Writer’s Workshop Anchor Charts

I’ve always been a big fan of writing. I love to see the progress my kids make throughout the year…it’s always so remarkable!! No matter what stage they’re at when I get them, they always grow. Even a *little* growth is A LOT! I was excited to start Writer’s Workshop this week. Even though I love teaching writing, I always feel like this is an area where I can improve. I mapped out this week’s writing plans to a T and so far, we’re off to a great start!

My littles were excited to get their draft books on Monday. I had some advanced writers, a few reluctant writers, and everything in between. On Tuesday, we talked about WHY writers write and made an anchor chart with all of our ideas…

Then we read Click, Clack, Moo and talked about why the animals & farmer in the story wanted to write.

We revisited our anchor chart today and made another. Today we learned all about WHAT writers write. I brought in a few examples of things I write…grocery list, to do list, thank you note…and showed them my blog{s} and my email, too! It was fun to see their little wheels turning realizing there are LOTS of reasons we write…not just to write stories!!!

After I showed them examples of all of my writing, we made another little anchor chart all about WHAT writers write…

I’m hanging all of these up in our little “Do you have a writer’s eye?” center area.

LOVING our Writers Workshop time so far!!!

Tomorrow we’ll be creating a “What Can Writer’s Write About?” anchor chart and making our maps of our hearts. I was inspired by these awesome heart maps I found via Pinterest {click on the pic to take you to the original source}.

On Friday, I’ll be passing out their mini offices and we’ll be decorating our draft books and celebrating our first full week of writing!!!

I’d love to hear about any fun activities you do to kick off writing in your classroom!!

Happy Wednesday!!

Place Value, MLK, and Snowmen!

First things first…I’m a fool! Y’all. I’m blushing red with embarrassment. For those of you who have purchased my Place Value Mystery Pictures…and those of you who have downloaded the free preview…I apologize. One of my firsties pointed out a HUGE mistake on the 100’s Chart this morning. There’s an 81 where there should be a 90!!! Yikes-a-bee! See…I TOLD you! Pregnancy brain strikes again…and I’m not even preggo! You can download the corrected 100’s chart by clicking on the pic below :)

SO sorry!!

Speaking of place value, here’s a fun little activity I made for my kids to do in their math tubs last week. It’s a snowman place value spinner!

Graphics courtesy of Digi Web Studio

Last week we were working on place value with teen numbers, so that’s what this particular activity reinforces. The kids spin the spinner on the middle portion of the snowman and collect that amount of ones cubes...or whatever kind of counter you want! Then they spin the spinner on the bottom portion of the snowman and collect the same amount of ones cubes as well. Then they count their cubes and see if they can make a set of ten. I always tell them, “If you can make a 10, trade it in!!!”. Then they grab a tens rod, place their base 10 blocks on the place value workmat accordingly, and then fill out the corresponding recording sheet. Y’all…they LOVED it!!!!

I LOVED our week of snowman fun!! It was absolutely the PERFECT week to learn about snowmen because it snowed like crazy last week {only 1 day} and the kids were SO excited! I took A LOT of ideas and activities from Deanna Jump’s Snowman Math & Literacy Unit. LOVED IT!!! It’s not too late, so if you don’t have yours yet, go grab it!

We read one of my favorites, Snowmen at Night, and imagined what it would be like to be a snowman in that story. I had the kids write about what they would do at night if they were a snowman and then create their DARLING snowmen with marshmallows & white paint! LOVED that idea!!

I originally saw these cutie snowmen on What the Teacher Wants and bookmarked it for this occasion! Rachelle said that they used black paint & tiny marshmallows to create the buttons & the face, but I just had the kids use construction paper for everything…except the white! They just dipped the marshmallow into the white paint and used it like a stamp.

Now…y’all PUH-leeze take a look at mister mister’s writing below. MERCY!! This one is a RIOT!!! I’m nervous to send it home :) And this just makes me wonder what the heck my boys will be writing about when they’re in school! HA!!

I also had the kids write a 4-step how-to on building a snowman. They had to use the words first, then, next, and last at the beginning of each of their sentences. Then they got to create their snowmen using construction paper. They all turned out SO different and I love that!

I had a lot of different writing activities for the kids to work on at the writing station this week. They couldn’t wait to finish one thing so they could move on to the next. They were really engaged and I was so proud of their writing! No pics of samples, but you can download the pack below.

Graphics courtesy of Digi Web Studio

And here’s one of several activities my kids did at word work…build-a-blend snowmen! Really…it was just a word to picture match, but we were working on blends this week and this just fit perfectly.

Click HERE to download your copy of the snowman blends.

And finally, I just wanted to share with you our sweet little MLK writing. We read a few non-fiction stories about Dr. King and the kids were TRULY shocked to hear about the way things used to be. It was really precious to hear their sweet hearts talking about how sad it must have been to live in a world where ALL people weren’t treated equally. We brainstormed words and phrases to sum up what we learned about MLK.

I showed the kids a snippet of his famous , “I Have A Dream” speech on Montage. Although it was hard for the kids to really hear…and understand…what he was saying, it was really powerful to show them how many people were there the day he gave his speech. Then I told them they had to write about their dreams…the kind of dream that’s in your heart, not your head.

I did this with my 2nd graders last year and I LOVED it. I got the original idea from one of my favorite websites, Little Giraffes. Here’s the LINK for the TLC directed art.

We also did this AWESOME egg activity with the kids. I originally found this idea on Teaching Heart. I did this with my kids a bit differently than she did with hers, but it made the same point. I showed them the brown egg & the white egg and we talked about the similarities and differences between the two. The only big difference being color. Then I went behind my easel, broke the two eggs, and brought them back out for the kids to see and asked them if they could tell which yolk was from the brown and which was from the white. Of course, NO ONE could tell! About that time, one of my firsties spoke up and said, “So…the eggs are like people. Dr. King knew that everybody was really alike and the only thing that was different was the color of our skin, so that’s why he thought that things were unfair.” Ding! Ding! Ding! I LOVE this activity…and I love my little GT kids who help the rest of us “get it” :)

In other news, I’ll be adding a Place Value Activity Packet to TPT tomorrow…Wednesday at the latest! It will include 15 games, workmats, printables, and ideas for you to use with your kids…and the games can be used for 2nd grade, too!! I’m just LOVIN’ place value right now!!!

If Take A Mouse To The Movies

One of my favorite holiday books…

And there’s SO much you can do with it! We had a little “If You Take A Mouse To The Movies” day the other day and the kids had so much fun!! Of course, we started out reading the book. After reading, we talked about cause & effect and made a diagram to show the chain of reaction.

I also assigned each kiddo to a story event and had them illustrate it. Then we came together as a whole group and I had the kids work together to sequence the events on a giant filmstrip!

I really wanted a text to self writing activity, so I gave them the prompt, “If you take me to the movies, I will ask you for some…”. I had them complete the sentence with the words of things they like to get when they go to the movies! And these little writing templates turned out so dang cute! It took me FOREVER to figure out how I wanted to display their writing, but the idea of a festive little Christmas mouse and a clapboard won out in the end! I LOVE how different each of them look! {Just incase you’re wondering…I precut all of the big pieces…clapboard pieces, head, hands, hat, ears} AFTER they were finished writing…and after I double checked it…I let the kids grab their materials to start assembling their little mice. They cut their own eyes & nose & drew the whiskers, too!

I pretty much died when I saw that this sweetie wrote, “popcorn and a cup of iced tea.” HA!!!

For our Daily 5 stations, I had the kids work on a few little mouse themed activities.

Here the kids are sorting chunk words {-oke, –ose, –ore} on popcorn into the corresponding popcorn tubs. After they sorted the words, the kids had to write them onto a large popcorn tub template and label it accordingly.

I also had the kids make CVC words using little clapboards and flimstrip letters.

The first slide/page in this download are hand drawn pictures {by yours truly ;)} that I used when I taught Kindergarten. I made rebus sentences out of them. {He will ask you for some…} The kids had to match the words to the pics.

Of course, I didn’t get around to everything I wanted to do. No shocker there. But some other ideas I had were to…

**have the kids create popcorn garland for the class tree. Cut out construction paper popcorn pieces {or print some off} and have the kids make words/fact families/etc. on each template, hole punch the top, and then string them together with yarn.

**make filmstrip sentences. I thought it would be fun to have large, premade filmstrip pieces and on each strip, write a different word. The kids would have to work together to put the sentence in order.

Do you guys do anything fun with this book?!? I’d love for you to share if you do!

If You Sailed On The Mayflower…

Today we celebrated “Mayflower Day”!! Okay…so I made that up…but I thought that sounded pretty fitting for our day today :) We started by reading a non-fiction book about the Mayflower. I can’t remember which one, but I checked it out from our school library and it was really good!! It was a great book to review Table of Contents also :) Each “chapter” was only a page or two long. After each page, we stopped to jot. During our stop to jot time, the kids gave me a few facts they learned from that chapter.

We learned a lot of really cool facts!! Did you know that the water was so unsafe to drink that everyone on the Mayflower…children included…drank beer?!?! Ummmm…yeah. That interesting tidbit of info was definitely in the book and you should’ve heard the conversations that transpired after reading that fun little fact :) Wow.

After brainstorming, I had the kids choose 5 facts to write about for their Mayflower books. Y’all. These books are DARLING. A few of the girls on our team have been making these “bag boats” for a few years and I LOVE them!!! They’re PERFECT for a little Mayflower fun!!

We compiled all their facts into this little book…

I used pencils to hold up the sails…just incase you’re wondering :)

There were a couple of extra “pages” left in the book, so we filled them in with a thinking map & a survey/graph. We made a Mayflower brace map to show the parts of the whole…

And I also had the kids survey their classmates asking them whether or not they would have liked to travel on the Mayflower if they were pilgrims. Not surprisingly, they all said NO!!!! The kids graphed their classmates responses and wrote about their data as well.

You can download the Mayflower brace map & graph HERE.

Next up….TURKEY FUN!!!

Spidey Writing

We started out our spider themed week reading a few non-fiction books and filling out a KWL. Not gonna lie…I learned A LOT of things about spiders this week! It was amazing to hear my kids recalling facts of everything they had learned, too! They were SO into it! I set up a labeling activity for the kids to visit during transition time or when they were finished with their other station activities. They also labeled a spider template I found on abcteach.com. This little labeling activity includes a lot more words to use for labeling…not sure what happened to them?!

At the end of the week, we talked about action words vs. descriptive words. While I don’t expect them to master the difference between adjectives and verbs right now, I did want them to know the difference! So I introduced verbs & adjectives and we used SPIDERS to brainstorm a list of both types of words…things that spiders can do vs. words that describe spiders. They LOVED this activity! They were talking about verbs and adjectives for the rest of the day!

After we created our list, I had the kids make a “Spider Sandwich” poem using 3 verbs and 3 adjectives that are “sandwiched” between the word SPIDER. After writing their poems, I painted their hands to make little handprint spiders. I LOVE handprint art!!! And I used reinforcement stickies for the eyes.

The Very Busy Spider

I love starting the month of October learning about spiders. We read several non-fiction books that the kids adored, but they also LOVED this Eric Carle classic…The Very Busy Spider.

After we read the story, I gave the kids a writing prompt to complete…

“I am very busy____________________________________ in First Grade!”

Their responses were cute and some of them were downright hilarious!! Apparently we spend our time running away from girls and coloring all day?! Hmmmm…

I cut out a class set of large black circles and a class set of smaller white circles to fit on top of the black {for a spider body}. I also cut a stack of black strips of construction paper {for spider legs}. We talked about accordion folds and I modeled how to accordion fold the black strips to form legs for the spiders. I hung faux spider webs on the inside of our classroom door and stuck the spiders on top of that. I also made a little title to hang that says, “The Very Busy First Graders…adapted from The Very Busy Spider”. This is how it turned out…

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