My new firsties and I just finished up our first week (3 days) of first grade!
I must say, we are off to one amazing start!
Here is some of the stuff we accomplished this week for our first week of first grade!
The very first thing we did on the first day of school, after we introduced ourselves was make our Good Morning chart. (Images from Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits) A HUGE mistake I made last year was not having a flow chart for the morning and afternoon. It was a major priority this year! Students have been rocking their morning and afternoon routine so far!
After we created our morning routine, I introduced students to their morning tubs. We talked about not throwing, eating or stomping on materials. Then, I let the students go. I will not be doing morning work, worksheets this year, instead I am going to encourage them to TALK! WHAT?! Yes, talk! It's important, they need to talk. The morning, is the perfect time. The kids always have cool stuff to talk about!
We, of course read the book, "The Night Before First Grade." Students drew their feeling in a little circle and we graphed our feelings. We then, turned this into a mini-discussion on why we felt certain ways.
After we discussed reasons for our feelings, the students completed their first writing and craft for the year! I challenged them, if they wanted to to add a reason to their feeling by using the magical word, because!
Ont he third day of school, students learned about our Ketchup (catch-up) folders. This is where we keep work that has not yet been completed. We wrote our own names on the front and practiced our goal of the week, to work quietly by decorating the inside!
On Day 2, we talked about what math is, what we know about math, how we use it and why we need math. I did this so I could see their prior knowledge about math. Their answers were adorable. I didn't sway any comments. I wrote them down and hung up this poster! It has a prominent spot on our math wall!
After we discussed our prior knowledge about math, we played our first math game. I put beads in a bucket, gave students a dice. Explained expectations for these two tools and then the students played. All they had to do was roll the dice, remove that many beads each time. When the bucket was empty, they needed to count ALL of their beads. The person with the biggest number won. I walked around and listened to a lot of counting! This was a great way for me to get a feel of where they are at with this important skill!
On day 3, I set up three stations of math tools.
Station 1: Dominoes, whiteboards and dry erase markers.
Station 2: Ten frames and counters
Station 3: Number grids, whiteboards and dry erase markers.
I again, gave very little direction. I wanted students to explore these tools and think of ways they could use them for math. I walked around, took pictures of students using the tools correctly and incorrectly (remember- I haven't told the students what I expect, so no one was corrected). On Monday, we will look at the photos and discuss correct ways and incorrect ways. I will print off the correct ways pictures and we will make an anchor chart of how to use the tools! Then, we will explore three more tools and do the same thing!
On Day 2, I introduced Read to Self. We made a chart to explain our jobs (forgot to photo). Then, we worked on it! We made it 1 minute and 7 seconds on the first day!! Not too shabby!!! My favorite part of this time was my principal walking in, asking what they were doing... I said read to self and she goes, "So basically just flipping through books." Ha ha!! Yeah, basically!
The students shopped for books to fill their books bins. Right now, I am only allowing 3 classroom books in their bins at a time. When students shopped for books, I put two bins at each table and there were allowed to shop at their table only. When they finished, a book, they practiced putting it away in the correctly labeled bin.
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