Fun with Telling Time!

We have been spending a lot of time working on telling time and the kids have gotten really good at the hour and half hour.  

When we first looked at the clock, we talked about the hands and I did this neat way of teaching the hands to the kids that came from teachertipster.com

Then we learned this cute little rhyme by teachertipster.com.

After learning the rhyme and practicing with some clocks, we moved to our desks and drew the clock.  Then we used licorice to show various times.  They were excited to do this because they knew that if they worked hard and followed directions, they would get to eat some licorice at the end. 

Next, we played our connect four game to practice telling time.  

Then, we played our I Have Who Has Game to practice telling time.

Finally, we used played scoot to practice telling time.

The kids are now doing great at telling time and we had fun learning how to tell the time!

Have a great week!

TEAM Homework, Scoot, Math Games, Vowel Town, and Extra Fun Thing!!

Another week has passed and we are starting to get a routine down.  I always forget how many things there are to teach at the beginning of the year on just the routines.  I wanted to share a few things that we worked on this week:

1.  TEAM Homework-We started homework this week and the kids were so excited.  I use the Team Homework approach that was found on TPT by Teacher's Clubhouse.  I love it!  The kids can play math games with a deck of cards, read, practice sight words and spelling words from a sight word/spelling menu and/or do writing from a writing menu.  When they do one of these they put a star by what they did.  At the end of the week, we add up how many stars the class gets.  The kids were so excited to tell me on Friday how many stars they had gotten.  We ended up having a total of 61 stars....YAY!!  That was a lot considering I have a low number of students in class this year.  We will try to beat that number next week.  Here is what their homework folders look like:

2.  I introduced the kids to scoot with tally mark scoot.  They loved it and the fact that they are up out of their seats and moving is even better.  I placed the cards around the room and they went around the room and wrote down the answers.  

3.  We are still working on how to be a good partner and using our spy voices (whisper voice).  We practiced with a math game.  

4.  Vowel Town-We use Pathways to reading, so I have the vowel town on the mimio and the kids had to race to put the vowels back where they belonged.  They had fun doing this and it was a great way to practice our vowel town.  

5.  Extra Fun Thing-the kids that have all their work done and haven't moved their clip down too many times get to participate in an extra fun thing at the end of the day on Friday.  This week, we made slime!  They thought this was so fun!

Have a great weekend!

Making Progress :)

21 days of school and I'm starting to get a little bit of a routine down.  You have probably figured out from my past posts that I really like to have routines established and my schedule running smoothly....ha! ha! ha!....like schedules ever run smoothly.  Anyways, I am so excited to share some of the progress of my first graders this year.  Thanks to our wonderful Kindergarten teachers, the first graders come in knowing what is expected of them and it doesn't take as long to get them into a routine.  So below is some of the routines that we are starting to establish:

1.  Partner reading-We are training for the Daily 5 and one of the rotations is read to someone.  We have discussed EEK-sitting elbow to elbow-knee to knee  (which they at first took literally and were trying to make sure their elbows were actually touching LOL!).  We also talked about always using our magic finger to follow along and that we can be a good teacher and help our partners out if they don't know a word.  

Love seeing the magic fingers following along in the book!

Nice EEKing!  Looks like they were still trying to really be touching elbow to elbow, knee to knee.  LOL!

Great teaching going on here.  This boy didn't even tell his partner the word.  He was helping by covering up some of the word and having his partner sound it out!  YAY!

2.  Read to Self-we have been practicing read to self for the Daily 5 and we made it 15 minutes at the end of the week!!!  YAY!  Sorry, I was focused on watching them to make sure they were reading that I didn't capture any pictures of it.  :-(

2.  Scoot-We worked on playing the game scoot with telling time to the hour.  We will need to practice on this one a little more.  Going to different desks was a little challenging, but the more we did it the better they got.  I found these cute cards and recording sheet from Teaching With Heart in Texas:

Recording the time

Scooting!

3.  Playing our short i connect four game.  We have been learning to play our connect four games and making sure we use a level 1 voice.  By level 1 we talk about it being almost like a whisper.  They have gotten better at this....it is hard at times because they get excited when they are close to getting a connect four.  They are already asking me when they get to play this game again. (I love it when they enjoy something that is educational). 

 

4.  Homework-we started a new homework system that comes from Amanda at Teaching Maddeness.  The kids love it and I have had parents writing notes to me saying that they are loving it as well.   The class is trying to earn stars for their homework every week and last week we got 94 stars and we decided as a class that our goal was to get more than that this week.  So, this week they made 133 stars-WOW!  If you haven't seen the homework system that she started, you should check it out.

                              

5.  Morning Routine-the students have started to follow the board every morning and follow our daily morning routine.  Crystal made some cute cards that we laminated and put magnetic tape on the back of it and just put up the ones you want for the day.  

                             

These are just a few of the things that we have been doing and making progress on!  I can't wait to start our Daily 5 and get more routines down.  

Have a great week!