New Year's Resolution Writing FREEBIE and Firework Craft

The first few weeks back from Winter Vacation can always be . . .  interesting. I love the idea of goal setting during January and how better to do that than with resolution writing! I've attached a link to the writing paper FREEBIE if you are interested in doing this with your class sometime this month. Look for it at the bottom of this post. 

First we read a Shared Reading book from Reading A-Z ( I LOVE that website!!) about New Year celebrations around the world. We typically do a workshop model, but the first week back we do a whole group book all week. 

The last page was about resolutions, a great transition! After we read the book, I modeled for students how I would write a resolution. Their learning target was "I can write a resolution using the writing process and the capitalization and punctuation rules I know." The first step in the writing process is pre-writing so we made a large class list of some resolution ideas. 

The second step is writing your first draft. I saw this great idea on someone's blog (I forgot who, but if you know who, let me know so I can credit them please!) about writing first drafts on whiteboards so because this was a small, one or two sentence writing project, the whiteboards worked great for first drafts!

Then they had their partner peer edit. Finally I looked it over and gave them their final draft paper once they had fixed any capitalization or punctuation errors. They wrote their resolutions and they turned out so well!

To make it more fun and to incorporate art, we also finger painted fireworks and then glued our writing onto the fireworks. Fireworks are a custom in many culture's New Year Celebration so we watched some videos of fireworks and then they were able to finger paint their own. I taught pre-k for 4 years and did this finger painting firework craft with them, but my 2nd graders loved it too! I pulled small groups of 5 kids over to the table to paint while everyone one else was working through the writing process. This was efficient and made managing 23 kids finger painting much more doable. 

I also like reading "The Night Before New Year's" Natasha Wing because it is so cute and follows a similar pattern to the Night Before Christmas. I'd love to hear about your New Year ideas!!

Anyhoo, here is the link to the FREEBIE and I hope you had a great New Year's!!

New Year's Resolution Writing Paper FREEBIE

Space Week: A Vocabulary Writing Craft FREEIBE and a Sale!

My students love learning about space! They are so curious about how the universe works and the awe they have at the size of things is exciting to watch. Our Reading Street story a few weeks ago was an informational text about space. My students were very excited! I love teaching informational text, but vocabulary is often the hardest part of non-fiction to teach. Yeah, it's easy to get kids to memorize definitions for a test, but to really get students to deeply understand and make connections with vocabulary words is another story. I have about 40% ELL (Engligh Language Learners) in my classroom so this makes effective vocabulary instruction even more critical. 

Lucky for me space vocabulary lends itself well to acting out and physical movements related to content is one of my favorite ways to teach. We had students ascending and descending from desks, orbiting around friends, and investigating tools! Once I felt like my students really understood the astronaut space vocabulary, I wanted them to demonstrate their knowledge with a writing prompt. Vocabulary writing can be a great assessment tool. I wanted to spice it up though and what better way to do that than with a craft! I came up with my Astronaut Vocabulary Writing Craftivity. 

First students wrote about what they would do if they were an astronaut on this space themed handwriting paper. Then they made an astronaut out of a paper plate, one of the best craft materials in the world I think. I gave them some black construction paper, crayons, and start stickers and the end product was not only adorable but a great way for me to assess their learning. 

I want to share this project with you so I just posted it as a FREEBIE! Astronaut Vocabulary Writing and Craft FREEBIE

To celebrate the end of October and the beginning of the most wonderful time of the year, I am hosting a 10% off sale in my Teachers Pay Teachers store through Tuesday, October 28th! Happy end of October! Go here for the sale Mrs. Grisham's TPT Store

Iris and Walter: Urban and Rural Communities plus a Vocabulary Power Point FREEBIE

The first unit in my Reading Street Curriculum was "Iris and Walter" by Elissa Haden Guest.

Despite the current movement away from basal readers, I actually am really loving my Reading Street curriculum right now because it not only has great stories, but I am totally able to use the anthology as a shared reading basis for my Reading Workshop which is awesome!! I'm planning on posting about how I incorporate the reading curriculum with the workshop model soon.

Anyhoo, the main social studies concept from this unit was the concept of rural vs urban communities. Iris moves from the city and finds country life to be sad and boring until she finds a new friend, Walter.

After reading the textbook story, I gathered some pictures from good ole Google Image of urban and rural communities around the world. We went through the slideshow together, pointing out things we saw that were similar and different about the various pictures. Then, while the power point was on repeat cycle, students worked with their reading partner to find similarities and differences between rural and urban communities. Then the kiddos brought their sticky notes down to the rug and we learned about Venn Diagrams using their sticky note ideas (Sticky Notes are one of my favorite formative assessment strategies!!) If I was more on top of it, I would have had blue in the middle (Yellow and green make blue, duh!) but maybe next year! Also, the sticky notes were not very sticky so the pictures aren't fabulous, but you can see the work!

Here is what some of the smart little kiddos came up with.

Rural: "People, cars, skyscrapers"

"Cow, horses, houses, school buses"

"Pigs, horses"

Urban: "A lot of people and buildings"

"Cars, skyscrapers, Space Needle"

"Urban places have subways and skyscrapers"

"A lot of houses"

Both: "Houses, ambulances"

"Trees, schools, houses"

"Buses, schools"

"Moms, dads"

Students then did a word sort of urban and rural vocabulary words in their reading response journals and we read two of my favorite books about this topic. We of course read "Town Mouse and Country Mouse" by Jan Brett.

And one of my favorite books of all time, "The Little House" by Virginia Lee Burton. I would spend hours staring at the fabulous illustrations in this book when I was a child so I of course wanted to share it with my class. Oh nostalgia!

We also read Scholastic News which had a whole issue related to this vocabulary issue! The issue compared and contrasted urban, suburban, and rural schools. I get Scholastic News for my students every year and there is some weird sort of Scholastic News Magic where their issues almost always coincide with what we are learning about in class. Plus, they are aligned to Common Core now which is fabulous!! I love Scholastic News!

I'd love to share my Rural and Urban Power Point and Social Study Word Sort with you for FREE!! Find it here Rural or Urban Vocabulary Mini-Unit FREEBIE

Happy Day!

FREEBIE: Chevron Pattern CAFE/Daily 5 Bulletin Board Signs

After attending the Daily 5/Cafe Training Workshop, I just couldn't wait to get started implementing this fabulous framework in my classroom. First on the list to make was a CAFE/Daily 5 Bulletin Board. My classroom decoration colors are light blue, purple, lime green, and yellow. I couldn't really find anything that fit exactly what I wanted so I made these signs and wanted to share with you for FREE!! I'm working on making rotation cards for the Daily 5 centers next, yay!! I'd love to see your Daily 5 bulletin boards. Share your pics in the comments!

FREEBIE: Chevron Cafe/Daily 5 Bulletin Board
Don't forget to grab your freebie!

Digital Chevron Paper Pack FREEBIE

I've been working on my CAFE and Daily 5 stuff for my classroom. Here is a sneak peek! 

I'm really digging the Chevron pattern lately so I wanted to use Chevron Patters as part of my CAFE headers. I know you all love Chevron pattern too so here is a  Chevron Digital Paper Pack FREEBIE!! It has all the rainbow colors;red, yellow, orange, green, blue, and purple digital papers for personal or commercial use. Use them to liven up bulletin boards, worksheets, scrapbooks, blogs and more!

 Happy Day!

Jenn
Fun and Fabulous in First Grade

Bee Themed Classroom plus Bee themed Nametag FREEBIE!!

 After finally getting my classroom somewhat organized Moving into a Messy, Chaotic Classroom, uggh!), I decided to take a break and make some fun but useful items for my classroom. Besides my Happy Birthday Bulletin Board, my most favorite thing so far is my Good BEEhavior Chart. What I love about this chart is that is allows students to easily self-monitor their behavior with a visual reminder. I also love the bright yellow color and the fun, whimsical theme of bees which I've incorporated into my classroom decoration theme (post about classroom decoration/organization to come in late August when I can get back into my classroom, yay!).

How it works:
1) The first week of school I will have each student make a clip with a pom-pom bee on the end. I call them over to my teacher table during free choice time.
2) All students start each day on Ready to Learn.
3) When they show good behavior, they get to move their clip up. It is critical that students do the majority of their clip moving. If the teacher is always doing it, the student will not make the connection between their behavior and the chart.
4) If they are not showing good behavior, they are asked to move their clip-down. Again, it is crucial that the students move their own clips.
5) Clips can be moved up and down all day in my classroom. This allows students the incentive to correct behavior if they know they can clip back up.
6) I have a system of rewards and consequences that go with each level. I have a detailed description of this system in my Good BEEhavior Classroom Management Pack 

In this pack is all the printables you'll need to implement this system as well behavior tracking sheet for student folders, rules posters, name-tags, writing paper, 3 different calendar cover-ups, and good behavior certificates! If you are using a bee theme in your classroom or are looking for an updated management tool, I think this will make a cute and useful addition!! 

                             

As part of my excitement for this unit, I have uploaded my first FREEBIE! These adorable bee themed nametags for your student desks. Just click on the link below to download. Enjoy and Happy Day!

Bee Nametag FREEBIE