a new idea! Instead of starting over with a new checklist everyday, I keep using them until they are all filled up - this way I can make sure all my students are practicing all 5 aspects.

 I ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS have my students in number order, so I start with number 1 - she or he gets to choose first, the next round I start with number 2 and so on. That way it is first come first serve when it comes to both Word Work and Listen to Reading, both of which have limited materials ( I make sure to keep track of how many choose these two options )

Next, I have a Daily 5 captain every day - this friend gets to pull sticks (Popsicle sticks with every student's number on them) to excuse the class from the carpet, that way it is in random order and there are no arguments about places to sit, word work materials, etc. We ALWAYS check in at the carpet and we ALWAYS come back to the carpet at the end of each round. I swear my class practically lives on that carpet!

One last thing, I project the week's sight words on the smart board during each and every round - students who are doing Word Work, HAVE to work on these words (I have found it keeps them on task) also, at the end of each round while we wait for every one to make clean up and make it back to the carpet, students are snap spelling and reading each word, keeps them busy busy and not talking or messing around. Just a little management tid bit that is also turning out to be a great quick assessment of sight word recognition, hooray!

Moral of the story....... Seriously...... buy this book best $14 I have EVER spent - I got mine used on Half.com but there are a ton of other sites, see HERE for shopping options

Writing in first grade.... what I'm slowly learning

Stockton Unified, my current home, uses California Treasures ELA curriculum - at first, I was really thrown off my game since I am not as familiar with Treasures as say, Open Court (which I had a lot of exposure to while student teaching), but now I am LOVING it! Especially for Phonics, sound spellings, fluency, decodable readers... I have finally worked out a routine and I can really see improvement in my student's reading! yay! 

But I digress, this post is about WRITING.... which was really a struggle for me to teach effectively. So I came up with the first of many ideas. Treasures really focuses on the main idea/details graphic organizer (the formative assessments are all about it,) so I started here. Almost every day the kids take out a 'brainstorm bubble,' we think of a main idea together, repeat for details (I've found for management purposes that it helps to have ALL of them write as I write).

Once our brainstorm bubble is ready, we move on to our writing, again we do this together.

We write 1 sentence for each bubble, crossing out the bubbles as we go. Once they are done writing with me, I give them a stamp and they can work on creating 'tear art' for their writing (motivation! they love art)

Now, here's my problem - they are COPYING and not writing on their own :(

While it is great that we are thinking of details and sentences together, I really want more of my students to be able to write on their own by the end of the year.

So, here's the plan (at least for this last month of school! oh, there's never enough time!) .... I am going to stick with the brainstorm bubble (because they need to be familiar with it either way) BUT I am going to try to give them more opportunities to create their own writing using aspects of Interactive Writing (along with Direct Interactive Instruction) and LUCY CALKINS Writer's Workshop. I found a few blogs that mentioned Calkins and then I found THIS awesome video on YouTube to help me understand it a little better.