Antonyms and some other stuff!*

This past week we went to school a whopping two days! --(I literally had an almost three week winter vacation!*Sorry* )  Need I say that we also had two, two hour delay days! I uploaded my 'peek at my week' on Sunday thinking, "Oh, we just will miss Monday so these plans will be fine--just may need to adjust one day." Bahaha---what was I thinking? We missed three full days and like I said had two, two hour delay days... So, needless to say I didn't do anything on the plans except for a few math lessons. So, I took some of what we were supposed to do the preview week but didn't (due to delays and cancellations) and squeezed it in this week! So, enough of me--here is some of what we did this week!!

We began our little antonym lesson I introduced a beanie turtle and our reading strategy was, "Tuning into interesting words." I got a cute Beanie Baby Reading Strategy Posters from First Grade Critter Cafe and they're a hit! We began by discussing the meaning of opposites and giving examples. I told the students the meaning of antonyms and then we then began reading, "The Foot Book" by Dr. Seuss. Students listened for antonyms in the story (they're on like every page) and each time they heard one they said, "screech!" I would stop, call on a kiddo and they would tell me which antonym they heard. I recorded them on this not so creative anchor chart. (I just did not have the time to make a cute one--oops)

After a lot of talk about antonyms and making sure they understood what it was they set off to complete this cute foot activity I found at The First Grade Parade. The kids got with a partner and they had three choices. They could use an antonym from the anchor chart--they could come up with one together--or they could read a book to tune into words that had an antonym (differentiation)!! ;)--A lot of them actually researched!

Then, partners traced one another feet and put the antonyms onto each foot. (I forgot to take a close up picture-sorry)

Here they are up on the bulletin board!

After that I gave students a book to work on from Cara (of course) and this time they all had to read a good fit book and tune into interesting words -- they had to focus on finding words that have an opposite meaning. When they found one they wrote both words down (ex. today - tomorrow), used both in a sentence and illustrated.

This little guy was HARD at work here! (I always know when this one is working hard--he twists his hair) :)

Here is a student hard at work and re-reading her sentences. :)  

 There you have my antonym lesson--It took my whole reading block but it was so worth it! I even had to make extra copies for the kids because they want to keep searching!! I let them do this at read to self or partner time.  

On Friday we did a lot of Long A review. We focused a lot on it the previous two weeks before winter break and I wanted to make sure we retained what we learned (which we didn't) so -- needless to say we did a lot of work together. 

First, we sorted long A and short A words together--practiced spelling them on our I-pads (screen chomp).

Then, I whipped out our Magic E Mix up with long A and taught students how to unscramble words.

The kids wrote the room and completed a the rest of the recording form for our review.

I love the mix up because it really takes some critical thinking skills to unscramble those words!

You can find this activity and a whole bunch more here.

I just have to share this because I got so excited when we finally got to dig into some interactive math journal activities this week!! OH-MG the kids loved it!! To begin one of our lessons on how to make 10 I whipped this sucker out for some review of addition sentences that equal and do not equal 10! Loved it and so did the kids!

You can find my interactive math journal here.

That's all for today! Hopefully, we will have a full week this week!