Merry Christmas

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Polar Animal Shared Research and Writing Project

Many of you are familiar with my Shared Research and Writing Projects:

I finally finished my newest unit - Polar Animals!

Check it out!

I plan on using this in January as an introduction to non-fiction text features.  I want to get my firsties acquainted with all the terminology and resources from this pack before we dive in full force with my Woodland Animals unit at the end of the year.  Click here to see last year's First Grade Writing Open House at our school.

I'd love for you to take a closer look!  Click on either of the pictures above to take you to my store.

Have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend!

Snow Day #4 and The Hands on the Clock ...

Well, today was snow day #4 but we did get a call saying we do have school tomorrow!  Yeah! Finally!  That means we only have 7 more days to finish what we've needed to over the last 2 1/2 weeks.

No pressure! :)

I have seen several ideas about teaching time using "Ana Log" and "Digi Tal".  

(I couldn't really find a source to credit anyone though.)

 I made this anchor chart with students and it REALLY seemed to help them understand!  

We've also been singing our "clock" song.  It's to the tune of "The Wheels on the Bus".

(I've been using this song in my classroom for many years now.  I do not know the original source)

(click the pic above to download the song)

Now, every time we talk about clocks or have them on our Saxon Math wkshts, we refer back to "Ana and Digi". 

They LOVE it!

Have a great rest of the week!

Narrative Writing

Ughhhhh!  Another snow day!  Now, don't get me wrong, I love staying home in my pjs and lounging with my family but we've still got some serious work to do in the classroom!  We were out Friday and again today.  I sure hope we can make it back in tomorrow.  If I think I can manage the roads, I am going to my classroom this afternoon to get some laminating and cutting done.  I also need to work on getting some center activities ready.

This is something we worked on right before Thanksgiving break.

We've been working on Narrative Writing.  I introduced it by using Jodi's product: What is Narrative Writing?  (She's pretty AMAZING btw!)

I put her posters in our pocket chart as we discussed the different parts.  Then I showed them a Norman Rockwell picture that I found in my writing files.  (It's the picture at the bottom right.)  We then used the picture to discuss each element of Narrative Writing.  After our discussion, we did a shared writing (that I forgot to take a pic of) about the picture focusing on BME and making sure that is was in a sequential order.  

The next day I turned it over to them and they practiced writing the same story in their own words.  Again focusing on BME.  

The next day, I gave them a different picture and let them write a story about it.  They had to tell me all the different elements within the story.

The next week, it was their turn to write their own narrative story.  They had to do this in the writing center for the week.  All in all I was very pleased with their first attempt.  I plan on doing some more narrative writing for Christmas.  

The little "I Can" cards you see on the chart are from one of my newest units:

It's Gingerbread Week!

We just finished up a week of Gingerbread activities!  We had a blast.

We read several gingerbread man books.  After we read 'The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School' we went back and found all the verbs where he could get from one place to another.   We wrote them all on sticky notes (twice for each word).  Then we went back and read the gingerbread man little saying using all the verbs we found.  They thought this was pretty fun.

Here were some of our center activities this week.

 Writing center:

We make this into a class book and add it to our reading center.

 How many words can you make?:

 Making patterns:

You can also click here to see my similar post from last year's Gingerbread Week.

 I sent home a gingerbread man pattern as a home project for my students to decorate.  Here are about half of them turned back in.  We use foil from our cafeteria for the cookie sheets.  (Sorry the picture isn't that great.  I couldn't get the best pictures because of the glare from the foil.)

The center activities from above are all a part of my 'Gingerbread Week" unit.  Click on the pic below to check it out!

You may also like the following to go along with your themed week.

Stay warm!  We had a snow day yesterday.  (More like an 'ice" day)  It is EXTREMELY cold here for the next several days and we're not so sure anything will melt for a long time.  Ugh!

Have a wonderful weekend my friends!