First Week Survival ~ Daily 5 Up and Running

I can't believe this three day weekend went SO fast... entirely too fast!  I would love to have just ONE more day! And even though I'm dead dog tired I told myself I had to blog and share with you a few things from our first full week back.  I know many of you do Daily 5 and we have gotten it up and running piece by piece.  I'm still not taking groups yet.  I want to make sure they are doing all activities properly and can problem solve and take care of situations without interrupting my group.  I love the first few weeks of Daily 5 because I am able to meander around the room and listen to kids read, watch them write, watch them build words and really get to know my students by having small conversations with them during this time. We start out with Read to Self and here are a few pics I took during that time.

We talked a lot about choosing just right books and using the five finger rule.  We also practice getting our book boxes and having them by our side during Daily 5.  After they all got the hang of Read to Self I introduced word work.  We began our first weekly word study last week and took our first spelling test on Friday!  I was amazed that 90% of my class spelled and wrote 100% of the words correctly!  Usually the first test is a doozy just because it's their first one.  I was blown away!  Word Work allows my students to practice these weekly words.  They always have a "must-do" and then they can choose several different activities to practice spelling and making words.  My "must-do" varies daily.  I use many of the pages from Abby's Short Vowels Pack and some word family activity pages from the great Cherry Carl .  I start out only introducing magnetic letters, rainbow words using smelly markers and glitter pens and stamps.  I add more throughout the year as I feel they can handle it.  Here are a few pics I took during word work.

As you can see our first week is short a.  She spelled "we" but as long as I see them building words it makes me happy. I love hearing them read me the words they have made.

These words were off of our word wall.  We start out with about 15 words on the word wall from Kindergarten or High Frequency words they will use a lot.  As you can see I think it's time for me to get some new ink pads!

I also have introduced writing.  I know that seems like a lot but we have writer's workshop every morning.  I like to introduce some "fun" writing choices so students can write and illustrate with markers.  One of our first writing activities is making a card.  I use the monthly premade card templates from Deedee Will's Writing Work Stations.  I also use her monthly vocabulary cards to hang in my writing center and I also use the corresponding page of the monthly words in my student's writing folders for writer's workshop.

Students are able to color and be creative during this time but are writing to their friends or their teacher.  This gives them more practice using the strategies we are learning during writer's workshop like stretching out the sounds in words.

On Friday I wanted to do something fun and yet connect it to our curriculum.  Since this week was short a and we worked with -at words, I found the cutest craftivity that allowed the students to write a story using at words and they got to make their own "Cat on a Mat".  The activity is by Mel From the Pond.  I fell in LOVE with it and my students did too! So after students wrote stories about their cat (and some were SO hilarious) we broke out the scissors and glue and began making our cats. I love standing back and watching how my new first graders use scissors and glue.

I wanted to take pictures of their stories too and forgot to take them before leaving for the weekend (it wasn't like I was in a hurry to start a three day weekend or anything ;)  I'll try to post them another time because they were so adorable!  Here is some more pics of our super cute craft!

Next week is only four days but we will be working with short i. I will be introducing more writing choices, our listening station and read with someone next week.  I love to hear how others use Daily 5!  I steal grab ideas from teachers all the time. It has to be my favorite time of the day!

Hope you had a fabulous three day weekend!  

OWLS, Reading Street, and a Freebie!

Well ~ we've had a break in the weather... high today 98! At least we are out of the triple digits.  Yesterday, I found some of the cutest clipart and decided I had to make a few things using owls.  {I just LOVE owls!}  I bet you didn't know that!?  So for ALL the owl fans out there, I hope you like these.  I started out by creating some nameplates using bright colorful owls.  I thought these were just the cutest... take a look:

If you notice - some of the nameplates have cute sayings and some do not.  I made them both ways  so you could choose if you wanted the sayings or not.  There are actually even more nameplates in the file.  I used 6 different backgrounds.  Click on any picture above to take you to my TPT store.

As I started using the chocolate brown backgrounds (which I love since it is the theme in my room) I began creating another file using brown owls.  I fell in love INSTANTLY!

I'm not sure which one I'm going to use this year... I may just use one of each!  Again - I created these so there are 2 copies in each file - one with the cute sayings - and one without.  Just print out the ones you want to use.  If you are interested, click on any picture above or HERE to go to my TPT store.

If you teach Reading Street, I created some grammar posters that I plan to use this year as we make our way through each week.  I will post these as references for each unit and then make them available in my writing center either on a ring, or in a binder, etc.  I'm not sure yet.  I wanted something that I could project on my Smart Board as we learn about each grammar concept.  Here are a few examples of what I came up with:

These are both from Unit 1.

These are from Unit 2.

These are from Unit 3.

These are from Unit 4.

These are from Unit 5.

Each unit has 6 different posters for each of the weekly skills.  These are all available in my TPT store if you are interested. 

NOW for the freebie!  I hope all you OWL lovers out there will like this. You can get one brown owl and one bright owl name plate for free by clicking HERE!  I am thinking about creating new book box labels, binder covers and cubby numbers using these cute owls.  What do you think?  Hope everyone has a great week... I am off to take my kids to Six Flags today.  Thank goodness it has cooled down a little.  (Heh heh)!

Shoveling Snow and Scooping Up Nouns

I found the cutest shovel pattern and knew I had to use it for something.  We have been talking about nouns, adjectives and verbs... but decided to focus on nouns with this activity.  After talking about nouns and finding them in a shared reading I gave each of my students a pile of sticky notes and instructed them to look through a book that they were reading from their book box and search for nouns.  When they found one, they were to write it down on their sticky note.  They could find as many as they wanted but our magic number was ten.  They were very engaged during this process and amazingly all of them found 10 nouns or more.  I showed them my shovel and told them they were going to make a shovel (their color choice) and write all their nouns on it.  I checked each child's sticky notes before they could use a sharpie marker (they LOVED this) to write their nouns. Here is a picture of a couple of the shovels.

We used cotton balls in the corner for the snow.  We first used white crayon but ended up using cotton for an added touch! What I love about these shovels is you can see the differentiation as many of the nouns varied by the independent book they were reading.  I bet if you looked closely you could even guess the book or type of book they were reading.  

I would love to share the shovel pattern with you, but unfortunately it was just a few pieces of paper I found in one of my files I picked up somewhere from long ago.  My scanner is broken here at home, but I will try to scan it in at school if possible later this week if you are interested.  Here is how our wall turned out with all of our shovels. Our title is:  "We've got the SCOOP on Nouns!"  

Hope your day is a great one!

UPDATE:  Here are the scanned pages you can download.  I'm sorry about the quality.  I have no idea where I originally got these from so if anyone knows the origin or the creator... let me know! :)  Click on the images to download the patterns.

Hope you find some use for these! :)