faulker099

Hello Everyone! We are 6 days away from one of our most exciting days...The 100th day of school!! We take that day very seriously! And why not??  To young kiddos, 100 is kind of magical.  We have been counting every day since the first day of school in August. We have some fun things planned for next week, and I know I've shared a lot of what we do already, but I wanted to quickly share my updated unit.  It includes poetry, word work, tons of math, fun activities and a new book idea.   100 Snowmen by Jen Arena has become my new fav. for the 100th day.  It's all about snowmen and math, but the illustrations are a hoot!  I can't wait to share it with my kiddos!! My 100th Day Unit includes some activities to go along with 100 Snowmen .  Here's a sampling from the updated version!! For your own printable 60 page unit for the 100th day, simply click HERE!! :) On another note, my thoughts and prayers go out to all those in the northeast who are having to de...

Hello Everyone! As teachers we should constantly be evolving.  I was reminded of that this week by my teammate.  We were working on our retelling using our story spoons. She mentioned that she included another part to the retelling...the author's purpose.  She, of course, is right.  We had briefly talked about that in the past few weeks, but I did not include that in my retelling charts, posters, or hands on visual tools. Retelling is an important part of detecting comprehension skills in our young readers, and the kids did a great job of including all the necessary parts of retelling a fiction piece, but I needed to revisit my unit to include author's message.  Before I share that, I want to show some quick pics of our work on retelling so far. We reviewed all the different parts of a fiction story and I introduced the colored symbols we will use to remind us of all the parts. We had kind of a snow theme going on last week, so I used the symbols as buttons on o...

Hello Everyone! Friday was one of our favorite days!  We finished up learning about Martin Luther King, Jr., and living and nonliving things. I love the passion the kids have for learning about important people from our nation's history.  Making it relevant to them can sometimes be a challenge. Our class is so diverse as far as ethnicity goes, the kids can't even begin to imagine what life was like in the 60's. For the past 9 or 10 years, I've been able to use this object lesson to bring home the lesson learned through MLK. Get as many different kinds of apples as you can find, or even have kids bring in their favs.  Talk about how different each apple looks in color, shape, size, texture. Then begin slicing the apples in half horizontally. The kids will be amazed at the formation of a star on the inside of each and every one.  Just like people- We all look different on the outside and are beautiful stars on the inside!! I am so thankful these sweet kids really under...

Hello Everyone! I love helping first graders express themselves through writing. For me, the first semester of first grade is all about creating a safe environment for them to feel comfortable putting their thoughts down on paper. We work on all the different ways to incorporate written expression into our day. I just love when one of my little would rather write than do anything else!   Well we are now all about making our great writing even better...That means editing. I don't know about you, but it has been my experience that kids do not like going back to fix anything in their writing! Does anyone truly love editing?   Hence the challenge, making editing engaging. After researching and trying different things and I think I finally came up with something that the kids can understand, use, and grow.  We  compared different pieces and rated them.  We will use them as rubrics to compare our own writing. We learned about a few first grade friendly editing marks. ...