Living Museum fun!

Last week I posted about our Tall Tales Living Museum. I promised more pictures in my next post, so here they are! (If you missed the last post, you can find it here.)

The sign I had for our Museum. If you're a Georgia teacher, you know that Pecos Bill and Thunder Rose are not in our standard about tall tale heroes. I had to decide between having larger groups and adding in some extra tall tale people. I decided to go with extra people. Pecos Bill was an easy pick. Thunder Rose was a last minute decision. You are probably wondering who in the world Thunder Rose is because you've never heard of her, am I right?! I found the book in our school media center (you can see it here on Amazon) and thought it might work. Thunder Rose was a great addition because it was another female for our Living Museum.

Here are the kids' scripts, all typed up and laminated. They wrote their own text-I just helped them with conventions and getting it into the printer. 95% of the time we roll right along happily with invented spelling (as long as sight words are spelled correctly!), but for a project like this where multiple people need to be able to read the writing I do act as the "editor" alongside my writers.

Here is a pic of some of my groups hard at work practicing their scripts! My class this year consists of pretty great readers, so we were able to focus hard-core on prosody (reading with inflection).

The sweet little kiddoes in my Pecos Bill group really worked hard. Here is the poster they made:

 Their writing is so adorable! Here's the last little bit of their piece: "He fighted a half-gorilla. He squeezed all of the poison out of a snake." Check out their invented spelling-isn't it adorable?

 The day of the museum went off without a hitch. The cool thing was all of the first grade teachers were hosting their own Tall Tales museum so our students got to visit each class. They loved it! One teacher down the hall had a real beaver skin as the activator for her Davey Crockett group and that's ALL the students could talk about!

Our last little step in the process is to wrap up their individual pieces about their tall tale heroes. We are going to compile the pieces into a class book and then I will enhance the pages of the book with the app Aurasma. Aurasma allows you to attach a video to a print image. That means when students (or parents, or whomever) scans the pictures in the book with my i-Pad or i-Touch the videos will pop up on the device...they will get to see and hear the performances from the Living Museum as if they were there! Isn't that neat?

Next week I'll be going to LRA in Florida to present on the Living Museum. As if that weren't exciting enough, I just got an e-mail this week saying my colleagues' and my proposal for the International Literacy Association conference next summer got accepted! We will be presenting there again about the Living Museum. Looks like I need to start saving some money for an airplane ticket!

This week is all about some much-needed R&R. We went on a little mountain trip this past weekend and after the Thanksgiving festivites we will be celebrating Little Miss' 3rd birthday. I've also been working very hard on some things for my TpT shop. Yesterday I updated my Christmas Around the World set I made last year...

I added a souvenir suitcase to store all of the little readers from this book along with a world map and a passport stamp booklet: 

We will be using it when we get back from the break. I am super excited about incorporating some holiday fun into our ELA and Social Studies time!

Today I also uploaded some little readers I've been working on. They are holiday themed for the month of December...

I think all of them are cute, but the Rockin' Reindeer one is my favorite! I am going to use these for some easy-peasy sub work for when I'm out next week at LRA. I think these will be awesome Morning Work activities that the kids will enjoy and most importantly, can do independently! If you are interested click the picture to go to my TpT store!

That's it for tonight...now I need to make a grocery list for my pre-Thanksgivng shopping trip. Ugh. I am dreading going to the grocery store tomorrow...I'm going to have to reward myself with some coffee or something to make it through! Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

'Twas the week before Thanksgiving...

Can you believe we have a week before Thanksgiving break? I am so in awe of how this school year is FLYING by. I think a lot of it has to do with how genuinely happy I am this year-but it's still crazy! (Side note: Little Miss will be THREE soon-the day after Thanksgiving, as a matter of fact-and I don't know how that happened, either. Craziness!)

Next week will be pure madness in the classroom...the good kind. We are hosting a Living Museum next Thursday on our tall tale heroes. If you've never heard of a Living Museum before...well...don't feel bad, I hadn't either until about six months ago! For a Living Museum, you have the kids dress up as historical characters (or whatever-I mean, we're doing tall tales because that's one of our standards) and "come to life" as that person when the visitors come through the "museum." To prepare for the Living Museum, we've been doing a lot of research and writing over the past few weeks! To start the project, I hung half sheets of chart paper around the room with pictures of the tall tale heroes. (In case you're not savvy on the Georgia standard...we're supposed to learn about Davey Crockett, Annie Oakley, Paul Bunyan, John Henry, and Johnny Appleseed.  I added a couple of extras-Pecos Bill and Thunder Rose-so that my groups wouldn't get too big. I figure a little enrichment won't hurt!) The kids picked their tall tale hero knowing NOTHING about their person, which added to the fun!

Then the research began. I put out books about the people under the posters as well as simple passages from my good friend Bethany's Tall Tales unit. The kids read about their people and added facts on sticky notes to their poster. I walked around the room and provided extra support. (For example, for some groups I sat down with them and read their texts along with them. For other groups, we just chatted about what they learned and the facts that they put on their posters.) This past week we spent a lot of time crafting their scripts for the Museum...and I'm so impressed! They each have 5+ sentences about their tall tale hero. This weekend I'm going to laminate their final drafts for durability so next week they can practice with their groups during Read to Someone time.

Here's a couple of pictures I snapped...I need to take some more. Pecos Bill's group did an AMAZING job and have the cutest sentences...I'll try to remember to take some more pictures this week!

So much fun and what a great way to keep them actively engaged the week before a break. My friend Bethany and I (along with my favorite professor of all time at Georgia College) are going to present about the Living Museum at Literacy Research Association next month. We are so pumped! Just to give you an idea, we started working together LAST fall on informational writing and talked about how it would be amazing to present at LRA. Can't wait!

Aside from The Living Museum, next week I'm going to try to squeeze in some fun turkey time things around the madness. I did make another little reader for next week about Thanksgiving. It's a simple little book for some of my ELL kids who are going to experience their first Thanksgiving in America this year-isn't that awesome? Anyway, I posted the reader as a freebie in my TpT shop! I downloaded a bunch of other amazing Thanksgiving resources that other sellers are giving away as freebies so I thought I'd join in...you can find it here!

I will be back later this week with more pics from the Living Museum!

fall in first grade...and a freebie!

Don't be shocked...a blog update. :)

One of the things that I've had to adjust to in my new school is having a large population of English Language Learners. In my previous school, I had one student in five years that was bilingual (and he was truly bilingual). In my new school, more than a third of my class speaks another language in addition to English! It's really cool. However, for some of my students who are less proficient with English, I'm having to figure out ways to scaffold language for them so that they can access the curriculum as fully as possible. 

One of the things that I've been doing with a few of my kids is an interactive alphabet notebook. One of my newer students didn't attend kindergarten full-time last year and I have another student who is coming to us from a culture that uses a completely different alphabet. Plus, I have a few non ELL students who need some work with letter sounds and letter recognition. I bought this set from Color Me Kinder and we are loving it! The prep couldn't be easier and what I personally really like is that I get to introduce some vocabulary at the same time that the kids may not know. 

Another "ah-ha!" that I had was that for this particular group of students, providing them with familiar texts to read at home might be extra helpful for them. Our new reading series came with a set of vocabulary readers that I tried to use with these students, but what I'm finding is that the readers are not on their instructional level. So, I'm resorting to scavenging the Internet to find easy little readers that have appropriate vocabulary and controlled sight words to keep them from getting frustrated. This week I got extra crafty and made a little book for us to use during guided reading. I also included some vocabulary cards to use with them to preview and review the vocabulary words before we read. I uploaded it to my shop and it is free, so if you're interested head on over there and download! 

Tomorrow we're off for Veteran's Day but I'll be hard at work on a conference presentation! We are also up to grand things next week in first grade, but I'll save that for another blog post!

Back to School Potpourri

WARNING: Today's post has no real theme-it's a mish-mash of things from my classroom from the past couple of weeks!

So, the school year is underway! Today marked day 16. I stand by what I said in my last post-I have a class full of sweeties this year! I am up to 21 precious firsties and they are all SO smart. I've only made one cry so far, so that's something, too!

One of the first things we did this year was read Pete the Cat books. My favorite is Pete the Cat: Rocking in My School Shoes. (Funny side story: Little Miss loves ALL of the Pete books. Over the summer she discovered them and now knows them by heart...she has to take them all to bed with her now EVERY NIGHT. It's hysterical.) We did this adorable activity from The Bubbly Blonde . They came out so cute! We talked about the ways that we can "rock" this school year and then I gave them the sentence frame "I can rock first grade by..." Here is what the outside of my door looks like now, all decorated for our first PTO meeting next week:

I just love all the bright colors and the polka dots!

Next thing: math fun...we've been working on graphing. Most of our activies have originated from my graphing packet that is available on TpT, but I tried something a little different this year to introduce tallies. My group this year saw tallies in kindergarten, but I wasn't sure how comfortable they were with MAKING sets of tallies. In my experience what kids like to do is make a row of five parallel lines and THEN cross the fifth...sigh. So, this year I tried out the popsicle stick method that I have seen all over Pinterest. To put it concisely...WOW! Here are some pics of my little mathematicians in action:

Aren't they awesome? I just used a tally practice page freebie I found on TpT in Ms. Scmidt's shop. The kids paired up with a math buddy (because I didn't have enough sticks for everyone to have their own set) and traded off counting out popsicle sticks to match the number and arranging the set into groups of five with leftovers. It was a lot of fun and I was able to see pretty quickly who understood the concept (but had trouble making tallies), who understood the concept and could make tally marks correctly, and who didn't get the concept at all.

One last thing...today was Friday and my precious room mother sent in snacks for the kiddos. Here is the extra one she told me to bring home for Little Miss:

Isn't that precious?! And the snack featured animal crackers and gummy worms. (She put the giraffe on it because the kiddos are Mrs. Goggans' Giraffes...every class in the school has a banner with an alliterative name and that was the cutest thing I could come up with. There's not many cutesy animals for the letter "G," believe it or not! "Mrs. Goggans' Geckos" doesn't quite have the same ring, does it?! Haha!)

That's all for this week...next week we're going to dig deep into our weather standard and wrap up graphing before the LONG WEEKEND!

2014 Classroom Tour

Hello, little blog! It's been a long time! I warned you last summer that blogging would be pretty sporadic until grad school was over. Well, guess what?! I'm DONE with grad school! That feels so good to type. I had my exit interview last week and I passed (with honors!). I have to take the state assessment to add Reading to my teaching certificate, but I can officially say I have my M.Ed now. :)

So, since that year-and-a-half-long journey is over...I can now turn my attention to other things...like my blog! And TpT store! You can expect to see and hear a lot more from me now...

A few updates since I haven't blogged since DECEMBER (ugh). First of all...in addition to having a shiny new degree...I moved schools this year. It's a big change in neighborhoods and size, but I am in heaven. You guys...my new school is SO nice. It's a lot smaller than my old school, and everyone is just as helpful as can be. And the parents are amazing...PTO came by with cash envelopes for the teachers last week to purchase supplies. I feel like I've been transplanted to an alternative universe! I will still be teaching first grade, but I won't have inclusion this year and I am not the grade level chair. Whew! I'm not going to know what to do with all this free time!

Now for the fun part...my classroom tour! I had a great time decorating my new space.

This is the view of my board. Ignore my to-do list on the left hand side. We have to do a lunch count every morning at our school, so that's what the taped-off boxes in the middle are for. Eventually kids will move their magnets into their designated lunch choice as part of their morning routine.

The view from my guided reading table. I chose not to claim a teacher desk this year. There was an enormous one in the room when I arrived, but it was beat-up and took up a crazy amount of space. I don't know yet how I will like only having my teacher table, but we'll see!

The view of my Word Wall and the clocks from last year. I was sad to let my magnetic word wall go...it was pretty awesome...but I think I will like this set-up okay. Since the meeting area pretty much needed to be here in the classroom, I thought the benefit of having the Word Wall close by outweighed the nifty-ness of words on magnets.

 My entryway table...same baskets from last year, new spot. One box is for tardy slips, one for hall passes, one for notes from home, and a basket for nametags.

The back of my classroom library. One neat thing about this classroom is that has an adjoining door to the classroom next door. The teacher next door is also new to the building, so we LOVE that we can stick our heads in each other's room to ask questions! The teacher who had my room before me painted the back of this bookcase with magnetic paint. I like how it is arranged now, but I am considering flipping it around to use the backside for our CAFE strategies. I don't know...thoughts?

View of the sink and counter area. This was BEFORE the kids and their mountain of supplies arrived...now those blue baskets are full of sanitizer and the counter is covered in Kleenex and copy paper! (At this school, almost everybody brings in supplies. This is SUCH a change for me!)

The view from the door. I re-painted my rocking chair this summer to match my new color scheme. Well, to be completely honest...I SUPERVISED my husband painting this chair...which means I picked out the color and he volunteered to do it. He's a keeper!

 The classroom library. It's a work in progress. I have several hundred more books at home, but we are searching high and low for the shelf clips to hold those last 2 shelves. Turns out they are very hard to find! My custodian repurposed a few from an old bookshelf for more but we are still looking for a few more. I will probably have to get another piece of furniture for the rest of my books at some point. I'm thinking a long low shelf along the back side of the rug would be good. (That means a trip to IKEA, though!)

Here are my cute signs for Open House! Like the rest of the teaching universe I got them at Michael's (along with the bowls) and I found cutesy signs on Pinterest that I liked.

We had an awesome first day on Friday. (Yes, our district started CRAZY early this year!) I have 18 kids as of right now, which is such a change from the class of 27 I had last year. I hope that number doesn't increase too much! They are a sweet, sweet bunch. I am so excited about going back to work tomorrow! I hope all of you that are headed back this week have a great first week!

December Currently

My poor blog.  I have the best of intentions about updating it but...well...some things just take precedence when you're in grad school.  Once I am all graduated with this M.Ed maybe I can be a big girl blogger!

For now...December Currently is what's up!

1.) Self-explanatory.  Little Miss is still obsessed with Sesame Street and I don't see her Elmo/Abby fixation ending anytime soon.  I can't complain-I find Abby a lot less annoying than, say, Dora.  (Or Daniel Tiger from Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood...or Caillou...but I digress.)

2.) We had a great week last week.  I SO enjoyed being on break.  There was a lot of lounging around in pajamas, but also a lot of holiday efficiency-Little Miss' birthday fell on Thanksgiving this year which meant we jam-packed birthday fun right along with Turkey Day festivities.  She got a lot of presents from sweet family, but our favorite at the moment is the Disney Princess Klip-Klop stable.  It is SOO cute...the horses actually move themselves down the ramps of the stable.  Adorbs.

3.) Also self-explanatory.  Tomorrow morning is gonna be ROUGH.  I will need loads of coffee.  And plus also, I am dreading it just a teeny tinsy bit because one of my little pumpkins was suspended the week before break...tomorrow will be his first day back with us and I am not sure how that's going to go.  (It's not been a good year so far, guys.  This class is TOUGH and I'm saying that as the teacher who has had more than her fair share of tough groups.  That's a whole 'nother post, though.)

4.) I am so excited about the TpT Cyber Monday sale...and not just because my shop is on sale (what little there is in it-making stuff for the shop will be high on my priority list once I'm done with grad school, promise) but because I have picked out a whole bunch of stuff that I want.  I may just stay up until midnight and do my shopping then...craziness, right?

5.) Ugh, I don't wanna.  I have a clinical report and a research plan to submit this week...and I've already done one big assignment that's due tomorrow.  Most of the work is done, but I have to synthesize it all and make it sound good...blah.

6.) Christmas Eve is my FAVORITE.  We go to church and there's candelight communion.  Shopping is all finished, the presents are all wrapped, and the excitement is still to come..I love Christmas Eve!  After candelight service we usually come home, put on jammies, and then cook breakfast food for dinner before watching holiday movies and hanging out as a family.  

Fall is here! (graphing freebie)

Well hello, little blog, long time no see!  I'm not going to make excuses-real life is SOOO busy between the teaching and the grad school-ing and the mommying-I barely have time to breathe at the moment, much less sit down to type out a blog entry.  The last month has been nuts...but I think we're getting into a groove, slowly but surely.

And it's FALL!  Don't you love fall?  It's probably my favorite season now.  So much good stuff happens in the fall-The Fair...the pumpkin patch...football (GOOO, Dawgs!)...beautiful weather (buh-bye, 90 degree temps)...hoodies and sweaters...and towards the end, Thanksgiving and Little Miss' birthday!  (Which fall on the same day this year.  I'm totally going to take the easy way out and just stick some birthday cake on the dessert table at Thanksgiving-no separate parties here.)  Oh-and a BEAUTIFUL little thing called Fall Break.  We get ours next week and I am so excited.  This is the first year our district has given us an actual Fall Break (versus a three-day weekend for the kids and a teacher work day for the grown-ups).  We are going to the beach for a few days.  I can't wait to see how Little Miss reacts to the ocean and the sand!  We haven't been since last summer and she was so little then she basically slept under the beach umbrella the whole time...I have a feeling that this trip will be a little more action-packed.

I do have a fall freebie for you guys.  Now, the idea is NOT mine, mkay?  I actually saw this over at Mrs. Plant's Kindergarten...go see how she graphed candy corn with her kids last year!  (And while you're there ooh and ahh over the Spookly pumpkins-Spookly is one of my FAVORITES!  I will be using him after Fall Break when we go into our shapes unit!)  I was all set to use her adorable little graphing sheet, but then we ran into a little problemo...my grocery store doesn't have green apple candy corn this year.  Man!  So I grabbed several bags of the generic autumn harvest mix and whipped up my own little graphing sheet.  It's a tad bit more first-grade oriented...I ask them to "Analyze their data" by writing some sentences for me.  They are getting so good at it!  This will be one of my math stations this week at the teachers' tables.  (And to differentiate, don't worry, I will give some of my little kiddos who need extra support sentence frames to help them with the analyze part.)  Click the pic to download!

And I'll wrap up with a little funny from first grade!  We did our big Johnny Appleseed stuff last week...all of the classic stuff: taste testing apples, graphing our results, reading books about Johnny, filling out a character web, and then some All About writing...(I am obsessed with writing across the curriculum right now, it is a Hot Topic in my grad classes).  Well, one of my little friends and I were conferencing over his All About Johnny Appleseed piece and he was doing an AMAZING job.  I was helping him stretch out some words and one of his friends from the table next to him was eavesdropping on our conference...and she started to tell my conferencing kiddo what the letters were.  He told her, "Hush!  My brain can tell me, I don't need you!"

I mean, what can you say to that?