It's a New School Year!

      Well the first 3 weeks of school have certainly flown by in a hurry!  I am starting my second year teaching first grade kiddos at APS and I am feeling more confident about my teaching strategies than I was a year ago.  However, I am still learning new things everyday... especially with the new Common Core Curriculum, our new reading series-- Journeys, using data notebooks with the kidlets, and even just getting the hang of using an iPad for my mClass/Dibels assessments.  It's a lot to take in, but I am just trying to take it one step at a time.  

     I have a new full time (YAY!) assistant this year.  I am going to miss Mrs. Jackson (she is next door though :)), but my new TA is super awesome.  Mrs. Crews has already given me lots and lots of great ideas... she has helped add some really cute things to my classroom already.  We both love Pinterest, so lots of our crafty ideas have been inspired by things we have seen from there.  Here are a few new pictures of my classroom:  

First Day of School!  Polka dotted to match my classroom :) 

My desk... it's always a bit messy! 

My TA's desk.  Too cute, right? 

Front of the classroom.. not too much has changed here.  I still love my zebra print rug!

Calendar area-- I really beefed up the math portion of calendar.  The kids seem to be understanding hard concepts better since I model it everyday.  

Tissue paper flower decorations on my cabinets... Mrs. Crew made these for me.  I saw the idea on Pinterest and I was sold.  She did a great job! 

This is where my students can keep their "Tiger Stripes."  Students earn Tiger Stripes for making good choices, doing homework, being respectful, etc. They can spend their Tiger Stripes at our Prize Box on Friday if they have at least 30. I bought the black popcorn containers from Oriental Trading for like $6 and they work perfectly for storage.

Our new behavior chart... another Pinterest idea :)  I love that the kiddos can "clip up" for being awesome & that they have the option to make better choices after making a bad one before the day is over.  Everyone makes mistakes... this teaches them that it's OK, but you have to keep trying so that it doesn't happen again.

I create centers based on the 5 Domain of Literacy.  

I put another Compliment Chain up for the kiddos.  We already have 8 links on the chain! (this is an old picture)  We are 1/2 way to a class treat! 

APS is now a "Lighthouse" School, which means we will be really focusing on implementing the 7 Healthy Habits by Sean Covey into our instruction.  This is the 7 Habits Tree that outlines the Habits.  For more info go to theleaderinme.org

      My new class of "smart cookies" has been really fun to get to know so far.  I am teaching an ELL cluster this year, so hopefully by the end of the year I will have learned a few Spanish and maybe a couple Chinese words from my students!  I am pretty amazed at how awesome my class is at math.  The new Common Core has really upped the math skills for first grade, but my kiddos have done an outstanding job so far.  They are drawing tally marks, using tens and ones, and making fact families like pros!  They actually cheer when I put the Problem of the Day on the SmartBoard!  Too cool :)  

      We have done some cute things over the past couple of weeks.  We read First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg and made "Jitter Juice" on the first day of school to help get rid of the butterflies.  "Jitter Juice" is just a concoction of Sprite Zero and Hawaiian Punch, but the kids were totally into it and thought it actually worked.  We read another one of my favorite books on Day 2--- The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn.  After the kids wrote about what they wanted to learn in school and created a Chester Raccoon craft, I had them close their eyes and hold out their hand so that I could give them a "kiss."  Some of my boys turned bright red!  I gave them all a hershey kiss, which they loved!    

My kiddos finishing eating the hershey kisses :)

The Kissing Hand writing activity and Chester Raccoon craft 

We created a "Recipe for a Great School Year" as a shared writing activity.  The kids also made Cookie Glyphs that are a part of this display... I didn't get a picture though! 

Every class at APS has a mission statement.  We wrote ours as a class and then I had the kiddos make thumbprints on the paper, which I turned into chocolate chip cookies, and then sign their names using my pretty fine point sharpies.  They loooove using my colorful pens.  

Well that is all I am going to write for now.  That is why I need to update regularly, and not wait 3 weeks!  

Valentine's Day and More

Well another week has quickly come and gone in first grade.  My kiddos are only 70 days from becoming second graders!  This past week we celebrated Valentine's Day in our classroom by having a Parent Breakfast on Tuesday.  I invited parents into our classroom so that they could take a minute out of their hectic schedules to sit down and enjoy some pastries and juice with their child.  I kindly asked parents to not bring any siblings so that they could really spend some quality one on one time with their first grader.  We had a really great turn out!  I had the students create Valentine's Day cards to present to their parents at the breakfast.  They turned out really cute!  I forgot to get a picture of a student's card, so I took a photo of the sample card I made.  Check it out below:

The students made their bunny using their thumbs and white acrylic paint.  I had them write sweet messages on the inside of the card and then the students presented their parent/guardian with the card at our Parent Breakfast on Valentine's Day.

Valentine's Day is such a fun holiday to celebrate with the students because all of the arts and crafts projects are just so darn cute!  The kids get excited about all the candy and passing out cards to their classmates, and any occasion to wear pink, red, and purple as well as receive beautiful flowers is OK by me :)

A beautiful Valentine's Day flower arrangement that my Mom sent to me at school.  The polka dots fit my classroom decor perfectly :)  Thanks Mom!  

In order to tie in some writing, we created a LOVE acrostic poem (similar to the SNOW one we did a couple of weeks ago).  The kids were familiar with the idea of an acrostic poem and so they were able to come up with some really great ideas!  I rewarded their creativity by breaking out the glitter to decorate the poems.  Don't get me wrong, I love glitter... but often times more glitter winds up on the floor or on the tables than on the craft at hand.  The mess wasn't too bad this time... :)

Koury's acrostic poem:
Like nothing else.
Of your heart.
Very beautiful.
Extraordinary.

Christian's acrostic poem:
Love is in your heart.
Oh, I love you very much!
Valentine's Day is special.
Everything about love is wonderful.

Meanwhile, besides celebrating Valentine's Day we also have been learning about the life cycle of a butterfly.  I love teaching plant and animal life cycles to the kiddos.  I think it is a really interesting topic and the students are so engaged in the material that it makes lesson planning fun.  In order to review all of the information we learned about butterflies and caterpillars throughout the week, I had the students create and label their own butterfly life cycle wheel.  The kids were into it because they got to use pipe cleaners, tissue paper, markers, and glue... and I loved it because my kiddos were fluently using words like "chrysalis" and "metamorphosis."  They did a fantastic job!

My work sample.
1. Egg
2. Caterpillar
3. Chrysalis
4. Butterfly

Student Work Sample # 1

Student Work Sample # 2

This week in first grade we are going to be spending some time reading about and taking an in depth look at Black History.  It should be a very interesting and fun week!

Love,
Mrs. Cook  

Happy (Belated) 100th Day!

Well, the 100th Day was actually this past Friday... but I am just now posting so that I could include a few pictures of some projects that my kiddos created to celebrate the number 100.  I don't remember celebrating the 100th Day when I was in primary/elementary school... but things were much simpler then.  I am pretty sure I spent most of my day coloring in first grade rather than learning about punctuation, subtraction, and how to draw conclusions from text.

In honor of this special day, all of the first grade classes at APS held a 100th Day Project Fair.  Children submitted homemade projects to represent the number 100 any way that they wanted.  I did not give a lot of instructions because I wanted to see what sorts of creative ideas they could come up with.  The projects were judged by other teachers and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes were given for the following categories:  Most Colorful, Most Creative, Most Patriotic, Best to Eat, and Best to Wear.  I wish I had gotten more pictures, but here are a couple of entries from my classroom:

Briana spray painted 100 soda tabs and macaroni noodles to create this unique project.  I love it! 

Our newest student, Christian, did an awesome job with his super colorful creation. 

The kids had a lot of fun presenting their projects to the class and I was so impressed with how many students participated in the fair.  Way to go kiddos!  

Another fun activity we did was to write about what each student would buy if I gave them $100.  First, we had to discuss how much $100 really is... some students thought it would be enough to buy a car or a house.  Sadly, I had to burst their bubble.  To put it into perspective for them, I created a presentation of items that would be equal to $100.  These are a few examples I used:  students could buy 4 new Nintendo DS games, 2 new pairs of Nike sneakers, about 30 Happy Meals from McDonalds, or go to the movies 20 times (not including popcorn, soda, or candy).  Some of the students came up with some great ideas of how to spend their $100.  

"If I had $100, I would buy a make up box and it makes you very cute like Mrs. Cook because she is so very cute and I love her" - Jada
This was too sweet not to share!  

"If I had $100, I would buy a tire swing and a princess gown." -Tamar
This one cracked me up... I love how original these kiddos are!

Last week we also learned about how plants grow and change as a part of our literacy unit.  To demonstrate what they learned, I had the students to create their own plant diagram and label the different parts of a plant.  We used common materials to create our flowering plant: coffee filter for the flower, sunflower seeds for the seeds, a straw for the stem, construction paper for the soil and leaves, twine for the roots, and sponges to remind the students that roots soak up water from the ground.  This is an idea that I borrowed from another first grade teacher in Moore County :)  I think they turned out wonderfully!

Well, that will do it for this post.  Have a great evening!  

Love, 

Mrs. Cook 

January Flew By!

Hi Everyone!

Ever since we got back from Christmas break, school has been such a blur!  The first couple of weeks back were absolutely exhausting... the kids were still in vacation mode and we had to really review our routines and procedures.  It's like they completely forgot how to walk in a straight line, raise their hands when they want to speak, and sit criss cross on the rug.  Fortunately, we got back into the swing of things by the end of January, haha.

Literacy and math assessments consumed weeks 3 and 4 of January.  I believe that assessments are a necessary and immensely valuable tool to use in the classroom, but when 4 out of 7 school hours are dedicated to assessments... I feel like it's a bit overkill.  I will be glad when the last DIBELS assessment is done next week.

On the bright side... we have gotten to do some neat things in the time that I am actually able to teach.  My kiddos FINALLY got enough links on their "compliment chain" (so that it touched the floor) to have a celebration.

I hung our compliment chain above the SmartBoard after we had our celebration.  It took 21 links for the chain to touch the floor.  Way to go kiddos! 

In our literacy and writing block, we have been focusing on how to correctly read and write punctuation.  Our media specialist gave me the book Punctuation Celebration by Elsa Knight Bruno to share with my class and they just loved it.  It is such a cute and very informative text!  We have only read about periods, commas, question marks, exclamation marks, and apostrophes thus far, but I know that they are looking forward to learning about all of the other types of punctuation such as quotation marks and semi colons. 

Such a cute book! 

Additionally, we have been learning how to write letters.  I feel like many students go throughout school without knowing how to properly write a letter, and so I wanted to share the very basics with my kiddos.  After we co-wrote a letter to a student who moved to a different school a few weeks ago, I had the students to write their own letter to whomever they desired.  Many wrote to family members and friends, but everyone did a great job!  

Our practice letter that we wrote to our friend who moved away.  The different colors represent the 5 parts of the letter: date, greeting, body, closing, and signature.

This month we have also been focusing a lot on how to read and write compound words. We have played some fun games in class that involved the students trying to match up a word they had on an index card to someone else's word to make a real compound word.  There were some funny word mash-ups along the way!  The learners practiced using their compound word creations by making a compound word "quilt."  After folding a piece of paper in half twice, students wrote 4 compound words of their choice in each square, used them in sentences, and then illustrated their sentences.    

The compound words she chose to use: outside, jellyfish, sandbox, and birthday.  I thought the illustration of the jellyfish was especially cute! 

During our writing time we have been really focusing on using "sparkle" words (adjectives) to enhance our writing.  As a fun and wintry activity (even though the temperature is still in the high 60s), we completed an acrostic poem using the letters SNOW.  We had a lot of fun coming up with ways to describe snow using those letters.  We really had to think hard to come up with the O.  I might have helped them out just a little bit... :)
 

Snow is... Sparkly white, Newly fallen, Obviously lovely, White and powdery. 

Snow is... Slippery, Not Hot, On the roof, Winter time. 

Anyways, that should catch us up!  I hope everyone has a wonderful day!

Love,
Mrs. Cook

Christmas Break!

Today was the last day of school until the new year.  The kiddos are out for Christmas Break until the 3rd of January.  I think we all are excited about some much needed R&R!

This week in first grade most of the teachers planned fun filled craft days for the students.  A lot of our families do not have many ornaments to decorate their Christmas tree with, so it's nice for the students to be able to make some decorations to use at their home over the holiday.  Crafting with a room full of riled up first graders is not an easy task... needless to say, I am exhausted from all of the festivities.  However, the kiddos created some really cute stuff that I would like to share... so it was worth it :)

The first ornament we made was integrated with a cultural read aloud about the origin of the poinsettia.  I read Tomie de Paola's The Legend of the Poinsettia, which explains how the flower came to be in a Mexican Christmas story.  It was a lovely story and the students really enjoyed learning more about the traditional Christmas symbol.  We created a poinsettia ornament using a coffee filter, red paint, glitter, clothespins, and pipe cleaners.  I think they turned out really beautifully!

Poinsettia Craft 

Last week we read Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends in class and compared it to the original Gingerbread Man story.  I promised the kiddos we would get to decorate our own gingerbread babies in class.  As a treat, I brought in gingerbread cookies, icing, and lots of candies.... the students had a blast decorating and eating their gingerbread babies.

A student carefully arranging an assortment of candy on her gingerbread babies. I provided icing, peppermints, chocolate chips, strawberry lace, mini sweet-tarts, and M&Ms.  MMM! 

Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

Here are a few more crafts the students created with the help of an adult... mainly because a hot glue gun was needed to complete the product.

A wreath ornament made with mini muffin tins and a small paper plate.   

Peppermint Ornament Craft
**I altered the methods slightly--- I used hot glue instead of icing and I used beads/sequins/rhinestones instead of red hots (because I could not find any)

Ice Cream Cone Craft
I modified this one as well... just to make it more kid friendly. 

Snowman Popsicle Stick 

As a gift to my students, I made baggies of homemade Hot Cocoa Mix and Homemade Marshmallows.  It took a little bit of prep work, but the kids thought it was so neat that I made my own marshmallows. My assistant and I also created mice ornaments made out of Hershey Kisses to give to the students.  I thought they were very sweet looking.  

Mice Ornaments

I think it is safe to say that I am a bit crafted out at this point.  The kids had a good time and I think they are proud of the neat-o ornaments they created.  I hope that everyone has a peaceful and relaxing Christmas vacation and a wonderful New Year!

Love,
Mrs. Cook

The Countdown to Christmas...

We just concluded our last full week of school before the kiddos get out for Christmas Break.  It's hard to believe we have been in school for 76 days already!  We are approaching the half way point very quickly.  This past week I had the opportunity to read lots of wonderful holiday themed children's books and do some fun activities with my cookies.  We didn't just do crafts though... the students got lots of good holiday spirited writing and math practice.  Next Monday and Tuesday we get to really focus on the crafts :)


The kiddos created their own math problems based around how many different colored ornaments they were going to use to decorate their Christmas tree.  The students would start with a number between 10-20 and then choose two colors they wanted their ornaments to be.  The learners then figured out a possible combination of the two colors so that the total number equaled the first number they chose.  Last, they wrote a number sentence and decorated their tree accordingly.  We have been working hard at composing and decomposing numbers in first grade--- this was a great activity to assess which students understand how to make different combinations of numbers.

It read:  My Christmas tree has 11 ornaments.  It has some yellow ornaments and some purple ornaments.  It has 10 yellow ornaments and 1 purple ornament.  Isn't it beautiful?  10+1=11

This week students also practiced their listening skills when we made Gingerbread Man Glyphs.  We read Jan Brett's Gingerbread Baby and then created our own.  The students listened to different questions and colored each part of their gingerbread man according to how they answered the question.  For example, the boys colored their buttons blue and the girls colored their buttons pink.  This would tell a viewer if the child was a boy or girl.  The poster below explains how someone can find out information about each student by "reading" their gingerbread man.  After we made our glyphs, we practiced graphing data to find out about our classmates based on how the gingerbread men were colored.

Our Gingerbread Man Glyphs displayed in the hallway.

An explanation of our Gingerbread Man Glyphs.

The last neat thing I would like to share from our classroom this week is our Wish Tree.  I had students trace their hands on green construction paper, cut them out, and then write a wish on their hands.  I explained that each hand would make up a part of our class's Wish Tree.  I really enjoyed walking around and listening to the children explain what they wished for.  Some of the wishes were very typical such as, "I wish I could  fly" or "I wish for a million bucks."  Other wishes really tugged at my heartstrings.  I work at a Title I school, which mean that my students that live in a high need area.  One of my students wrote, "I wish my mom would find a job."  That kind of awareness in a 6 year old just makes me so sad.

My class's Wish Tree.  

I started tearing up as I was reading the wishes with my kiddos in class.  It reminds me how important school is to these kiddos... its a place where they can get away from their worries for just a little while, and it's nice to know I can offer that to a child.  No matter how tough it is being a teacher, I know that some of these kids have a pretty tough job too.

Love,
Mrs. Cook

P.S.  Mr. Cook finally came by my classroom to meet my kiddos!  They have heard much about him already and they were "ohh-ing and ahh-ing" all afternoon.  He said "he felt like rockstar" because they all knew his name and were so excited to meet him.  It didn't hurt that he was in uniform--- these kids LOVE that!  :)

Honey Bees and Other Things

Hi There!

I am sorry about such a lapse in my blogs.  The past few weeks have been nuts-o at school!  I will try to catch you up.

Last week to go along with our Scott Foresman Reading Street Story, we studied our unit on honey bees.  The kids studied all about how honey bees make honey and about what goes on inside of a bee hive.  Of course we started the unit by making a KWL chart to set our goals and objectives for the week.

Our honey bee KWL chart.  

The kiddos learned some really neat stuff!  Did you know that honey bees use their saliva and beat their wings to help dry nectar so that it ripens into honey?  We all thought that was really interesting... and a little gross too!  I was very impressed with how well the students were able to understand the honey making process.  We practiced sequencing the order of events by writing about how honey bees make honey.  The kids used words like "first," "next," and "last" in their writing.  

First, the honey bees gather nectar from flowers.  Then, the honey bees take the nectar to their hive.  Last, the honey bees dry the nectar until it ripens into honey. 

One of my favorite parts of the week was reading Patricia Polacco's wonderful story-- The Bee Tree--- to my cookies.  It is a lovely story that teaches a very valuable lesson to the main character, which is that reading-- just like HONEY-- is sweet and rewarding.  Afterwards, the students got to eat biscuits with honey... just like in the story... as a sweet treat.

Comprehension worksheet on story elements from The Bee Tree.  Students were asked to describe the characters, setting, problem, and solution in the book. 

The Bee Tree by Patricia Polacco---- a beautiful children's book that teaches the importance and value of reading. 

Biscuits and Honey! A sweet treat to reward my cookies for being such good students.

 

This week we are reading lots and lots of fun books about Christmas and the holiday season.  I will add another blog very soon to keep everyone updated!  

Love, 

Mrs. Cook