The low down on my ABC chart

A couple summers ago, we started a curriculum mapping team that learned about curriculum mapping and made our maps for the county. I volunteered, and actually enjoyed it! I got some great new ideas from fellow teachers AND our new friend Sue Ellen. She was spearheading the "conference" and she had some amazing ideas that she shared with us. One of the ideas was an ABC chart. The idea was to close out your

 lesson by giving each student a post-it note or piece of paper with a letter on it, and they had to think of a word that related to the lesson. Wellllllll, I knew my little firsties wouldn't be able to handle that by themselves, so I turned the ABC chart into a whole lesson. I got some ABC sticky letters from Walmart and glued them on a large piece of paper. I had it laminated and voila, an easy way to review a LOT of things. One good thing about the letters, there are several sets, so you can share with your teacher friends! Recently we used the ABC chart to talk about nouns. Each student got a letter on a sticky note and since we are still having phonics issues, I told them they can draw and write the noun. The kids LOVED the activity and they came up with some great nouns.

Here is the whole chart with our nouns on them.

Here are a few examples of what the kids did!

         

This one is my favorite! I just love the cute turtle, tree, and his attempt at spelling!

What can YOU use this chart for? Happy brainstorming :)

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.

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 :)

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!

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.

What's in my teaching bag :)

If you ever wondered what was in a teaching bag, well you are in luck :) This post is alllll about what is in my cute teaching bag! Most teachers are obsessed with bags, everyone has to carry one, and luckily we have tons of people that sell Thirtyone. They have cute things that you can get monogrammed, so that is where my bag came from.

The inside of my bag :)

This is my pink and black bag with lots of pockets and my initial.

One of my obsessions are obviously pens.... I LOVE PENS! Colorful ones of course... I have colorful pens everywhere..Ohmiword y'all you have to have colorful pens.

These are some of my favs!

I have to have an umbrella just in case...This one is of course covered in high heels :)

I have three planners, this one is my personal planner...although somehow school always creeps in there.

Three planners, if you think they won't get used, you are mistaken. I over plan..everything :)

Love more color..lots of notebooks :)

I make the yearbook at our school, so I have my yearbook stuff handy to work at home. I also have my cute folder that houses everything from scores, to grades, to notes and things I need to grade. 

Another notebook that I use for school meetings. My clipboard that houses my daily behavior and attendance.

For differentiation i use Word Journeys and Words Their Way to make spelling lists on the students individual level.


Because it is only the first few weeks of school, my bag isn't TOO full, but eventually I'll update you when its overflowing :)