Monster Writing

 Some of my best ideas are not really planned at all, they just kind of come when inspiration strikes.  I will admit that I'm not the best planner- I could be a tad better.  That's what happened today during our visit to story time.  Our school is reading and voting on the California Young Reader books. Our firsties get to go to the library every Monday and hear another one of the nominees read by our librarian.  After they have listened to all of the books, they will get to vote for the book they liked the best.  They love to hear the results to see if our school picked the book that was chosen state-wide.  Today's book was just too cute and the kids L-O-V-E-D it!  It's called I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll.

It is loaded with great adjectives, which is something we've been working on a lot in writing.  I thouht it would be really cute to have them make their own monster with construction paper and lots of googly eyes of course and then have them write about it.  I'm imagining all the great things they'll come up with for their monsters.  I made the writing paper for their story and will try to post pics of their crazy creatures when they're done.  Click here to get a copy of the writing page. I really need to find out how to embed the link to the image :(

A Little Break

Hello Blogging Friends,
It's been a while since I've posted.  Life just kind of got in the way, as did Pinterest.  I've been so caught up in finding all the cool stuff that everyone else has been up to, that I have neglected my own blog.  In the time that I've been away, I've mostly been creating a lot of resources for my SmartBoard.  Our school used to only have 3 at our site and now, through fundraising efforts of our Parent Teacher Club (which I serve as the treasurer for) we have been able to purchase 6 more this school year.  Did you know that you can use Scholastic dollars from your Book Fair to purchase SmartBoards?  We purchased 2 of the 6 through this option. 

Anyhow, I will be posting many of the lessons that I have created through my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  All of my materials that I have posted there are FREE!  You heard it right- download whatever you want and feel free to "tweak it" however needed to suit your classroom needs.  There are tons of resources out there and I'm a firm believer in not recreating the wheel if you don't have to, but sometimes you just can't find exactly what you're looking for.  This is why I create so many of my own resources.  The one I'm posting today is for "possessive 's". 
It's a lesson we used a little earlier in the year, but the kids enjoyed it and you can always add it to your files for next year, right? 
Have a great week!

Cause and Effect with Charles Tiger

For those of you who use the Houghton Mifflin Reading Series, Charles Tiger is coming up as the BIG Book story for week 3.   I don't know about your kiddos, but mine looooove this story (I think it's just because they get to "roar" at the end when Charles finds his roar.  I made a little thinking map (sort of an adaptation of a multi-flow map) to show cause and effect.  I don't have any kid samples as we have not actually done this yet.  I'm just trying to actually post something before we do it in our class.  Click {HERE} to download. 

Also, a bit of good great news came my way this week.  They have hired a new 1st grade teacher and I will be losing 7- yes, I said 7, kids next week.  I want to feel sad, but truthfully, with 35 in my room I can't feel anything but relieved right now.  Now we will actually be able to walk in the room and not just around the perimeter.  I hope to post some pics of my room next week.  Happy TGIalmostF!

1st Week "Goodies"

Well, we're back in full swing and it is definitely an adjustment.  In 13 years of teaching, this is the most students I have ever had- 35 to be precise.  It is a little overwhelming, but the kids seem to be adjusting a little better now that we are getting to our regular routine.  But truthfully, I think the only reason I'm surviving right now is because I have a tutor (this week only) and a student-teacher in my room ALL day.  They are truly life-savers!

We started our reading program this week (Houghton Mifflin).  I created some printables to go along with our first theme.  Each day my students do a page of seatwork and then they can go to their center for the day.  Each page reinforces the phonics skill for that week.

Here is an example of one of the phonics pages...

{Click here to download "at" page}
{Click here to download "an" page}

I hope everyone's school year is off to a great start and I can't wait to see all the fabulous ideas you all come up with this year!

ABC's of First Grade

So, I'm headed to work for the 1st time this school year and now that I'm officially in "school mode" again, I thought I would share something that a colleague shared with me.  I know this has probably been out there for ages and I apologize for not knowing the original source.
It's the ABC's of 1st grade- an alphabetical listing of classroom and school policies and procedures.  Just modify it to suit the needs of your own classroom and school.  My only concern is that I teach at a school with a large population of ESL learners and many families do not speak English in the home.  This is always a challenge when sending home information.  I hope to get this translated into Spanish, but that may take a little time.  I will review this at our Back-to-School night (which is actually the day before school starts.)
I wish all of you a great start of the new school year!

ABC's of First Grade
   

Is it that Time Already?

It has been a long time since I have posted anything.  Just to bring you up to speed... the end of the year was a bit crazy.  Our district is changing from 2 K-4 schools to 4 K-6 schools.  This meant a lot of movement and just plain chaos- all while trying to wrap up the school year. 
My oldest just graduated high school and is preparing to go into the service (Air National Guard).
About a week after school ended, I taught a 3 week English Language Summer Academy (I only ended up having 12 kids, but it was still school).  Sooooo... by the time that was wrapped up, I was in desperate need for a break- mentally and physically.  I don't know how some of you gals do it.  It seems that some of you have school on the mind 24/7.  I am that way too sometimes, but this year I needed a little "time-out".
Anywhooo, the time has come and it can't be put off any longer.  I had to get my BTS letters sent out and that meant a trip to school.  It was good to see my room and get a "feel" for what needs to be done.  I will try to remember to take pics as I go. 
One of my favorite things (and worth every penny) is fadeless paper.

It really saves me time because it means I don't have to change every bulletin board at the start of every year.  I know at some schools you are required to take EVERYTHING down, but luckily, we are not.

Lastly, I know that this is not new to most of you, but I am loving Pinterest.  Warning! It is extremely addicting (thank goodness I'm still on vacation).

It is great to be able to browse great ideas and "pin" them without having to search the whole web.  It's *genius* really. 

Hope you're all a lot further along in your back-to-school chores than I am.  If not, stop reading these blogs and get busy. :)

Telling Time with Prezi

It's Spring Break for us and I have to admit, I have a bit of spring fever and have not been real motivated to do "school things".  I had a few things I wanted to post last week and time just got away from me. 

Anywhoooo- a few weeks ago, Mrs. M over at The Techy Teacher posted about a free site called Prezi.com.  It allows you to create presentations on the web (kind of like PowerPoint).  So, I created an account and started playing around with it.  It's pretty user friendly and really engaging for the kids.  There's also tons of presentations already made that you can show/use for free.

We were working on telling time at that time (sorry for the redundancy) and so I created a presentation about the parts of a clock and telling time to the hour and half hour.

You can view it here, but I strongly encourage you to go to their site and try one of your own.  If you want to use it in your classroom, it might be better to view it from their site.  Our school computers/ network has lots of filters that make it difficult for us to access blogs and such.  

  I even made a simple one with words spelled with "or" and "ore" just for extra decoding practice.  

Fun, fun, fun!

Telling Time on Prezi



Transportation Lesson for SmartBoard

Transportation Then and Now

I used this lesson a couple weeks ago during our social studies unit on comparing the past and today.  While I like to create things, I don't often like to recreate the wheel if there's something out there that will meet my needs.  This just wasn't the case when it came to transportation.  So, I made a short little SmartBoard lesson to help illustrate how transportation has changed over the years.  It includes a timeline and sequencing activity, a couple of thinking maps, a sorting activity and a graph at the end.

Here's a couple of pics.  I will upload this lesson to TpT (it's free), just as soon as I finish typing this post.

Click here for the link.

Adding a Signature to your Blog

For all of you newbie bloggers like me, I found a really easy way to add a "signature" to the end of your post.  It literally took me about 2 minutes and couldn't have been easier.  It's a few more steps if you want your actual signature because it has to be scanned and all that.  But for right now, I'm pleased.  Just go to My Live Signature and create your own.  It guides you step by step and then just copy the HTML code.  In Blogger, go to "settings", then "formatting" and "Post Template" and copy the code there.  Then just type your regular post above your signature.  Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy!

10 Things I've Learned from Teaching

10 Things I've Learned

Jennifer from Rowdy in First is having a linky party.  It's been wonderful to read these posts from so many teachers and be able to nod your head and think, "I knew I wasn't the only one".  I've taught for 12 years and I know I've learned a lot along the way.  Here are just a few (or 10 to be exact):

1.  No child named "Angel" is ever an angel.  In general, teaching can ruin a lot of perfectly good names.

2.  If anyone deserves Happy Hour on Friday, it's a teacher!

3.  No matter how ready you are for the school year to be over, you will be the same kind of excited for it to begin again in August.

4.  Back-to-School ads create just about the same amount of excitement in me as the Black-Friday ones.

5.  Before-school yard duty is 10 times worse than recess yard duty, even though it's the same amount of time.  I don't know why, it just is.

6.  I've heard/read this many times, but it is one truth I try to remind myself of all the time.  Kids will not remember all the "things" you taught them (in first grade or any other), but they will remember how they felt in your class.  Make it fun!

7.  As much as technology has changed the way we teach, kids still enjoy the simple things like a good picture book and a song.

8.  Your expectations are never as clear as you think they are- kids need LOTS of examples.

9.  Nothing is greater than knowing you've helped give a child the gift of reading.

10.  Teachers will NEVER get paid what they're worth.  Get over it and move on.  Complain about it over a margarita (or two), but then let it go and be the best you can be!

Enjoy your weekend!

Shelly

SmartBoard Lesson for Sounds of Y

Sounds for Y

click here for the download

Thank you Mrs. M at teckyteach.blogspot.com for your suggestion to post this on TpT.  While I'm happy to email any and all of you, it's probably easier to just download it yourself.  I've never posted anything there before, so I hope it all went well.  Please let me know if you are not able to download it and I will happily email the file to you.  I apologize if the pages do not fit your screen.  I've never understood why files created on one computer come up looking different on another computer.  If you know of a way to make the pages a little more universal, I'd love to know.  Thanks for your interest in my lesson.

Shelly

SmartBoard Lesson for Sounds of Y

SmartBoard Lesson

I created a short lesson for the SmartBoard for the vowel sounds of "y".  I am not quite sure how to share these via my blog.  In the meantime, while I try to find a hosting site for this and other files I have for SmartBoard, I am more than happy to email you the file.  The picture shown is just a couple of the pages from this lesson.  I also created a word sort for the pocket chart or small word work center to use for this skill as well.

Hope you have a great Monday.

Shelly

Revised Math Game using Jing

Doubles Plus 1 Math Game

I have been dying to know how to show an image on my blog of something I've created without having to embed a Scribd or GoogleDocs window.  I like the look of this because it shows up on your sidebar and looks more inviting to people checking out your blog.  A teacher friend from school (who really introduced the blogworld to me) told me about a free download called Jing.  (You can visit her blog, My First Year in First Grade, for more great ideas.)  You can take a screenshot of something on your computer and save it as a picture file and then link it to GoogleDocs or wherever you have your file uploaded.  So here is my first try at this.  I thought I would use a file that I already had.  I posted this game and then later realized it had a mistake.  Here is the corrected version.


My kids really liked this game and it was challenging at the same time.  I gave them a small cup of Honeycomb cereal to use for their "markers" while they played.

Money Songs

I LOVE TO SING!  Now, I'm no Kelly Clarkson (not a die-hard fan, but the girl can sing!), but I can carry a tune.  Although, I was once told by one of my kindergarten students that I would not make it Hollywood (on American Idol, of course).  Nevertheless, we sing all day long.  I especially love songs that teach!  Soooo.... I thought I would write a few of my own.  While getting ready to teach money to my kiddos, I was pulling out some money songs and found that I was missing my song for "nickels" and that I didn't much care for the "quarter" song.  Hence, my own collection of money songs written to familiar lyrics, was born.  I typed them big so we can add them to our poem/song folder.  We add to it throughout the year and it provides great practice for fluency as well.


By the way, I desperately want to know how to embed this link without it being so big.  I was hoping for just the picture of the document to show up.  I would love any pointers, if you have them.

Shelly

So Many Giveaways!

I just found a new blog today, and what do you know! She's doing a giveaway.  Mrs. Thiessen at the First Grade Sweet Life is giving away a $20 gift certificate to Scrappin' Doodles.  Don't you just love all the stuff you can get for just a buck- so $20 can go a loooong way!  Head on over today and enter.

And.... if $20 isn't enough, you can enter another great giveaway for a$25 to Scrappin' Doodles. 

This one is being hosted by the ladies at Burst of First and Fantastic First. 

I hope the the luck of the Irish is with me (and you too, of course)!

Sounds of Y Word Sort

This week we are going to be reading words that end with "y".  Students will learn that the letter y can make 2 different vowel sounds when it comes at the end of the word.  I made this word sort activity to help them practice this skill during seatwork/center time.  It includes a sorting mat, the words and a recording page.  Jen Bates also posted a link for a cute little poster about "Tricky Y the robber guy"... too cute. 
Y Word Sort

Have a great week!
Shelly

Tall Tales and Paul Bunyan

This week the main story in our anthology was about Johnny Appleseed, but our read-aloud on Monday/Tuesday was about Paul Bunyan.  I have a lot of EL learners and it took some time explaining what a "tall tale" is and the expression, "stretching the truth".  Nonetheless, they really enjoyed it (the Disney video on American folk heros didn't hurt either) and they wrote some great tall tales of their own. 

I used 12x18 paper and cut it lengthwise.  We did a directed drawing with a black crayon and then colored.  The paper was folded in half so it made it easier for them to keep the top and bottom in proportion.  I told them to make his shirt stop at the middle and make his pants go all the way to the bottom.  They turned out sooo cute!





I had a parent draw lines with a Sharpie for the kids to write their stories so it really would be a "tall" tale.  I gave them some sentence starters to get them going.  Some of the ones we used were, "Did you ever hear about...", "He was so strong..." and their favorite, "When he was a baby..."

Hopefully I'll have the bulletin board up by tomorrow and I'll take another picture of the whole thing.

Happy TGIF(eve)!

Shelly

Pets Linky Party

Ladybug's Teacher Files is hosting a Linky party just for pets.  Right now, it seems like I have more pictures of my dogs than I do of my kids (not to worry, I have lots of pics of them too.)  I never thought I was a dog/pet person before as I did not grow up with any pets (except for a hermit crab, if you can call that a pet).  About a year ago we got a yellow lab puppy, Bailey, and that changed everything.

She obviously doesn't look like this now, but who doesn't love a cute puppy? 

She's a lab (retriever) so her FAVORITE thing to do is play fetch- in the house, in the backyard, wherever!  She's super smart and follows quite a few commands.  She makes me a proud mama!

This is what she looks like now...

She's been to puppy kinder and puppy 1st grade.  She graduated at the top of her class.

We have another dog, Lexie, who's kind of a rescue of sorts.  She is about 8 years old and just loves to be pet and take short slow walks.  She just loves attention of any kind., but is very camera shy.  I must say she has been quite patient with a rowdy puppy around.

I never thought I would be the type to have dogs (big ones at that) in my house, but there you have it.  They are part of the family and we love them to pieces!



Fun with Dr. Seuss

This week was a blast celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday.  Our school has a door decorating contest each year- the theme of course being a favorite Dr. Seuss book.  We took our classes on a tour around campus to view all the doors.  Here are some pictures of some really cute ones (any of these could be adapted to a bulletin board in your class of course).

 These directed drawings were done by Kinders- super cute!

 This door won for Kinder.

 This door won for 4th grade.

 I had never even heard of this book before.

 This door won for 1st grade.

And of course, last but not least, my door.  You know how sometimes you're in it to win it and other times, you're just trying to get it done?  Well, this year was the latter for me.

To top it off, when we got back after looking at all the other doors (I had my ELD group, not my regular class) a little girl asked, "Ms. Asprec, what are those?"  I replied, "They're pockets."  Then she said, "That's what I told her (pointing to girl #2).  She said they were underwear."  LOL! 

I hadn't seen it before, but I see why they would think that.

And.... it wouldn't be a celebration with a little green eggs and ham...

I went with deviled eggs because I thought they were cute and my personal kids LOVE, LOVE, LOVE these things.  My class wasn't too sure.  Here are the results on our picture graph (title and eggs came from Jenn Bates at Finally in First.)

There were soooo many great ideas out there on all the blogs that I think the Seuss celebration is going to have to continue into next week a little. More pictures to come!

Double Delicious Math Game

I made this game closer to Valentine's Day, but not really for that particular holiday.  It took me a little longer than expected to get it laminated and cut and ready to go.  Alas, the kids are playing this week during math centers and are having a blast.  I have tons of wood cubes (old, old math manips that I kept in my room just for making dice) that I used to make 2 dice.  One is for numbers 1-6 and the other is for numbers 7-12.  The kids have to decide which dice they want or need to use to cover one of the numbers on their board.  I have sat with a couple of groups as they played and it's exciting to see how quickly they start to remember the doubles facts during the game.  Hope your kids enjoy it as much as mine!
Double Delicious Game Board