Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I love that I get to teach such a variety of materials daily to my students.  It is one of the joys of being an elementary educator.  The last two weeks, we have spent a lot of time learning about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The students have been extremely interested in his life and I feel like they have thoroughly enjoyed learning about our history.  Of course the history behind MLK is a sad.  It is so easy for our little ones to recognize that we are all created equal.  However, out of that sadness comes a story about bravery and love.  I'll fill you in on all of the activities we have done to learn about our history and MLK, Jr.

We began this unit by watching a Brain Pop, Jr. video on Martin Luther King, Jr.  This really got the kids thinking about him and brought up some memories we remembered from learning about him in Kindergarten.  Afterwards, we learned a song about Martin Luther King, Jr and we read a book from this fabulous unit by Megan Mitchell:  MLK Jr. Unit for Primary Teachers.  We also read the following books, Happy Birthday Martin Luther King by Jean Marzollo and Martin's Big Words by Doreen Rappaport.  We also watched several videos about Martin Luther King, Jr on Discovery Streaming.  Afterwards, we discussed Martin's character (the characteristics on the inside that we could infer through his actions and his words).  The students brainstormed his character traits and came up with the following words, brave, nice, kind, loving, leader, faithful, helpful, caring, peaceful, and thoughtful.  We then made silhouettes of Martin Luther King, Jr. face and wrote the character words on the silhouette.  We will glitter the words next so they stand out on his silhouette.

FYI:The example of the silhouette is from last year.  I have yet to get them all glittered.  In the past the students put vocabulary words from our MLK, Jr. unit on their silhouette, but this year I changed it up.  I can't wait to show you the final product.  I had hoped to get in over the weekend and complete them and then complete the post.  However, my busy weekend didn't allow for that.


Parents, on Friday the  Fundations unit 9 take home packet in your child's blue homework folder.  We will begin this unit next week.  We will review words and the students will learn about closed syllables.  The trick words say, says, see, between, and each will be added to our word wall.  They are also in the pack for you to cut out and add with all the other trick words from the previous packs.

In addition, I noticed that not every mailbox had homework schedule in it.  I will post the homework schedule on the blog.  Please read for 15 minutes and complete the math homework page that was sent home.

Some of you have asked about the 100th day.  We will not be celebrating the 100th day on Wednesday.  First grades common core standard states:  CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.A.1
Count to 120, starting at any number less than 120. In this range, read and write numerals and represent a number of objects with a written numeral.  Therefore, we celebrate the 120th day of school.  The 120th day is currently scheduled for February 27th.  Keep in mind that as we miss school due to the weather the 120th day will be pushed back for each day missed.  The kids will be asked to dress like a rock star as we celebrate our accomplishments.  I created a unit last year that we will use for this day and I can't wait to share it with the class.

Retelling with Jan Brett

We have really gotten back in the swing of things since winter break.  This week, the students have been learning how to retell a story.  I introduced the students to one of my most favorite children's authors Jan Brett.  They have fallen in love with her stories and beautiful illustrations.  We started with learning about Jan Brett.  I showed them photographs of Jan and told information about Jan's life.  They were immediately intrigued.  We then began by reading The Mitten.  This is a great story for retelling.  The story centers around Nicki who wanted snow-white mittens.  He soon loses one of the mittens and various animals climb inside the mitten to get out of the cold snowy weather.  Finally, when the bear sneezes, all the animals fly out of the mitten and Nicki finds his mitten against the blue sky.  We reviewed how to check for understanding while reading a book.  We talked about the importance of checking for understanding and how it helps us to retell the story at the end of the book.  [Home Tip:  While reading books at home, have your child stop after every couple of pages and answer who is the story about? and what is happening?]  At the end of the story I modeled how to retell a story in sequence.  The next day, we reread The Mitten.  This time, the children each had a mitten and all the animals from the story.  Afterwards, we retold the story using our mitten and animals.  The students loved this activity.  Hopefully they brought their mitten and animals home and modeled how to retell for you!  The next day, we took retelling a step farther and completed a story map of The Mitten.  Then, I read The Missing Mitten Mystery.  We used this story as a comparison to The Mitten.  The students loved this story written by Steven Kellogg and did a great job comparing and contrasting the two mitten stories.  On Friday it was another Jan Brett story, The Hat.  Next week, we will use this book to practice retelling with our partners.   The students will also be introduced to some more of Jan Brett's books.  

I hope you enjoy the pictures below of the happenings in our classroom.  I love all of the learning that is taking place in our classroom right now.  I hope you all enjoy the three day weekend.  Next week, I will show you what we have done in the classroom to learn about Martin Luther King, Jr.

Brrr....A Chilly Start to 2015

Welcome back to school!  I hope you all had a nice enjoyable holiday break.  I know I truly cherished the time I had at home with my family.  Now we are back in school and working hard to meet our goals by the end of the school year.  

Swimming started this week during P.E.  Thank you all for remembering to pack all needed items for swimming lessons.  I love that our school has swimming as part of its curriculum.  I've always thought that was something very unique that our school offers.  Not to mention it is an extremely important life skill.  I do not accompany the students to swimming, so I have no photos to post.  It is possible that by the end of swim classes, I might go down and sneak in some pictures.  

This week we picked right up where we left off in most of our subjects.  Today, I sent home a math news and a phonics Fundations letter that explain what we are working on this month.  Please be sure to read those to keep informed of our classroom happenings.  The Fundations letter packet includes activities that you can do at home to assist your child.  In addition, the new trick words for the unit are included in there.  In reading, we reviewed some of the things we discussed first semester through the use of snow related literature.  It's a shame we have no snow to go along with all these frigid temperatures.  I may be alone in wishing for that type of weather.  :)  Next week, we will begin learning how to retell a story.  We will also begin our author study on Jan Brett.  You can check out her website here.  

This week I sent home all of our previous writing materials.  First semester we learned how to be storytellers and write narrative stories about ourselves.  Before break, the students worked on publishing one of their pieces.  They chose the story they like best, they then edited and revised it.  Afterwards, they wrote their final draft and added a cover.  We then took their books and bound them together and laminated the covers.  When we returned from break we had a celebration and shared our pieces with a Kindergarten class.  We are now learning how to write nonfiction pieces about things we are experts on.

In social studies in the coming weeks we will be learning about Martin Luther King, Jr.

As the weeks continue, I hope to add more pictures up of our classroom happenings.  I have a few snapshots that I took today with my phone in class.  I will try my best to get back out here at some point and add the pictures.  Enjoy your weekend and stay warm!  

Upcoming Dates of Importance:

1/13 PTO meeting in the elementary cafeteria

1/16 Kindergarten Nursery Rhyme Day (Mrs. Hogan will be out of the classroom to watch her daughter's performance in this.  She will return when it is finished.)

1/16 PTO movie night sponsored by 5th grade.  Doors open at 6:30 and the movie starts at 7:00 p.m.

1/19 NO SCHOOL-Martin Luther King. Jr.

1/20 NO SCHOOL-Professional Development