October Daily Messages

At the end of September, I posted a set of October Daily Messages for Kindergarten.  Would you believe that I'm just now gettin' around to blogging about them?  Oy...  You can find them in my Tpt store and I'm working on a November set as well.

The messages included look about like the image below, but each one is a little different.

When I did a daily message in my classroom, I put it under the document camera each day. We solved the words with missing letters together.  That gave us an opportunity to talk about specific phonemic awareness skills, phonics skills, word wall words, spelling words, decoding strategies and comprehension strategies together.  Then I gave each student their own copy of the message and they filled in the blanks, read it to themselves and read it to a partner.  Finally, they took their copy home to read it to their parents (or their dog, or a stuffed animal).

When we worked on blends, if we discovered a word that had a consonant blend at the beginning we added it to our Book of Blends.  You can also find My Book of Blends in my Tpt store.

I am lucky enough to visit lots of classrooms for my new job, which I love! I've shared my Super Spelling Forms and Autograph Bookmarks with several of my teacher friends for word work and accountability for independent reading time.

I'm off to a Painting with a Twist event with a friend!  Have a great week!

Book Talk Tuesday

Joining Deanna Jump this week for Book Talk Tuesday.

The books I decided to include today are 3 of my absolute favorite mentor texts.  I use them every single year.  I read them to my class multiple times each year during writer's workshop and each time I read them, my students beg me to read them again.

Salt Hands by Jane Chelsea Aragon gives me goosebumps every time I read it.  Warning:  a few kids cry the first time I read it each year.  It's not a sad book, just so moving!  Unfortunately, I had to pay close to $40 to get my hands on a paperback copy of this book.  It's out of print and if you watch online sellers carefully you can usually get it for around $40 if you are willing to pay that much.  I read it so many times each year that it was totally worth the money.  It is the perfect example of a capturing a small moment.  I also use it during my writer's workshop time to model word choice, clear beginning/middle/end sequence in a small moment and creating mental images with words.

Fireflies  by Julie Brinckloe is the perfect choice for mini lessons on word choice. I also use this book as a model for creating mental images with your words and developing an author's voice.

I use Roller Coaster by Marla Frazee for mini lessons to model varying action words, capturing a small moment, building suspense and adding detail to writing.  I also use this book as a model for adding facial expressions to your illustrations.  

Even though I'm looping with my class, I know we'll revisit these three favorites next year.  

The possibilities are endless!

Happy Tuesday!

Zoohoo

Zoohoo!  Doesn't that sound like a good name for an app or a game or a book?  It's really just a combination of "zoo" and "boohoo"...because it's taken me a whole month to get to this post about the activities we did to prepare for the zoo trip in my classroom.  Better late than never...

We finished our animal research projects the week prior to all this zoo themed business.  I like the students to wrap those up just in case we need to consult an "expert" during our zoo themed activities.  You can read my previous post about our animal research books here. My students design their own covers, but we use my Animal Research Book format.

We started out the week by reading Animal Action by Karen Pandell and Art Wolfe.  This book is a great way to review verbs.  It also served as a mentor text for our writer's workshop mini lessons.

At the writing workstation, my students listened to a book called How to Ride a Giraffe.  I recorded the story on one of our iPads and put the link on our classroom Edmodo account.  That makes it easy for my students to find the link to the story and the directions for their writing work all in one place (without disturbing me while I work with small groups for reading instruction).  Their assigned task for this particular week was to write their own how to story after listening to the story.

We also read Giraffe's Can't Dance and the children created their own giraffe.  

I do this art project every year and I absolutely love how their giraffes turn out.  I call it a "get a frame for this one" project!

During writer's workshop, we worked on a sentence expansion activity.  Toward the end of the year, my students began to suffer from "I'm done syndrome"  during writer's workshop.  I decided it might help if we worked on editing and revising another writer's work, rather than our own for a bit.

My school subscribes to Reading A to Z.  I used one of the level AA books as a springboard for this project.  The book we used is called The Zoo.  I explained to the children that the author wrote the simple repetitive text in this book with the specific purpose of helping beginning readers build confidence, practice the sight word "the" and use the picture clues to help them identify the unknown word on each page.  The text on each page follows the pattern "The lion.", "The tiger.", "The elephant." and so on.

Using a book with a simple repetitive text pattern allowed us to practice different skills throughout the week.

Day 1 - adding a verb on each page (using the Animal Action book as a model for choosing interesting verbs)
*example:  The lion stalks

Day 2 - adding an adjective on each page to describe the animal
*example:  The sneaky lion stalks

Day 3 -  expanding each sentence to add details to answer the questions who, where and when
*example:  At sunrise, the sneaky lion stalks his prey at the edge of the woods.

Day 4 - add an introduction to the story

Day 5 - add a conclusion to the story

Day 6 - change the title to make your reader want to read the story

When they were done with each of these steps, they were ready to write a final draft of their story so it could be published in time to be on display with their animal research books for our Ice Cream Social/Showcase.

And...if you follow me on Instagram you already saw how excited I was for school to be out for the summer!  No sad goodbyes for me this year, because I'm looping to 2nd grade with my class!

School's out for summer!

pictured in this photo: my teaching BFF's

FYI - I'm sitting on the couch to write this post!  I.NEVER.SIT.ON.THE.COUCH from when school starts all the way to June.  PEOPLE - I'm sitting on the couch with my feet up!!!  Oh happy day!

Opportunities for Opinion Writing

Two weeks ago, we started working on opinion writing in my first grade classroom. Last year, I did lots of rethinking about how I wanted to teach opinion writing to my little ones. After spending lots of time reviewing the writing strands of the common core, pouring over possible mentor texts and thinking about the best way to scaffold graphic organizers I decided to create my own opinion writing unit.

I created Writing My Opinion to cover the K, 1st and 2nd standards from the common core writing anchor standard 1.  The unit includes different graphic organizers (one that supports writers working on the K standard, another for the 1st grade standard and one for the 2nd grade standard) for differentiating opinion writing.  It also includes 3 different rubrics, 3 different self reflection forms, pieces to make a reusable anchor chart, a list of mentor texts to use for opinion writing and 10 writing prompts for your students to use as they are being introduced to opinion writing.

I introduce each type of writing that we do throughout the year by reminding the students that authors organize their writing in different ways.  We added opinion writing to our "Ways Authors Organize Text" anchor chart a couple weeks ago.  

I introduce opinion writing by using the mentor text  Red Is Best by Kathy Stinson.

After reading the book, we used my reusable opinion writing anchor chart to highlight the topic, opinion, supporting reasons, and conclusion as modeled by the author of this book.  That really helped the students focus their own opinions.  The pieces to make the reusable opinion writing chart are included in the Writing My Opinion unit.  After I made the chart, I laminated it and then I use large sticky notes to change the things we add to match each different topic that we work on together.

When the students were ready, I introduced a topic that I wanted them to try to write about. We used the "best ice cream sundae topping" as our first opinion writing topic. I knew there would be a high level of motivation involved.  I modeled first with my own opinion about my favorite topping.  I used the reusable chart again for the modeling.

I am super proud of how their writing turned out.  When they were finished, I typed their writing and we published them and turned the collection into a class book.  With the help of my fabulous parents, we also had an author's celebration with real ice cream sundaes!

You can check out the Writing My Opinion unit and my other products by visiting my Tpt store.  

It's almost time for  the cyber Monday/Tuesday sale!

I'm signing off to start filling up my Tpt shopping cart for the Cyber Monday/Tuesday sale!

Back to School Books Linky Party

We just finished school on June 7...but the summer is best time to shop for books from my classroom.  Or maybe it's just about having time?  Whatever the case, I love books and I love shopping.

I'm linking up with First Grade and Fabulous to share some of my favorite books for the first week of school...

My favorite back to school book is called Hands as Warm as Toast.  The author, Lisa Himle, is a colleague and a friend of mine.  It is really a perfect story to read during the first few weeks of school or any time that a child may be feeling nervous or unsure about trying something new.  

Listen Buddy by Helen Lester is a hilarious story about the importance of listening. My students always  love this book!

I use We Share Everything by Robert Munsch to remind my first graders about my expectations for sharing in our classroom.

During the first few days, while I'm introducing rules, I read Following Rules and Respecting Others by Robin Nelson.  Both are nonfiction books with real photographs.

Excuse the blurry pictures...I guess that is what happens when I snag images.

Don't forget to head over to First Grade and Fabulous to check out the other books teachers are using for the first week of school!

Mentor Text Monday Linky - Math Mentor Texts

Thanks for stopping by for this weeks mentor text monday linky! I received lots of emails last week asking questions about mentor texts and how I use them. I will answer those as soon as I can. I got attacked by strep throat and a nasty cold last week. Between that and a presentation I did over the weekend, I'm backed up on responding to my emails. Sorry... You can head back to my post from last Monday if you want to download a copy of my list of favorite mentor texts.  You can find that post here.

The mentor texts that I'm writing about today are a few of my favorites for working on math related skills.  The first book is from Stuart Murphy's Math Start series, which I love. I use Tally O'Malley at the beginning of the year when we work on tally marks, then again when we start yes/no surveys (and need to rely on tally marks for data collection).

I use How Many Feet in the Bed? to help me introduce skip counting and number combinations.  My students always love to count how many feet would be in a bed if their whole family climbed in bed together.

The Best Vacation Ever - doesn't that just sound good?  This book is also from the Math Start series.  It is the book that I use to introduce collecting data and surveys.

If you have a favorite math book or two that you like to use as a mentor text with a specific lesson, please link up. Don't be shy! According to the number of emails I received about mentor texts last week, inquiring minds want to know.
 

Mentor Text Monday (#1 Literacy Mentor Texts) + freebie

 Thanks for stopping by for the first Mentor Text Monday! 

The mentor texts that I'm asking everyone to share today (or whenever you get a chance to link up to this post) are any book that you use to help you teach a literacy related topic. I'm doing a whole separate week for writing mentor texts at the end of this 4 week series. There are just so many great mentor texts for specific writing lessons, that I thought they deserved their own week. 

 I recently discovered two (new to me) books that are perfect mentor texts. The first one is Kitchen Dance by Maurie J. Manning. I used this story to introduce the concept of small moment stories and to help my little ones focus on the word choice within the text. I reread it when we started writing small moment stories.

 
 The second book is called Saturdays and Teacakes by Lester Laminack. This is a beautiful story about a boy who rides his bike to visit his grandma each week. My students LOVED the illustrations in this book! I used this book as an example of a personal narrative story and we focused on dialogue in the text.

As promised, I also wanted to share about how I organize the mentor texts that I use in my classroom.  Three years ago,  after switching grade levels and/or rooms for 6 years in a row, I decided that I needed a more organized way to store the books that fit in the "hey, this is a perfect book to teach..." category.  

My mentor text bins are not fancy, but they are organized in a way that saves me tons of time and keeps my favorite books to teach specific topics right at my finger tips.  Each book has a piece of card stock in front of it with the title, author and teaching focus on it.  My bins are organized by the order that I would teach specific topics throughout the year.  

I typed a list of all of the books that are currently in my mentor text bins.  I only keep my favorite books in the bins...ones that I know I will use year after year as mentor texts.  I don't want my bins to be cluttered with "maybe" books.  

Here is the list of my favorite mentor texts.  The list is not in any specific order.  You can click on the image below if you'd like to download a copy.

 
 

Currently March & Mentor Text Monday Announcement

It's that time again! I'm linking up with Farley for the March Currently.

Stop by to visit Farley, at Oh Boy 4th Grade, to read about what everyone is currently doing. 

And...stop back here to visit tomorrow for the first linky party in a 4 part series called Mentor Text Mondays. 

 Tomorrow, I will be posting about a few of my favorite mentor texts to use for literacy mini lessons. I will also be sharing a complete list of my favorite mentor texts. I hope you will visit, link up about your favorite literacy mentor texts and then come back over the next few weeks to link up and/or read about math, science and writing mentor texts.

 

Small Moment Writing (mentor texts)

During writer's workshop last week, I started to share small moment stories with my class. Writing small moment stories is one of my favorite things to do for writer's workshop. 

We've done three mini lessons to build up to our small moment stories so far. During those mini lessons I shared 3 of my favorite mentor texts for teaching small moment stories. 

The first one, which is my favorite, is called Salt Hands by Jane Chelsea Aragon. Unfortunately, it is out of print. But, if you watch amazon or ebay, you can often get a used copy for around $30. Believe me, it is worth it! It is the kind of story that makes the kids beg to hear it over and over. This year, my students clapped all three times that I read it to them.

Another great story for modeling small moment writing is Roller Coaster by Marla Frazee.  I use this story for word choice and wrap up sentence (closing) mini lessons at different times throughout the year.  It's also a good story to show how an author builds suspense through writing.  But, I'm stashin' that mini lesson thought away in case I ever get transferred to another grade.  

Fireflies by Judy Brinckloe is another great book to include when teaching mini lessons for small moment stories.  I use it to demonstrate the idea of "zooming in" on a small moment in life.  

I'll be sharing other mentor texts that I use for reader's and writer's workshop in my classroom over the next few weeks.  Last year, I hosted a writer's workshop mentor text linky party.  You can find the old linky party here.  When the linky party was finished, I compiled a list of all the books different bloggers shared.  You can find the post with the list here. I'm planning to do that again to add to the list.  So, watch for the linky party to start sometime next week.  I'd love it if you would link up with your favorite mentor texts!