Day 42- Count Down! 5.....

This is the Monday before FALL BREAK! The kids are excited, and so are the teachers! However, it's not a time to slack off. There is still work to be done, so let's get to it!

We started a new schedule today. We started TIER II intervention for students who are below grade level in reading. TIER II is different from regular reading groups, it is an extra 30 min of reading intervention. Since I still have some students who need to work on letter recognition and letter sounds, that is what we are working on, along with recognizing sight words.
Today we worked on sight word recognition using an I Like Ponds printable I found HERE at the 1+1+1=1 website. My students made the little book and we practiced the words I, like, ponds, frogs, turtles, ducks, dragonflies, snails, fish.

After TIER II we moved into math. That's right, math. We swapped our reading and math time, and I love it! The kids' minds are so fresh in the morning! Today we worked on Parts of 10. We sat on the carpet (our new favorite place for math) used our unifix cubes and HAD A GOOD TIME!

Now, granted, we have worked on this material for a while now, but there is just something about being able to veg out on the floor while "playing" with cubes that made this math time more engaging. After the lesson, we extended our 10's learning by playing a math game for Cub Cash.

During whole group reading we classified nouns. Last week we made this handy-dandy chart using the Shurley Method noun jingle.

Little did I know... the noun rule has been changed! Not only do nouns name people, places and things (and ideas, but we don't touch that in first grade) now nouns classify... animals! My students were right! When we were making the chart my students kept trying to tell me that animals are separate, but I always thought that animals fit in the "things" category. Well, I was wrong. I can admit it.
Our new list, which we will be adding to all week, includes animals in its own category.

The nouns we added were from the teacher read- aloud and our social studies lesson. In social studies we are learning about the animals and landforms of Australia!

My students were very proud of their work today during centers. I have to admit, I liked having students doing their center work in the afternoon. In the afternoon my students are wiggly and it's hard to keep their focus. With centers they are allowed to whisper (as long as they are constructive) and most of my centers allow for movement.

She wanted to share what she wrote in her center. Team 1's center included some vocabulary pictures. They were to use the anchor charts around the room to either write sentences about the pictures, or create a story around the picture.

Both of these ladies chose the same picture to write about. One wrote sentences using descriptive words, the other wrote a story.

This gentleman wrote about a waterfall. He is one of my best writers!

These ladies used their Spell Texters to read-and-write the room. They had to practice their spelling words and new story vocabulary first.

Read, Build, Write cards. I used the topic of Birds this week.

 These are the new sight words and vocabulary words for this week. On the right we have special vocabulary: How to Speak Australian. One of our texts we are going to use this week is the song Waltzing Matilda. It's full of fun Australian terms! I wrote down the terms form the song and tomorrow we are going to talk about the possibilities of their meanings. My students laughed so hard as we went through these!

To introduce Australia to my students today, we went through a Power Point I had made 2 years ago for my second grade class. (we were studying different countries) The kids liked getting to choose what they learned about first. (feel free to check out the Power Point by clicking on the link) The pictures I used were mostly from Google and you can see from where they originated.

After looking at the Power Point and going through the links, students were told to choose an animal that they learned about and write at least 3 sentences about that animal. Of course this was after we added the animals to our nouns board. Most of my students chose a kangaroo, but one students stepped out of the box and chose the Eastern Barred Bandicoot.

 

 Our Daily Brain