I Finally Uploaded my First Grade "I Can" Statements"!

I finished my "I Can" statements at the beginning of this school year but never got around to getting them uploaded to TpT.  My first grade team and I have been using them.  I absolutely LOVE that they are kid-friendly!  They are written so my higher children can read them and there are pictures to match for my lower readers.  Here's what my unit looks like:

Here are a few examples where I change them out each week in our different centers.

I'd love for you to check it out!  Just click any image above.

Have a great rest of the week!

50th Day of School and Spiders!

We celebrated our 50th day of School last Friday.  

Here's our team of First Grade Teachers! Love, Love, Love these ladies!

(the second young lady in the back - in black and pink - is my student observer this semester - She's AMAZING!)

 Here are my students that dressed up.  My whole class picture turned out major blurry - bummer!

We also enjoyed some coke floats in the afternoon!

We have also been studying about spiders.  

Meet "Octavia"!

I found this garden spider 2 weeks ago.  She made a web between my car and car port.  I almost walked right into her one morning when I was leaving for work.  I brought her to school to show my kids and she turned out being our new class pet.  

We have been feeding her crickets and grasshoppers every day.  It has been very cool actually getting to watch her in real life instead of only learning about spiders in the books we read.  As soon as an insect hits her web, she starts wrapping them with her silk.  We watch her pull out the silk from her spinnerets with her back legs.  Again, super cool to watch in real life! (It's nasty and cool all at the same time!)

Here's our Can Have Are chart:

(We watched a youtube video of a peacock spider "dancing".  That's where the word "dance" came from.)

This is the chart where we labeled and added adjectives:

Please don't forget about our Donors Choose Project.

If you would like to read more about it, click here to go to that post.

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Donors Choose and Winners!

I wanted you guys to check out my Donors Choose Project!  This is my first time to put together a project and I am super excited about it!  It is titled "There's an APP for That!"  I am asking for an iPad mini for our classroom.  Here's a little more info:

There's An APP For That! 

Mrs. Rowland's technology project at Northwest Heights Elem School in Durant, OK | High Poverty

"Bring in the reinforcements!" Teachers will take all the help they can get to reinforce skills being taught in the classroom everyday and to make learning fun and meaningful!

I teach 25 amazing first graders in a public school in Oklahoma. They are very eager to learn and jump at the opportunity to use technology in the classroom. My students use hands-on activities and tools any chance they can get. They learn so much better with something in their hands. It makes their learning meaningful and long-lasting!

There are so many amazing apps out there for the ipad. Many teachers themselves have created games and activities that are fun and interactive for students. Putting an iPad in a child's hands gives them an excitement for learning. The students don't even realize their learning. All they know is that they are playing this really cool game that is super fun! Not only can the student use the iPad as a tool for learning, I can also use it for formal and informal ongoing assessments throughout the year. Our state reading assessment can be given using a touch screen and can even give me activities and ideas of things to do with each student to help increase their reading levels and even chart their growth. It also gives me an opportunity to use it not only for small group instruction but individual instruction for struggling students. There are new apps available everyday that can be used to make learning fun and interactive while reinforcing the skills being taught on a daily basis.

Funding this project would give children something that they use for the rest of their lives - knowledge! Giving children a strong grasp of reading skills at a young age gives them a solid foundation for the rest of their educational career. The hope is that with this solid foundation a child will continue to grow and succeed even into college and career endeavors.

You can click on the link below to check it out for yourself!

http://www.donorschoose.org/mrs.rowlandsfirstgrade

Now on to my "One Year Blogiversary Winners!

There are 3 winners that get to choose 3 units from my store!

Samantha C. (please email me - your email keeps bouncing :(  )

Jackie M. &

Kelly B.

Check your email ladies!

Tomorrow we have a Professional Development day.  We have Ginny Dowd coming to teach us her updates and new ideas for her Phonics Dance.  We are SUPER excited!  

It's my Blogiversary! How about a giveaway?

Can you believe that it is my one year BLOGIVERSARY!

(graphics and fonts by Melonheadz, Mad Clips Factory and Hello Fonts)

aaaaaaahhhhhhh!

I can't believe that I've been blogging for a whole year!  I have had such an exciting journey and have learned so much.  I also can't believe that there are others our there that actually read about the things I do in my classroom!  It's very exciting and humbling.  

I would like to celebrate by hosting a giveaway.

I will choose 3 winners and they get 3 choices from my TpT store!

Sound good?  Enter the rafflecopter below:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

We had a wonderful fall break!  A little sad to go back to school on Monday but excited because it will be SPIDER week!

Don't forget about my newest unit:

Click on the pic above to check it out!

(You can also check out this post)

Have a great rest of the weekend!

Bats, Spiders and Ghosts - Oh My! (A New Unit!)

We've studied about bats last week.  Here are a few things we did:

We labeled our bat on Monday.  On Tuesday we wrote adjectives about our bat.

Wednesday and Thursday we spent reading several nonfiction books about bats and then filling in our Can/Have/Are charts.

In the art center, my firsties made a bat to hang in our room.

(These are A Cupcake for the Teacher's bats!  Check it out here.)

 We also added our Bat Poem to our notebooks:

All this batty work brought me to create my newest unit:

What's inside:

(Click on any of the pics above to find out more!)

I have a student observer this semester and she did her video lesson today using the ten frames, counters, number sentence strip and recording sheets for addition.  My firsties LOVED it and they were so engaged!  Score!

One more day tomorrow, Parent/Teacher conferences tomorrow night and then fall break the rest of the week!  I'm so excited!  I'm exhausted and need a break - Can I get an amen?!?!?!?

Reading Strategy Examples for our Notebooks

We have been learning about all the different reading strategies we can use when decoding words.  We have been using Cara's Reading Strategies.  (BTW - They are free so you might want to check them out!)

I took the small ones and copied them so that my fristies could glue them in their notebooks.  Then we put examples of what each strategy means.  I'm very pleased with the way they have turned out so far.  Here's a peek at a few:

We have been studying about bats and will begin our spiders in 2 weeks.  Next week we only have 2 days and then Fall Break!  Yeah!!!

Our plan is to do 2 days of fun Halloween and Fall Literacy and Math centers.  I hope to get lots of pictures ready for you.  Have a wonderful weekend!

A New Me?!?!?!?

Oh my!  I'm so excited!  I won Meet Miss Parker's Birthday Giveaway!  I am overwhelmed with so many amazing products from so many great bloggers.  I want to give a little shout-out to one of them right now.  

Did you see it?  Did you see "the new me" over on the right?

I absolutely love my new mini!

It was one of the prizes I won.  It's from The Tongass Teacher.  You have to go and check her out!  You definitely need to think about getting a custom mini!  It's so much fun!

Last week we studied the "chunk" -ing.  We did Susan's "King of Ing" Unit again this year.

 

 My little firsties had so much fun acting like kings and writing all the -ing words they could think of.

I'm hoping to be back later this week with some reading strategy notebook examples.

Have a Terrific Tuesday!