Emergency Sub Plans - BATS!!!

Emergency Sub Plans (or last week of school plans!!!).  All about BATS!  My littles have LOVED this set!  So much fun exploring bats, learning new vocabulary, reading, writing, and practicing their math skills! 

Also included is a list of art discovery links!

There are at least 3 hours of instructional material included in this pack!  We spent all week with BATS a couple of weeks ago, just using this material to fill in the gaps between long recesses, activities, parties, assemblies, etc.

You can find this great little set HERE.

[waves hi...]

What a roller coaster this year has been.

Feeling like I'm getting my "teacher legs" under me a bit again.

Still have moments where I get knocked flat with sadness, but those moments are gradually being replaced by the memories of the 12 1/2 years we had with Kenton.

I've been working (s.l.o.w.l.y) through my to do list...it's LONG.

I have "create a year long writing plan" as one of my goals this year.

Sigh. Yeah, need to get to work on that one.

Soon.

This month we've been learning how to take notes while listening, viewing, or reading, and how to organize those notes onto a graphic organizer (mostly tree maps or spider graphs), and then take those notes and move them into sentences and into a cohesive paragraph.  This week is the big test to see if my littles are understanding.  They have been given a non-fiction passage, a graphic organizer, and will have this week to create a paragraph. 

{shudder}

This could get really interesting really fast.

There are some great SHORT first grade non-fiction passages here: http://www.freereading.net/index.php?title=Decodable_passages

They're free (BONUS!) and they have about 80 words and come in several formats.

Helpful if you're needing to increase your littles' non-fiction reading selection on a budget.  ;)

One of my other goals this year is to better utilize the time I have scheduled for rotations (aka centers).  One part of my goal is to equally divide the time between math and literacy.  I do great with math, not so great with literacy.  I'm working on it...

If you teach Saxon Phonics and Spelling, here's a fun and free little UNO type game for Spelling List 16. 

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/68803494/Spelling/UNO.pdf

Sometimes I have my littles write the words they have in their stack after they finish.  What I've found is that recognition of the word, being able to know what it is and read it, helps so much with their ability to spell it.

Yeah, I'm slow.  I know.  LOL.

Graphics are from the one and only incredibly talented Dustin Pike.  Stop by and see what he has in his shop.  Seriously the cutest stuff.

And now, I have 45 minutes of silence here in my classroom while McKayslin is at Paige's house and Luke is home doing dishes and folding laundry (yes, I'm spoiled!).

Time to work on items 1, 2, 3, and maybe 4 of a bazillion things on my to do list.

Have a great week!

And, seriously, thanks for sticking with me through the past 8 1/2 months.

Seriously.

It means a lot.

[Just WRITE Wednesday]

Writing has become a HUGE focus at our school.

Truthfully, I am LOVING that we are being encouraged to have our littles write more.

They need to be writing every day.

Every piece of writing won't be edited nor will it be published.

Some will.

Most won't.

And I'm (starting to be) okay with that.

 

Some pieces will be publishing pieces.

And some littles want need to KNOW how to spell the words they're writing.

This morning, my brain was thinking of a page that could be used for those few littles that are really REALLY concerned about permanent spelling, and for those pieces that will turn into published pieces.

 

This is what I came up with.

 

Image is linked to the free download.

Have a just "write" Wednesday!

[Emergency Sub Plans] [CureSearch]

A giant thanks heading out to those of you that have purchased items from my Teacher's Notebook shop over the past week!

Our family sincerely appreciates your support!

 

Today's item took a LOT longer than I had planned for it to take.

However, the finished product is exactly what I'd hoped!

 

There have been a few times in my career that I've seriously been too ill to go to school to make detailed sub plans.

I've sent e-mails to my colleagues asking them to print off my plans and copies and get everything ready for me.

They willingly ablige, but I feel guilty for the entire day (and most of the next week) knowing that I added stress to their morning.

 

And now, with everything that's going on with Kenton, I've felt for a while that I needed to have something that was sub ready just in case.

 

Introducing my first set of EMERGENCY SUB PLANS!  :)

 

This set is focused around the book My Friend is Sad, and Elephant and Piggie book by
Mo Willems.

 

  Emergency Sub Plans feature activities in math, fact discovery and recording, writing (with a rubric!), spelling, reading comprehension, and PE.

22 pages that you just need to print off, make copies for your class, purchase the book, and BAM! Sub Plans for the day ready to go.

$5.00 at Teacher's Notebook.

On sale at a 25% discount through November 15.

 

My heartfelt gratitude goes out to Steve and Debbie at Teacher's Notebook, who in their own time of need dealing with Superstorm Sandy, generously offered to match all purchases made in my shop with a donation to CureSearch in Kenton's name.

 

THANK YOU for sticking with me and my sporadic postings.

I'd promise to do better, but well, that's just a promise I am not able to make.

I'll be here when I can with new and fun stuff.

Have a great Friday and a fantastic weekend!!

[Teacher's Notebook Shop] Update

I just posted a couple of new things in the shop.

 

First up, October Daily Review.

15 full pages of review.

Sentence Editing and Math.

Perfect for this time of year as a whole class teaching experience in first grade or a review/self-start experience is second grade.

 

$3.

15 pages.

 

 

The other thing that is now posted is the Research Writing Pack.

It's good stuff.

I've used it for 2 full weeks in my class now as a whole class writing experience and the kids are LOVING this type of writing.

 

I'll share with you in a few days the best way I've found to start this project.  :)

$3.

10 pages.

 

Thanks for shopping My Little Classity Class.



[Writing Adventures] Research_or_Informational Writing

I have to admit, I'm getting a little excited about this whole writing aspect again.

I used to LOVE to teach writing in first grade.

Not sure what happened, but then I just didn't anymore.  :(

But. . .with this as my teaching goal this year, I'm finding ways to do what we are required to do in a way that works well and I LOVE.

Isn't it amazing what you can do when you decide to stop whining and just get to work?!  ;)

One of our required writing pieces is a research or informational piece.

Uuuggghh.

LOL.

I've seen about a bazillion and one of these little tree map guys floating around blog world.

I seriously love the idea of using a tree map to organize writing with kids.

It.just.makes.sense.

But. . .(there's always a but with me, you know that by now, right?!). . .

what I've seen just.didn't.quite.fit.what.I.wanted.

You know what that means.

I made my own.

Now there are a bazillion and two of these little tree map guys floating around blog world.

What's different about my tree map?

Maybe nothing.

A few things compared to the ones I've seen. . .

* Handwriting lines (critical in first grade - especially the first half of first grade!)

* Topic sentence (remember how first graders get distracted?!  They're all. . ."A car is a vehicle. . .squirrel!" and while that's awesome in conversation, it's kind of less than awesome in writing - having a topic sentence written will {hopefully} help actually keep them ON TOPIC!!)

* Concluding sentence (again with the squirrel. . .)

I plan to introduce this as soon as we finish our narrative story about the first day of school (one page a day, there will be 8 pages plus the introduction and conclusion - we've currently written through day 2).  We're going to write a biography.

So. . .if you can use this bazillion and second little tree map guy, enjoy.

If not, well, that's okay, too.

Just have to say that I'm LOVING my littles this year.

(I know - I say that every year, but I always mean it!!) 

Yesterday was an awesome day!

Everyone stayed on ready or was able to move up on the behavior chart.

Everyone.

The whole day was full of hand raising, commenting, questioning, working together, listening, direction following.

Our balloon popper activity was FREE TIME.

And they rocked the heck out of it.

No arguments.

Played nicely.

Cleaned up perfectly.

Were really quiet.

It.was.awesome.

It's Thursday.

One more sleep till we get to go see our boys.

:)

Have a great rest of the week!

[Writing Adventures]

We're currently on day 3 of our narrative writing adventure in our classroom.

We're writing about the first day of school.

Taking it day by day makes it a LOT easier to get a finished product, but it sure is a long, drawn-out, crazy process!

Here's the link to my Narrative Writing pack on Teacher's Notebook.

It's a good, solid, research based writing pack.

My favorite part is that it helps my littles get some really good word choice in their stories - especially after we do a few narrative writing adventures as a whole class before I turn them loose (and I use that term very very lightly, lol) to write on their own.

Last night I was doing a little bit of searching to find some other stuff to add to my Writing Binder and came upon this: The How of Writing: First-Graders Learn Craft from the National Writing Project.

I.Can't.Wait to do this with my littles!

What a fun little group I have this year.  They have awesome personalities and so much energy!  They're getting into a good routine and learning to follow our class rules.

One of my cute moms knew yesterday would be a tough day for me and brought me the cutest survival kit.  Why, yes, that is an ice cold diet coke tied up all fancy like with a Hershey bar.  :)

We had our Room Parent Tea yesterday.

I have over half of my moms signed up to help with parties and such.  :)

Yay for awesome helpers!

We get to start Learning Stations on Monday - I finally got that schedule put together.

Super excited about that!

Kenton started radiation therapy yesterday.  Twice a day for 4 days.

Round 1 went well.

Round 2?  Not so much.  Made him sick.

He threw up a couple of times and has a really sore jaw.

We girls are missing our boys and counting the sleeps till we see them again.

Sure do LOVE LOVE LOVE these two little monsters of mine!

Thank you for keeping our family in your prayers and for following my little bloggity blog.

Happy Wednesday!

Have a great day!

[Writing Ideas] Student Resource Pages

This pack of writing resource pages are perfect for your kiddos!

The "Brain Ticklers" page gives your kiddos 20 quick writing ideas.

The "names" pages and "school words" page will save you TONS of time and lots less of the "Teacher, teacher!!  How do you spell. . .?!"

My littles have a writing resource folder.

It has all of these pages, an alphabet resource page, and a blends page.

The student resources sheets are linked to the image.

Let me know if they're helpful.

Remember - Tuesday I'll be posting over at Latter-Day Crafters!

See you back here on Wednesday!

Have a great week!!

[Writing Block Organization]

I found this sheet in my files.

No idea where it came from originally (I'm thinking perhaps my principal. . .)

I modified it to fit what my needs are (and my organizational style).

I'll be using this during the year to plan out my writing projects for my class.

Writing is our school wide goal as well as one of my personal goals.

I really REALLY need to be better about planning and carrying through with my plan so my students may become proficient writers.

If you need an organization plan for your writing block - the image is linked - give it a try.

Have a great weekend!

See you Monday with some other fun writing stuff.  :)

[The First TEN days] Daily Review

I LOVED using these Daily Review sheets in my classroom at the end of the year last year.

My hope is that by introducing them at the beginning of the year (aka TODAY!!!), my students will become familiar and comfortable enough with the format to take some risks when the problem solving problems become more challenging as the year goes on. . .

These sets take A LOT of time to create.

Each sheet has to have the same format but different problems/questions.

Love them?
The FULL set of TEN SHEETS is only $3 at Teacher's Notebook.

I'd LOVE to see my "follower" number hit 350. . .bring some new friends by, and IF I hit 350 today, I'll set up a FREE download hour or two for this item only.  :)

[the final countdown] and an editing freebie

I didn't mean to disappear.

Just no time to blog.

It's May.

You get that.  :)

However, since I currently have a certain child who is unable to go to recess or be left alone in the classroom, I can blog now.  Sigh.

Aunt Bobbie will have 3 months of chemo and then surgery.

The fluid in her stomach contains ovarian cancer cells.

She had a port put in for chemo and feeding and a pacemaker to regulate her heart.

She's optimistic and was giving the doctors crap about making her room dirty.

Thanks so much for your prayers and kind thoughts!!

We're down to the wire here at school.

4 hours 10 minutes left today (they're currently at recess, so subtract time for that, we have lunch, so subtract time for that, we have music, so subtract time for that, and afternoon recess - subtract time there, too).

2 hours 50 minutes tomorrow.

And then they're off.

I'm really feeling more sad than happy.

I have some a.dor.a.ble littles this year!

We did meet the teacher yesterday - oh my cuteness coming to me in the fall!

It's going to be AWESOME!

Finishing up the writing binder thing (to answer Storie's question - I print the cover/spine on 12x12 but it's sized to be cut down to fit the binder).  Needed another editing rubric.

Found these super funny faces in the Microsoft ScreenBeans Gallery and couldn't resist using them.  My absolute favorite is the little guy on the "word choice" spot.  The yawning one.  LOL.  Think they'll get the clue?!

Image is linked.

Have a great day!

[Ideas] It's one of those writing trait thingies

Remember a few posts back. . .the one with the cute binder covers?

The one where I talked about our year long adventure in creating a writing resource binder?

Yep, that one.  :)

I have been exploring blog-world for things to add to my little resource binder and found this incredible idea from Connie at Welcome To First Grade Room 5.

Seriously a brilliant idea!

I wish I would have done this earlier in the year.

But I'm not that smart.

We did it yesterday.

My kids were super excited to have a "list" of writing ideas!

They worked on their own pages as I completed one on the projection system.

I'll have to take some pictures to add.  Adorable!

It was then time for our last writing assessment of the year.

Complete silence as they worked for over 30 minutes writing/illustrating.

Oh, if Connie lived by me, I'd be taking her a giant bag of M&M's as a thank you!

(That silence and hard work was exactly what this frazzled teacher was needing!!).

And the stories?!

Oh.My.Awesome.

Looking for an idea sheet to help your writers?

You need to stop over and visit Connie first - leave her a little comment love, and then stop by my Facebook page for the link to pick up today's Facebook Friday Freebie.

Oh, and it's FREE LISTING FRIDAY on Latter-Day Crafters!

Interested in selling your handcrafted items or teacher created materials?

Stop over and check it out!  Today you can list 5 items with NO LISTING FEE!!!

Have a great day!

[Writing Portfolio Samples] a year long gathering

As we're approaching the end of the year, I'm really wishing I'd done something like this for this year's class.  I recently pulled out some papers from the first of the year and was shocked by the improvement in their handwriting, spelling, and drawing skill!

Use one set of pages on the first school day of each month in the 2012-2013 school year, keep them in sheet protectors in a binder with other portfolio type projects/assessments, and at the end of the year, you'll have documented your students' growth with very little effort.  Image is linked to the 23 page PDF download.

We are lucky enough at our school to have Meet the Teacher Day in May every year where we get to meet our new littles.  That's why there is a Meet the Teacher Day/May 2012 sheet there.  :)

I seriously can't wait to start these!

Happy Monday!
Have a great week!

I'm hoping to survive the day.  Do you see the posting time of 3:20 am?!  Sigh.  I fell asleep on the couch Sunday afternoon and slept for almost an hour.  I'm not a napper.  Consequently, I'm wide awake at 3:20 am.  I've been up working on stuff for school since about 1:12.  So not cool.

[super fast post, a freebie, and a deadline]

I'm up against a super tight deadline this morning to get a district assessment rewritten along with a set of model drawing pages finished up before 9 am.

Procrastination?  Why, yes, I am very well acquainted with procrastination.

Anyway. . .came up with this little peer editing checklist yesterday - I know there are 8 bazillion of them out there in blog-land, but I didn't want to search them out.

Laziness?  Why, yes, in fact, I'm very well acquainted with that, too.

If you can use this, the image is linked to the pdf file.  There are 2 on a page.  It worked really really well with my class yesterday (we've done very little peer editing).  I had them focus on one checklist item at a time.  They were remarkably accurate in their observations.  And kind of shocked that when they assured me they had, indeed, done everything on that list to their own papers, when they looked over the editing checklist and their papers again, they saw that they, indeed, had not.  Ha!  Score one for the mean old teacher.  ;)

Now, I really must get to work on that assessment.

Really.

Right after I get the boy off to school, lunches packed for Little Miss and I, the puppy taken potty, and breakfast fixed and eaten.

Maybe breakfast will be toast and chocolate milk for Little Miss and a granola bar while I work for me. . .

Later 'gators!

[Painting a Picture with Words] sentence writing activity

Well. . .good morning!

It's a cold and rainy morning here in Utah.

Not exactly the gorgeous spring weather I was hoping for, lol, but we'll survive.

Jenny asked how I created the bubbles on the Brain Busters Challenge sheets.

Simple unicode.  If you click here, you'll be whisked away to Alan Wood's Enclosed AlphaNumerics Unicode cheat sheet page.  Then you can make bubbled letters, too!  :)

It's been an interesting week in my classroom.

My littles haven't been naughty, nor have they been really good.

It's been some weird strange combination of the two.

I know.  I don't get it either.

I rearranged desks yesterday.

That helped.

But. . .today is cold and rainy.

Ha!  Interesting indeed.

We've been working a lot on writing at our school.

Starting with the whole writing process, the 6+1 traits, writing plans, types of writing, forms of writing, handwriting, and expanding sentences.

Expanding sentences.

Sounds like fun.

No?

Yeah, I know.  I was having a hard time making it exciting in my classroom, too.

This week we've been doing one of these little activities each day.

On Monday I had every student complete the drawing and simple sentence part.

Tuesday and Wednesday we completed a page and displayed them in the hall.

The best part is, I KNOW they're starting to understand because when we're reading a book, they say, "That sentence needs a WHEN!" (or a WHERE/HOW/WHY/WHAT/WHO!).

Makes me smile.

(Although I really wish they wouldn't just blurt it out, lol).

I have seen some improvement in their journaling also - sentences are becoming longer and more interesting, more thought is going into each sentence.

Yep.  Makes me smile.

Anyway. . .(I'm rambling)(I'm tired)(My fingers are frozen from taking puppy out to go potty). . .the image is linked to the pdf download which includes the instructions and the work page.

You can say thanks and warm my little grinch heart if you feel like it.  ;)

Some have been having issues downloading the handwriting lines if they have a mac.

Not sure why.

So. . .I didn't use a handwriting font.

I just used lines and a dashed line - although the dashed line didn't look too dashed in the pdf file.  I did make it grey instead of black, so it will copy a little lighter.

If you have a mac and have had trouble, please let me know if this format works better - if the lines actually show up when you print.  Thanks!

[Narrative Writing] NOW on Teacher's Notebook

Our PD last Monday was in.cred.i.ble.

Absolutely amazing!

I LOVED all of the ideas that were shared and have been busily working to figure out how to bring those ideas into my classroom!

Writing with first graders is tough.

Let me rephrase - GOOD writing with first graders is tough!

As my principal reminded us on Friday during faculty meeting, "Practice doesn't make perfect.  Practice makes permanent.  So be very careful what you're having your kids practice!!"  I'm so guilty of just saying, "Take out your journals and write."  That's not necessarily the bad part.  It's the fact that I never look at their journal writing.  We don't talk about it.  We don't edit it.  We don't do anything else.

You know as well as I do how frustrating the whole writing process (when done the right way!) can be with a whole class of littles.

I need to be better about the I DO, I DO, I DO, WE DO, WE DO, WE DO, YOU DO thing.

Mucho modeling.  Lots of shared writing experience.  All of that before I turn them loose to write.  Sigh.  It's not pretty.  It's not fun.  It is necessary.

In order to better facilitate just exactly the what and the how of this in my classroom, I spent the afternoon coming up with a plan.  A plan with LOTS of organization.  LOTS of steps.  This IS going to work.  Right?!

Anyone else in the same boat?  Or are you a rock star that can get awesome writing out of your kids every.single.time?  If so, can I come to your room and hang out for a while to soak in your awesomeness?  Pretty please?

If you are in the same boat.  Maybe give this a shot.  See if it works.  It's based on proven practices.  It meets the first grade core for writing narratives.  It should make the whole process easier (provided that mucho modeling and lots of shared writing happens FIRST!).

Image is linked to the whole stinkin' download.

The procedure page.

The planning/pre-writing page.

The developing the sentences pages.

The publishing page.

The title page.

The About the Author page.

It's a lot.

It took me for.e.ver.

Thanks to everyone who downloaded this freebie!  With so many downloads, I hope this is helpful to many teachers and students!  This free offer has expired.  If you would like to access this file, it's only $2 at Teacher's Notebook!

Have a great day!

[Chickity Chick Brainiac Pack] 20 page kit and a freebie

Looking for some early bird work? Or maybe some fast finisher work? Or maybe some whole class review pages that cover a bunch of first grade common core topics all at the same time?

This Chickity Chick Brainiac Pack does just that! 20 pages of concept review covers core areas in math and language arts. Each week the math concept changes. Your kiddos will be reviewing sentence editing, comprehension, spelling, number bonds, counting by 2, counting on and back by 10, comparing 2 two digit numbers, and adding 3 digits.

I can't wait to practice with Chickity Chick for the next 4 weeks.  :)

You can purchase the entire pack (20 pages!) on Teacher's Notebook for only $5!

Seriously a heck of a good deal!

Combine the preview below with all of the previews on TN and you'll see each week's work.

Here's the LINK for the Teacher's Notebook whole Chickity Chick Brainiac Pack.

Not sure how this will work for you?

Here's a freebie sample. . .clip art is Alice Smith for DigiWebStudio.

Have a great weekend!

[writing picture prompt pages]

Sometimes when my littles are stuck for a writing idea, or need a break from the day-to-day super structured common core writing, or when I have a sub, I break out the writing pages that have a picture prompt and let them just go to town writing a story.  Spelling can be temporary.  The story can be fact or fiction.  It's just a really fun way to let them explore their own writing world.  In fact, some of their best to publish ideas come as a spin-off of these picture prompt pages.

Missing 3 days of school this week, my class has had 3 different picture prompt pages, 2 that I can share, and 1 that I can't because of copyright restrictions.  The PDF files have one full sheet of writing lines to run on the backside of the picture prompt, leaving room for a title, the author's name, and plenty of writing space.

The first features the super cute Mr. Smarty Pants from Mr. Bubblegum.

I can't wait to read what they come up with for this one!

The other features part of the Charlotte's Web set from MelonHeadz.

Both images are linked.

If you think your class would enjoy working with these pages, please take them, leave a little thank you, and let me know how they turn out.

Off to snuggle my little miss some more.

This cough is just rattling in her chest and she hurts so bad.

I love the time we get to spend together.

I just wish she felt better!

[publishing page] edited with the link to the file

We're encouraged to take our kiddos clear through every step of writing to the publishing stage.  Publishing in 1st grade looks very different for every teacher.  In an effort to align my efforts more with the expectations of my administrator (and to make it so I'm not wanting to tear my hair out by the handful!), I've adapted an idea from my colleague (thanks, Dana!) and made this into a full page publishing page.
Ummm, yeah, NOW the image is linked to the download.
Sigh.  Told you it was a long week! 

My kiddos will NOT be allowed to write on this page until they have moved all spelling from temporary to permanent and edited for clarity and conventions.  THEN they can publish ONE or TWO sentences per page.  No illustrations until I have okayed the writing.  Hopefully at the end, we'll have a story that they're proud of, I'm proud of, and something that meets the expectations given.  Hopefully.

I've been using THESE AWESOME WRITING PLAN SHEETS from First Grade Shenanigans to help my firsties get from the planning stage to the writing stage and now into the publishing stage.  You'd be doing yourself a favor if you checked them out!  They make sooooo much sense for first graders!

And now, it's Friday! 

What a week this has been.

[genuine writing] Snowman Poems

I saw this idea over at Mrs. Jackson's Art Room (scroll down to March 26, 2011). . .

. . .and loved it so very much!

We're working on direction following and detailed drawing, so this fit in perfectly!

After our snowmen pictures were complete, we used this poem form (there are 2 poem forms per page) to create our snowmen poems.

With this poem form, the first line is a color word, the 2nd line is the noun, the 3rd line is an ing verb, and the last line completes the poem with a sentence about the noun ending with an adjective.

Word Choice was a big deal for the verb and adjective portions of the poem, giving each student a semi-original (is that like semi-homemade?! lol) poem to display with his/her snowman art piece.
A couple of my favorite poems. . .
White
Snowman
Giggling
My snowman is sparkly!

White
Snowman
Melting
My snowman is grumpy!

My kiddos LOVED this activity!  It was a quick, fun, meaningful activity that will look awesome displayed in our hallway.

Happy Writing!