My kids this year are SO very much into non-fiction stories. I LOVE IT!!! We started our week of apples with a KWL. I set out this little KWL and fill it out with the kids as we go along… After reading a few short non-fiction books about apples, we filled out the “What You LEARNED” apple and had the… Read More
Word Helper Strategies
I originally saw these darling Word Helper strategy cards on the First Grader At Last blog and knew I had to have them!!! My kids are seriously OBSESSED with word strategies now! Every time they get stuck on a word, I’ll hear someone say, “think Stretchy Snake!” OR, “don’t forget Fly Eye!” I changed up a few little things to… Read More
Reader’s Response ~ The Big Orange Splot
What a random little book find! Have you ever read The Big Orange Splot by D. Manus Pinkwater?! I never had until one of the girls on our team was telling us about it a few weeks ago. It’s a cute little story about people who live on a street where ALL the houses look EXACTLY the same until one… Read More
Growing or Repeating?!
When we talk about skip counting with our kids, we explain how the numbers “grow”. Before we get too deep into “growing numbers”, we illustrate this concept by talking about growing patterns. Since my kids were having a little trouble understanding the difference between growing and repeating, we practiced the concept every morning {quickly} during our morning meeting and then… Read More
Brag Tags
I mentioned Brag Tags in an earlier post and received a few questions asking about them. The Brag Tags are sponsored by our AWESOME PTA and organized by our school counselor. Every student in the school gets brag tags. They all start the year out with a grade level tag. Here’s First Grade’s first brag tag… Darling, right?! I… Read More
Draft Book Publishing
My kids write in their draft books almost every day during our Writer’s Workshop block. Every Tuesday, I have publishing moms that come in and take the kids one-by-one to help them publish one of their writing pieces into a little book they can keep in their book baskets to read at different times. Hopefully by the end of the… Read More