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Thursday, May 22, 2014

New Phonics Unit

Just finished the long i word work unit...PHEW!  One more to go and then I'll bundle them for TPT.  These units have been great for my first grade super stars.  The kids love the games (especially Roll and Read and Slap it!) and they love the little phonics characters.  Because all of the reading is differentiated, each student has access, which is so important for their success.  We are cycling back on long vowels now, and the kids needed it!  With so many spelling and phonics patterns swirling in their heads I'm so happy I went back and used the last few weeks and these units to review the long vowels so that they are nice and firm for the kids in second grade.  I'm definitely going to use them at the beginning of the year for my second graders in the 1/2 combo I'm going to teach next year.  If interested the link is below.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Long-i-word-work-unit-Differentiated-1252637

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Goal Setting

Yesterday I tried a new spin on goal setting with my class, and it worked GREAT!  I could sense the need to change things up a little with spring fever going strong so I did a mini-lesson on goals.  We then decided to set a daily goal based on something we could do in class. Most of the kids chose a behavior goal, but some chose learning goals also.  I gave them a quick 3-5 minutes to write their goal, and they turned them into me.  If they felt comfortable I read them, and I told them that at the end of the day we would revisit them and see if we met our goals (I wrote one too).  I also told them that I would pick a few randomly at the end of the day out of the pile, and if those people met their goals then I would reward them with a raffle ticket for our school behavior plan.  I was so impressed with their goals. Below are a few of them:



During the day, it was AWESOME because they kept reminding each other to keep working on their goal.  Even my student on a behavior contract met his goal (this was way more motivating to him than anything else I've tried this year...go figure!).  A the end of the day, they reflected on how they did.  The added benefit was that at the end of the day the reflection put a calm spin on a rushed Friday afternoon.  I loved this activity so much. I'm definitely going to try it again on Monday!

#goalsettingfirstgrade#learninggoals#behaviorgoals

New Common Core Reading Literature Unit -Days With Frog and Toad -The Hat

I just finished writing this unit and we started working on it in class this week.  The kids LOVE the story!  It is the perfect unit to end the year because the Frog and Toad series has so many options for books.  I am teaching the main comprehension strategies with this unit for The Hat, and the kids are reading up the other Frog and Toad stories like crazy during Daily 5 time.   I also added poetry analysis and a fun little structured poetry writing activity.  Some fun game additions that we play with this unit are "Jeopardy" type game with the comprehension questions, and we play "Build a Tower" with the questions that they write in the unit.  I got all the CCSS RL standards in this unit except for CCSSRL5, and they are labeled to make planning easy.   If you are interested in checking it out see the link below.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Comprehension Fun!

As part of our common core reading literature unit featuring the David McPhail book, Lost, the kids wrote text-based questions about the story.  The twist was that they had to cite the  page number that the answer was found on.  They wrote them on index cards and we played an awesome game called Build a Tower with their cards.  The great learning came when students were crafting their questions.  Some of the questions were inferential and it was hard for them to come up with the page number that the answer was found on. This was great because it led us to a great discussion on the two types of questioning.  Through some redefining and refining the students came up with a clear difference between inferential and text based questions.  These first graders AMAZE me!

Below is a picture of the game and below that is a link to the unit we used if you are interested.




and the companion informative text unit on bears