My Classroom Library

      One of the most important parts of our day is the time we spend practicing our reading.  Each student has their own book boxes that they keep 4-6 books in as well as their poetry folder and an occasional magazine such as their Weekly Reader.  I have tried many, many different systems of organization for my classroom books.  I encourage the students to have a variety of non-fiction, poetry, and fiction books.  We also work all year on how to make good book selections.  I use the guidelines from Daily 5 called "I Pick".

At the beginning of first grade, particularly, we talk about different ways to enjoy books.  Many students at that time have very limited books that they are able to completely read independently.  These guidelines help them realize there is still a lot of enjoyment they can get out of the books in their book boxes.  These guidelines are also from Daily 5.

 Here are a few pictures of how my books are currently organized.

Here is our reading area.  The display shelves in this area hold all of my picture books that don't belong in a series or a popular author.  

I have all of my "series" books in baskets.  Junie B., Henry and Mudge, Berenstain Bears, Magic School Bus, Magic Tree House, Beverly Cleary, If You Lived At The Time Of, etc.

I have this book display that holds books related to our current theme or unit of study.  Many of these are books I intend to read aloud and teach a lesson from.

Next week, we will continue enjoying some fun Halloween books.  We will also talk about the election.  We will do some opinion writing after reading Grace For President.

I have all of my non-fiction books in baskets, not yet sorted by topics.  Hopefully, that will eventually happen.

Problem Solving Using Patterns

       We have been busy this week using our knowledge of repeating patterns to help us solve problems.  One of the problems I presented this week was adapted from a book called Introduction to Problem Solving by Susan O'Connell.  It is an EXCELLENT resource for problem solving!  The problem  involved them making an extended pattern and then looking for specific pieces of the pattern.  It was about a squirrel who was making piles of nuts for winter.   He placed the piles in the order of walnuts, acorns, pecans.  The question I presented the kids with was, "What kind of nuts would be in the 15th pile?"  The students were very quick to notice that the squirrel was using an ABC pattern in his piles.  They spent some time making the piles and took a bit of guidance to realize that they somehow needed to label their piles so they knew which was which.  Some students used a dry erase board to show their patterns and some chose to use blocks to show their patterns. 

      After solving this initial problem and discussing it, they really caught on to what we were doing and were able to answer a variety of questions about their patterns. Examples..."After making 20 piles of nuts, how many of those piles were pecans?"  The students are using manipulatives to solve these problems and then defending their answers by explaining to the class what they did.  The rest of the class gives feedback on if that was a good way to do it and if they think there was an easier way to solve the problem.

      We will work on many problems involving patterns throughout this week that I also adapted from the resource mentioned above.  With some problems we will include using a set schedule to figure out the pattern for which days the brother has to walk the dog, how many days in the month it will be the sister's turn to walk the dog, etc. 

Here are some pictures of the students working on the calendar problem.

Spiders are NOT scary!

       Some other topics I love to learn about around Halloween are bats and spiders!  With all of the curriculum that we are required to teach, I have to be creative about how to fit in those "fun extras" that enthuse my students about learning.  These two topics are easy...there are tons of non-fiction books at their level that we use during Guided Reading, Shared Reading, and Read Aloud.  We write about what we learn and I was able to find some good quality math activities that fit with the 8 Best Math Practices that I will talk a lot about on this blog! 

     When teaching my students what good readers do in their minds while reading, I use a variety of resources.  One of my very favorites that I use a LOT is The Primary Comprehension Toolkit created by Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis.  I like it because they are short, simple lessons that the kids love and are very engaged in.  This week we delved into the strategy of Asking Questions using a Time for Kids article about spiders.  I could not have asked for the lesson to go better!  The students were so motivated and engaged.  The questions and learning that they came up with were stellar!  I was able to learn where some of them are at with their writing development as well as what they found fascinating in our reading.  Here are a few examples.


"How do spiders jump to catch their prey?"  "I learned that spiders make trap doors."



"I wonder if the spider falls in the water?"  "I learned that they're sneaky." 

"I didn't know that there was a crab spider."

      During Math we did a problem solving activity I found on Mathwire.com.  Each pair of students received a card with some information on it.  The card told them how many heads and how many legs they had to use.  Then they had to figure out how many spiders and insects they could possibly have with that combination.  It took some of the groups several different tries to come up with a correct solution.   One of the 8 Math Practices we will be working on this year is Make Sense of Problems and Persevere in Solving Them.  The second Math Practice we utilized was Using Appropriate Tools Correctly.  In this case, they used Q-tips and cotton balls to represent the heads and legs.   They also used pencil/paper to show their solution. 

And as a culminating activity we did some writing about what we had learned.  We are working really hard in writing at adding at least three good details to tell people information about our topic. 



Scarecrows

     Scarecrows are so fun for kids at this time of year and they are a good alternative for keeping the Halloween craziness from happening too soon!  We made a Scarecrow glyph.  A glyph is a fun way to display data.  They make their project, in this case a scarecrow, in a certain way based on their answers to some key questions.  In this case they colored their pants a certain color based on what their favorite fall activity was, etc.  Then, when all of the projects are completed, they can count up how many scarecrows had blue pants to figure out how many students liked jumping in leaves, etc.  It is a fun and creative way to display data rather than always using a graph.  When we are looking at graphs and data we practice using math vocabulary to discuss our findings.  We had a discussion about the data we found in our scarecrows and the students had to write a sentence using a math term such as greater than, less than, maximum, minimum, fewer, more, mode, etc.  This is difficult for first graders and is still a work in progress.

When we were done with the math portion of our scarecrow unit we did a writing piece about scarecrows.  First, we brainstormed together some of the things that scarecrows "can", "have", and "do".  Then they used these ideas to write a 3 sentence paragraph about scarecrows.  I loved that some of the students chose to use words and phrases from the poems we have been reading for fluency practice this week, too.   That's how good writers learn...it's not cheating or copying, it's learning to use language in a sophisticated way!  They have to learn those words and phrases somewhere!  My favorite phrase was, "The scarecrow is my best man."  Too cute!  And one of our friends referred to overalls as "Those old man pants"! 

Discovering patterns

       One of the most important skills that kids can learn in math is that our number system is FULL of patterns!  We are working this week on identifying and naming visual and kinesthetic patterns, extending the patterns, and creating our own patterns.  One activity that we are doing that is an extension of our pattern unit is recognizing a pattern when listing our facts that add up to 10.   The first thing we did was create towers of two different colors that equal ten.  Once they had a tower made, they colored it on a chart to record it.  They worked at this for quite awhile.  While a few students needed some encouragement to keep working at it, most of them were pretty persistent at finding a new way that they had not found.  At this point, their work was pretty random in how they were finding the facts.  The students were working independently at this point.

The next thing I asked them to do (during the next work session) was to see if they could figure out a way to organize their facts.  I didn't give them any direction other than "How could you organize your towers in a way that you could be sure you haven't missed any towers you could have made?"   For this part of the task they were able to cut apart the strips they colored so they could manipulate them.  My goal was that by arranging the towers they could see a visual pattern...Example:  One white block with 9 green blocks, 2 white blocks with 8 green blocks, etc.  If they could organize this visually into a pattern, we could then examine the addition sentences that go along with them and see a numerical pattern.  I loved seeing the lightbulbs coming on when they saw the numerical patterns in the addition sentences and didn't even need to look at their towers anymore to tell me the next addition sentence!  I also loved that they were able to tell me why they knew they were not missing any facts!

After they saw the visual pattern, they were able to see which facts they were still missing.

Learning the facts of 10 is so important!  Making it into a pattern is not only a good way to make sense of the facts, but this activity is also a good problem-solving activity because they have to take the random towers and organize them logically.  Then they have to verbally explain why their method will guarantee that they have not missed any of the facts.   Justifying their thinking is very important in all areas of learning, not just math!

Welcome!

Welcome parents and other guests to my First Grade blog!  I'm excited to use this communication tool to show you what is going on in my classroom.  Fellow teachers, feel free to use any of the ideas you see in your own classrooms.  I have tried my best to give credit to the person that I got the idea from, but that is not always possible.   Sometimes my posts will be about general information for the upcoming week.  Sometimes, they will be about specific areas or projects we are working on.  

     We work really hard in first grade at becoming good readers.  Each day we do a Daily 5!  This is basically an organization system for Guided Reading centers that was developed by Gail Boushey and Joan Moser.  The Daily 5 consist of Reading to Self, Reading to Someone, Listening to Reading, Working with Words, and Working on Writing.  These are the activities that the students do while I am working with a Guided Reading group.  Here are a few pictures of what they look like.  *I could write multiple posts about the Daily 5....this is a VERY brief overview to make you a little more familiar with the ideas.

In this photo, students are practicing Read to Self.  Each student has their own individual book boxes that they select books for each week.  We learn strategies for choosing books that interest them and are at an appropriate reading level that will make them successful with the book.

Students Work on Writing each day.  Typically on Monday they write a "news article" about what happened in their life over the weekend.  At this point, they need to write at least 3 sentences (including correct capitalization and punctuation) with an illustration.

Working with Words is just that...they have multiple experiences learning how the English language works, particularly spelling.  On Mondays, they practice their new spelling words using shape boxes.  I created these papers from Ed Helper.

If they are not in a Daily 5 center, they are participating in a Guided Reading lesson with me.  We practice their reading strategies using a book at a level that will present them with a "just right" challenge.  These books are considered their instructional level.