Station Sensation

Wow!  What a busy week it has been!  I feel like I am just trying to play catch up.  In early December I attended the MO First and Second Grade Conference.  I came away with some exciting ideas for starting math stations.  My goal was to come back home and try and figure out a way that I could squeeze this into our already busy schedules.  So, I rearranged some time/activities that take place in our rooms and voila!  math stations have arrived in our classroom.  We didn't just start math stations, we also added another station into our daily 5 rotations.  The students now go to Read to Self, Work with Words literacy and phonics stations, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, and Work on Computers stations (once a month).  During math, the students are taught a mini-lesson before they complete their assigned work.  After they complete their math for the day, they are then able to complete the math stations.  The kids are in LOVE with the new stations and they work really hard to get through them every day.  

I have also decided that since we only have the computers for one full week each month that I would try to incorporate a little more technology into our daily routine.  Next week will be our first week for our iPad Station.  Students will use the iPad as a reading station for one full week each month as well.  Some of the kids noticed the iPads in the room earlier today and asked if we were going to use them.  They were beyond excited!  I just know this is going to add the extra something they needed to keep them motivated throughout the rest of the year.  

The following week, I will introduce iPods.  I have four iPods for fluency stations in my classroom.  Students will record themselves reading and listen to their reading.  They will then try to improve their fluency.  With the computers, iPads, and iPods our class will be using a variety of technology throughout the remainder of the school year.  Keep coming back for more updates on how this technology is improving the learning in our classroom.  

It seems as if the PTO movie night was once again a success tonight.  My daughter loved the movie {and the running around}.  We are now home lounging on the couch, however, I failed to bring my device with the pictures of our math stations and work with words stations home.  I'll do my best to get those posted by the end of the weekend.  Enjoy the coming weather and be safe.


Here are some of the pictures I got of the students doing some of their math tubs this week. A lot of these great stations have come from units I have purchased off of Teachers Pay Teachers.  Some of my favorite authors/teachers are Cara Carroll, Deanna Jump, and Abby Mullins.  I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE their creativity and the students always enjoy their literacy and math stations.  I also got some great ideas for math games and daily 5 in math from Shannon Samulski.  Pictured below you will see the kids playing Bump.  There are many variations of this game, but since this was the first time the kids had played it we did the *simple* version.  {roll the dice, add the numbers, cover the sum}  This great activity helps kids with exploratory learning.  I love the idea of the kids being able to continually practice and review what has been taught.  These activities really get the kids thinking about numbers and what they mean.  LOVE!!!  You can check out her great things at Strategic Intervention Solutions.  Check her out HERE.

Kids playing bump

Coin Toss {writing addition sentences}

Non-units standard of measurement {How many snowflakes tall are you?}

Our Week in Pictures

As you can see we've been busy learning in a variety of formats this week.  Students learned about the Constitution of the United States, the flag, and the Pledge of Allegiance. They created their own United States flag and are currently working on learning the meaning of the pledge.  They will also create their own Pledge of Allegiance book.  You'll notice I posted a picture of our Daily 5 Literacy Rotation Chart.  The students were introduced to this and began using it during literacy stations this week.  It was also our week for the traveling first grade laptop cart.  We read digital books on it during our literacy stations.  Once we are ready, students will publish written work on the laptops as well.  Our students will gradually be introduced to more uses of the laptop cart as the year progresses.  I plan on introducing only one concept/aspect of the laptops at a time so we can become proficient/accomplished in one task before learning something new.  The students enjoyed the laptops and I know they will look forward to 4 weeks from now when we will have the laptops in our room again.  We finished our living/nonliving unit with an assessment.  The students had to find pictures in magazines of living and nonliving things and create a poster.  We also learned that author's publish their written work.  We began the early stages of editing/fixing up our stories.  On Thursday/Friday we had a share celebration.  Our stories will be placed in our classroom library for students to check out.  We also learned that as readers we often think about the book we are reading.  Sometimes we say to ourselves, "This reminds me of...." or "This makes me think of..."  The students are learning how to pay attention to their connections they make while reading or listening to stories.

Busy 3-Day Week…a SHOUT OUT…and TECH-NOL-OGY

BOY…what a week it has been.  I hope you all enjoyed your Labor Day weekend.  I know I always LOVE having one extra day to spend with my family.  As I was walking around my neighborhood this past weekend, I passed by the house of one of my previous students.  He came up to say “hello” to me (as he was outside with his family) and proceeded to say that the school was SO nice to let the kids have an extra day off.  Kids say the funniest things sometimes.  It is so interesting to see the world through a child’s mind.  WE, and when I say we I mean all teachers and administrators, didn’t have an extra day off as this child put it.  WE were busy at work.  As you may remember, instead of having several early out days throughout the year, we opted for one full day off so as to give the teachers and administrators MORE time for professional development.  So, we thank you for our one extra day off.  These days will allow teachers with the available time needed to improve the learning and successes in our school.

                                

 

I would like to give a SHOUT OUT  to all my parents who ordered from Scholastic Book Clubs.  Your books should be arriving soon.  I placed the order on Wednesday.  I am so happy that many of you are utilizing the online manner in which to order your books.  This is quick and simple and helps us earn more books for our classroom.  You’ll be happy to know that with YOUR HELP our class RAISED OVER 300 BONUS POINTS for our classroom library.  In addition, with YOUR HELP our class earned 20 dollars in FREE BOOKS!!!  With our 20 dollars, I purchased 8 new books for our classroom library.  Many of them will go into our leveled portion of our library.  The students use the leveled portion of our classroom library daily for their Reader’s Workshop daily 5 stations.  These books are read so many times and I want to be able to offer a wide variety of books that meet the needs of our students.  Not only do I want the students to be able to read the books I want them to be INTERESTED in the books in our library.  I am working towards getting more books for our library that the kids have shown interest in.  If you would like to help build up our leveled library…ask me how you can help.

With such a short week, the students have been very busy.  We didn’t waste any valuable instructional time this week…but instead went full steam ahead!  We have almost  completely started ALL DAILY 5 ROTATIONS!!!  Students are LEARNING strategies to add to our CAFÉ board and using those strategies during Read to Self and Read to Someone.  We have even included our Listen to Reading Station this week. 

Of course we always round out the DAILY 5 with our daily phonics instruction and our writer’s workshop.  You might be wondering what our CAFÉ board is.  Well…CAFÉ is an acronym for Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expanded Vocabulary.  Our CAFÉ board is a menu of sorts, but instead of a menu of food it is a menu of reading strategies that good readers use while reading.  Each day in our reader’s workshop, I teach a short mini-lesson in which I model/teach a reading strategy that good proficient readers use while reading.  We discuss the importance of each strategy and then place it under the appropriate heading on our CAFÉ board.  The board gives the students a visual of all the strategies they have learned and can use while reading a story.  In the future, the CAFÉ board will be a way the students can monitor their own reading and will include the students’ current reading goals.  Currently, the students have been introduced to the following strategies, check for understanding, cross checking, and tune into interesting words. 

Has your student come home and mentioned our awesome  MIMIO.  The MIMIO is an interactive whiteboard.  

 

This neat little device, when hooked up to a projector and computer, makes a regular plain Jane whiteboard become an interactive whiteboard.  It really is one of the neatest things I’ve ever seen.  Well…needless to say I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT!!!  This little gizmo is running all day in our classroom.  From the time the students come into the room till the time they leave, we use our interactive board about as often as we can.  When the students come in every morning they do their attendance and lunch count on the MIMIO.  Our daily phonics instruction is also completed in an interactive way on the MiMIO as students move letters around on the interactive board to create new words and sort words by initial sounds and rhyming patterns.  During math, the line leader conducts Calendar time on the MIMIO and our math lesson for the day is also completed on the interactive whiteboard.  In the afternoon, science and social studies units are often interactive MIMIO lessons.  Can you tell that WE LOVE OUR MIMIO.  Sometimes I wonder how I taught without all the wonderful technology our school now has to offer.  Every class has an interactive board of some sort, either by a SMART or Promeathean Board or a MIMIO.  The students love getting to use the interactive board and I do my best to use it as often as I can so the students will benefit from the technology we have available in our classroom.  Coming soon….the students will be introduced to Read to Self on the computer.  YES THAT’’S RIGHT….reading on the computer.  We have a traveling laptop cart in first grade and one week out of the month our class will contain 5 laptops for our use all day during our allotted week.  I’m so excited about introducing this new fun way of reading.  We will also use our laptop cart for publishing our written work.  In addition, students who finish work early may also have the opportunity for enrichment activities on the computer.  I just KNOW this will spark an interest or two in the class!!!  STAY TUNED for more technology updates….YES , you heard me…MORE!  (We have more techno goodies to use throughout the year as well!)  Can’t wait to hear more about them…then come back and visit us soon!!!!

DON’T FORGET to check out ALL academics updates on the page off to the right entitled Academic Updates.