Thursday, September 29, 2011

Rainbow Nouns

Just a quick post! One of my teachers I work with found this idea on line. You break the students into groups and give each one a piece of construction paper. Each group brainstorms nouns of that color.  My sweet darlings did a great job! They came up with some creative things :) I traced over their writing with a sharpie.

grass, crayon, shirt, paper, box, balloon

apple, flag, wagon, marker, shoes, bucket 

grapes, candy, plum, purple folder, mat, flowers, card 

 an orange, sucker, paper, seat, cord, tape, skate, shoes

car, toy, shirt, ocean, jacket, dolphin, bucket, pens

banana, lemon, pencil, egg yolk, paper, sun, book, pen, chair, bee


I was really impressed with them! The kids did a great job, and I loved their brainstorming tactics. It was cute listening to them talk to each other! I put them all together and made our "Rainbow Nouns" Chart.


Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Roll Tide Board


 I don't have too much today, but I wanted to upload pictures of my new board that I keep behind my desk. It houses bus notes, busy duty schedules, school calendars, and other random things that don't belong on my desk :)

If you get a chance, head over to Abby's Blog, she posted what is in her teaching bag. I wrote about this is August, so if you haven't checked it out, you should!

Have a good rest of the week :)

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Fact Families

Teaching fact families has been better than ever this year! Normally I teach addition for a couple weeks, then subtraction for a couple weeks, but not this year. I decided that this year I needed to try something different. I taught addition for a week and subtraction for a week, then I taught fact families to merge the two together. Although the first day of fact families was rough, the kids actually understood the concept better than any other year I've taught. I was so excited and proud of my kiddos! One of the days, I had the kids split into two groups and work on these fact family rainbows that I made. I cut them and wrote the fact families on them, then I wrote the three numbers on the cloud and the kids put them together. There are about 22 of them that I made, so they had know the fact family to be able to use them.













The kids really enjoyed it, and now I have another center for them to work on when they need extra practice!

Benjamin Franklin

Just like our Thomas Jefferson unit, I was looking for new and different ways to teach our history lessons. Our new teacher, Ashley, made this person once before when she taught younger grades. My students made their Ben Franklin and wrote one sentence about him.


It says, he invented a lightening rod.

Cute Ben Franklins
 Also that week we used this paper from Cara's blog. You can find it here. She did an inventor's unit and i printed off the invention paper! It was great for the kids and they used higher level thinking skills, which is a big deal for first grade. They had to write the inventor and invention of their choice, illustrate what they learned, illustrate the invention, and describe what life would be like without the invention.

Describe what life would be like without this invention. This one says, " The house will be burned." (without the lightening rod)  So smart :)


This one says, "If the world did not have the Franklin Stove, they would get freezing" Haha I love it!
If you can't tell I am loving Cara's blog, The First Grade Parade! If you haven't taken a look at her blog, you need to!

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Thomas Jefferson

I have been researching different ways to teach my students unit. (Science and Social Studies) Science is very easy, because most of it is hands on. Social Studies, however isn't as easy. There is a lot to learn and facts are hard for first graders. I found an idea here at Cara's blog. Her idea was originally for George Washington, but since we study Thomas Jefferson in Georgia, I changed it. The kids did a really cute job, and I was impressed with what they came up with! Here are a few pictures!





This is too cute! If you cant read it it says, Thomas Jefferson was the third president. Thomas Jefferson Declaration of Independence. :)


I was so happy with the end results! The kids worked really hard and they loved putting the batting for the hair on Thomas' head.