Anchors Away!

I love anchor charts - last year I had them, but didn't use them. This year, my goal is to actually refer to them (easier said than done!). I'm hoping that if I get in the habit of making them and using them, it will continue to get better.

The Writer's Workshop has the steps students follow during our Writer's Workshop block. They really like the "Warm Up Your Brain" step!

Writer's Workshop Anchor Chart

One of my favorite professional books is Debbie Miller's Reading with Meaning. It has a lot of good and practical info on how to teach comprehension strategies to elementary students. It's funny hearing my 5-year-olds talk about their schema...but they definitely understand it!

The pictures on the right are student drawings after reading a book about kids playing. For this particular one, I asked them to visualize the page about having fun dressing up with red items (can't remember which book I read though!).

Reading Strategy - Visualize Anchor Chart

If You Take a Mouse to the Movies

I love Laura Numeroff books. The nice thing about this book was that most of my kids hadn't read it - so they really enjoyed listening to the story.

We read the story and then did a word sort with "P" and "M" words together. Students then did the sort on their own. We made a mouse craft and finished a predictable chart "I would take a mouse to _____________". It turned out really cute! 

Mouse Craft


For math, we strung popcorn numbers (1-30) with partners! The kids had fun. My hope next year is to have a paper tree large enough to hang up the popcorn strings when we are finished!

A special thanks to the First Grade Parade Blog for the inspiration!

Patterns, Patterns Everywhere

My kiddos finished a pattern unit recently. One of the ways we actually explored using the pattern block pieces was with these cards. Students pick a task card and create a design with that number of pattern blocks. Print, laminate, cut and place with your pattern blocks - you're good to go!

 

Pattern Block Cards