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.