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!

Cute Little Pigs for Short I

This week in reading we were working on the short vowel i sound.  My co-teacher found this very cute art project at Kiddie Crafts 365 Blog that we decided to have the kids make.  We named the pigs-ICKY IGBY the Pig.  The kids had a blast with it and of course any time you bring out the paints, their eyes get big and they become very excited.  :-)  Although, I will say that I had some of the kids that didn't want their Igby Pig to be Icky.  They decided that they wanted her to stay clean.  Therefore, some of them were ICKY and some were just a clean Igby. 

 

The kids did a good job on them.  Here they are:

 

 

Next week, we are going to be working on l blends.  I have been trying to find a fun way to introduce them, but haven't been able to find much on l blends.  Any ideas?  How do you introduce and teach them? 

 

I'm also very excited because we will be ready to launch and start our Daily 5 next week.  We have been in training the last few weeks and they are ready to start it up!  YAY!  They have been doing a great job with it!  It has helped because our Kindergarten teachers did it last year with them, so they already knew how it works.  We just had to have a refresher course.  :-)  So, I'm hoping for a successful full week of Daily 5 next week! 

 

Hope all of you have a wonderful weekend!