1) Christmas Monkey Elf! Last year almost all of the teachers on my team used the adorable Elf on the Shelf in the classroom. Since I didn't want to shell out the $30 for the kit I got a Christmas Monkey from Dollar Tree for another teacher and myself. Our monkey has been causing lots of trouble around the room and occasionally leaving us notes. Below he is hiding in a wreath near our handmade Christmas tree. So much fun!
2) Grateful to my wonderful helping parents! I am blessed again this year to have an amazing group of helpful and artistic parents. They made origami ornaments with the kids and everyone had a blast! They also made a beautiful 3-D Christmas tree by accordion folding! Talented!
3) Christmas Opinion Writing! We had so much fun discussing, graphing, and writing about who we thought worked harder the elves or Santa. I absolutely love reading the reasoning of first graders! We will turn their opinion pieces into little books next week!
4) Take Brain Breaks! Super blessed to have a track at our school and we take advantage of it at each transition running a lap or two before we get inside to get to business! I love having the kids get oxygen to their brains.
5) Our Celebration of Learning! We have been working on our Life Long Ago unit for social studies for the past few weeks. Our informational text has been articles about life long ago, Blend Space research, and for fiction we have been reading about Johnny Appleseed. The kids were in expert groups that studied one area of Life Long Ago in depth. They loved doing their projects and here is some of their great work! We present to other grade levels and parents next week. The links for products are also below if interested.
We started the week by defining organized and unorganized data, graphing blocks, shoes, and other fun activities. Then we ended the week with the kids conducting surveys. The had a blast and their cute little survey responses warm my heart! See below:
All of this can be found in my new data, graphing, and survey unit found on TPT. It has wall vocabulary cards, activities, surveys, and centers. We'll be moving on to using the concepts in centers as a review this week. Here is the unit link if you are interested.
2) Gratitude
We make it part of our day to make sure that we write a gratitude message at the end of each day. We are fortunate to have write on desks, but this could easily be done in a paper journal, which would be such a cute footprint of the kids' year. It is one of my favorite parts of the day to read what these fantastic firsties write! Here's one below:
3) San Diego Area TPT Meetup!
It was awesome to meet other local TPT authors over the Thanksgiving week break. I loved learning about the powers of Instagram from Kristen Kalani (@easyteachingtools). I am always impressed by the dedication these ladies have to teaching!
4) Power Writing!
It is one of our class goals to become better writers and also to read like a writer. I am so impressed by my kids each and every day as they try to improve their craft and grow as writers. Below is a picture of one of my little guys using his Opinion Writing Handbook in a Power Writing entry. When the other kids saw him it was like the domino effect. Soon everyone was accessing their handbooks and I saw a sea of green, red, and blue books. The color coding is for the text type they choose to write. In Power Writing, we brainstorm two topics. We have a few minutes of table group discussion about each topic and then we create a brainstormed list on the white board. The kids then share with their tables what text type they will write and what topic they will write about. I then set the time and the kids are off. We write without stopping to build stamina. If someone finishes their first topic, then they go on to the next. I scaffold the journals also for my kids who have a tough time looking from board to desk and need the extra support. I LOVE this time because everyone focuses on writing fluency which is essential. They are also given a scaffold with a white board list of ideas, and they are given CHOICE. Choice on which topics to write on and choice on what text type to write about it. As the kids write I go around and give little mini lessons like capitals, noticing strong introductions or conclusions, and even focusing on proper printer motions. It's a little one on one time for me with the kids as I circulate. This is just one part of my writing program and takes only about 15-20 minutes. It truly is valuable time!
I also started using some of the great introductions and conclusions I was seeing in our class and putting them up on our wall. I teach the kids the names of the introduction and conclusion to the kids so that they can have them as part of their vocabulary. For example when they use a question as an introduction I put it up under our Question Introduction poster. When kids talk like a writer, they write like a writer. The kids love having their writing as the mentor text. Last week, a little firstie came up to me and said, "Look Mrs. Miller. I came up with a new introduction type. . . the countdown!" I loved it and I love that he even gave it his own name! Below are some of these fun pics and the products that I use to teach these things!
5) I'm so ready for Christmas!
I just love the holiday times. People just act a little nicer, have extra kindness in their hearts, and family time is prime time! I love it. I'm so thankful for all that we have have and that I have my two beautiful children. Below are some fun Christmas products I'm looking forward to using and a couple of Pinterest snapshots of things I'm going to try in my classroom. Happy Holidays!
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