Short /U/ Pumpkins RTR and some visualizing!

Can I just say that I absolutely LOVE blogging!  Boy how boring would teaching be without great ideas from others.   I have to admit that although some things are my original ideas, most of the stuff I post about is things I have found on other blogs and just had to share. 

  This past week, we have been working on the short u sound in Reading.   Before we start each new sound for the week, I head over to Youtube and see if they have any videos from Hooked on Phonics for that sound.  Here is the one for short u and trust me your kiddos will love it.   Mine can't wait to hear it every day.

I also created a little read the room activity with short /u/ pumpkins.  I saw this on First Grader At Last and just had to do it!  Here are the pumpkins I made for my room and the recording sheet I made to go along with it.

Short /u/ RTR Recording Sheet

Our skill was visualizing for last week too!  I found so many great things on Pinterest for this skill.  The kids totally got the skill after these activities.  The first one we did was "The Green Giant" from Mrs. Williamson's Kinders.  They turned out so cute and so very different which was one thing I really emphasized to my kids.  Not everyone sees the same image.

The other visualizing activity we did was during our station time and sorry I don't have a picture of that but I do have the printable I created for it.  I saw this idea on Snippets By Sarah but I tweaked it a little to be more kid friendly for my kiddos.  I used the poem by Ding-A-Ling by Jill Egglton because it had words I knew my kids could sound out on their own.  Here is what we did...

Mental Image Printable

Enjoy Ladies!!!

Hocus...Pocus....Fairy Tale Fun!

We did our week long Fairy Tale unit the last week in October and I wanted to share a few things we did for fun.  Sorry there are no pics...I totally forgot my camera.

First, we read Rapunzel and did this great activity I found at Mrs. Tabb's First Grade Awesomeness .  The kids loved making the tower with the long hair.  We did make a little bit of change to our tower.  We wrote the things we would do in the tower and created one person we would let climb up our hair to hang out with.  They were cracking me up with who they would let climb up their hair.

Next, we read Cinderella and created her a new slipper that would definitely not fall off as she was leaving the castle.  I got this idea from Amy Lemons blog.  My kiddos came up with the same kind of ideas just like her kiddos.  Many of them created sticky shoes or fancy shoes with laces.  Every girl's dream!

Then, we read The Three Little Pigs and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and discussed the differences between the two.  We also talked about the different points of view from which the stories were written and who we thought was actually telling the truth.  I told my kids we were going to make wanted posters for the pigs or wolf, whoever they thought was lying.  They did such a great job!

Wanted Poster

The last thing we did was discuss our favorite fairy tale of the week.  We read so many that it was very hard for them to choose just one but most of them liked Hansel and Gretel.  I think it is mainly because they had never heard it before.  I created this little sheet for them to review their favorite fairy tale and they did an excellent job.

Fairy Tale Review

Hope you all can use some of this stuff!  Sorry it is late for those of you who have already done it!

Remodeling Noun Town!

As I mentioned in my previous post, my class made a Noun Town for one of my observations this year.  Our town turned out great...especially once we created proper nouns for all of our common nouns. 

Since we were down with Nouns, I hated to trash our town so I hung on to it and I am so glad I did!  We moved on to verbs after nouns and we began a little remodel on our town.  First we watched this School House Rock video on Verbs...which they LOVED!

Next, we went to Noun Town and did a little remodeling.  We went through the town and talked about all of the verbs/actions we could do at each stop.  They thought this was just madness that we could do so much in our little town...it was super funny!  I have attached the verb pows we made in our town.

 



Verb POWS!

After we went through our town, I gave each child an action card (I cannot take credit for this idea...my co-worker did it for her observation).  Without talking, each child had to act out their card and find their partner in the room.  I don't think I have ever laugh so hard!  It was hilarious!

Action Cards!



After the action cards, I told the students we were going to create our very own action heroes (thanks to The Teacher Wife).  They were SUPER excited!  We made a circle map and discussed all of the actions a hero can do.  Then, we created our own heroes and let's just say they are MEGA cute!

Sorry I don't have the hero to download.  I had to free hand it from a picture I found online but check out The Teacher Wife...she has printables in her TPT store.

Here's a close up!

I know this seems like a lot to do in one lesson but it went super fast I promise.  Enjoy!

Noun Town!

This year, our school district adopted this new teacher evaluation system.  So, for my first observation I chose to do Noun Town.  Now, I have seen several different Noun Towns on Pinterest which is where I got my inspiration from.  I started our Noun Town by giving each student an index card and a plain sheet of white paper.  The index card had nouns on them that we would see around town.  I told the students to create the noun listed on their card.  They turned out so great! 

Here is our cute little town.

For my observation, we went through our town and made everything a proper noun.  We talked about how proper nouns are more specific and start with a capital letter.  I let each student take their common noun they made and tell me a proper noun to replace it.  They were so good at thinking of proper nouns.  It was a great visual to have!

Don't ya love the Goodwill...lol!

Check out the Chinese lanterns in our Chef Wang's...too cute!

I created some extra practice pages for morning work and they could totally find all the nouns.  Thanks to all of you bloggers out there for your great idea of Noun Town!



This one is both common and proper.



This one is common nouns only.



Day late dollar short....Subtraction and missing addends!

Boy oh boy... talk about some craziness!  I have been swamped with so much here lately, I have neglected my blog so BADLY.  Please forgive me!  Hope these next few posts and freebies make up for it.

So back like a month ago we taught some subtraction.  LOL!  Just like I did for addition, I made an anchor chart with key words used for subtraction as well as an independent anchor chart for my students to complete.  They are doing fantastic with subtracion! 



Click Here!





Click Here!

After subtraction we went into missing addends and when I searched high and low for stuff dealing with it, I couldn't find a thing.  So I began creating my own powerpoints for missing addends and my kiddos did very well grasping the concept.  The first one I made was about how to be a good detective to find the missing addends.  We talked about the many ways we could look for missing addends, such as we might just know the fact or we could use a number line/fact bracelet.  This was a great visual for my kids and helped them greatly.

 


Click on the here to download the powerpoint!

 

The second powerpoint I made was just some practice finding missing addends.  My kids LOVED trying to guess what was behind the magic curtain...lol!




Click on the here to find the powerpoint!

 

Hope you enjoy!!!