Spring Break Writing

Are you heading back to school from a nice, relaxing spring break? You know those kids are going to want to talk your ear off to tell you all about their spring break. Don't try to prevent it, and don't you think for a second that 20 minutes of share time is going to be enough. I've learned the hard way!

I take their passion for sharing and turn it into a week long writing unit. This allows the children to share all they want about their spring break. They talk about & write about it until they really have nothing left to share. It's a great way to revamp your classroom community and get the jitters out of the kids. You know they're missing their families.

INSIDE THE WRITING UNITThe Spring Break Writing Unit includes important mini-lessons that are great review for really any age.

These are the two mini-lessons included

• Identifying complete and non-complete sentences
• Adding detail sentences to each part of your story

A DAY BY DAY LOOKHere is a day by day look at how to teach this Spring Break Writing Unit! It's very simple to do and so engaging for the students!

• Day One: Brainstorm!
• Day Two: Complete & Incomplete Sentence Work
• Day Three: Make your sentences complete
• Day Four: Adding details to each part of your story
• Day Five: Publish your writing and complete the craft

A PEEK AT THE ACTIVITIESHere is a peek at the teaching posters and activities included in the mini-unit!

Brainstorming Activity Sheet

 Complete and Incomplete Teaching Poster

Incomplete & Complete Sentence Activity

When we did this, I gave students and brand new brainstorming paper and had them rewrite each part. They had to turn each sentence into a complete sentence!

Adding Details Teaching Poster

Students add details to each part of their story. I just had my kids use their brainstorming sheet. If they ran out of room in their box, they used the back of the paper.

The final product! 

If you are interested in using this mini-unit in your classroom, you can find it by clicking the image below!

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Spring Literacy Stations - FINALLY!

I have finally and I mean finally finished these spring literacy stations! I know some of you have been asking about these lovely little stations and I just wanted to stop in really quick tonight to let you know that they're finally here!!

 

There are 10 different ELA stations included and 10 different writing prompts too!

I just sticking writing prompts at my stations! The kids always come up with the most creative stories!! :)

 

 

 

 

I will be back soon because I have two weeks of classroom pictures to share with you! We've been super busy in first grade and pictures will be here soon for you to see!

If you are interested in this spring pack click HERE or anywhere above! :)

HAPPY EASTER!!

 

 

 

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Some*bunny* Is Ready For Rabbits!

This week we are learning all about those cute little Easter critters!! I purchased a huge spring writing packet from Hope King. Her packet inspired this cute little rabbit below. 

This is our little rabbit that's going to get our brains going on our schema of rabbits!

I will be writing down student schema on sticky notes and placing them to the left of the rabbit. Then, we will be organizing information into subtopics. I have headers that I will be placing on our anchor chart (belly, cloud and right side of rabbit).

We are reading this booklet I created to find out information about rabbits and review some text features.

This will help us organize our thoughts because we will really be focusing on our headers!

This week we are also digging into UE and EW Stations and making something I call BLUE GEW! 

I can't wait to make this stuff with my kids!! Hopefully it helps them remember their new phonics skill!!

I haven't done a giveaway in forever and so I thought, "Hey, let's give this packet away!"

Enter BELOW!! :) - Easy Peezy Lemon Squeezy!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here are my visual plans for this week!

Here are some of my stations for this week!

 (I meant to take a lot more pictures...but, I got wrapped up in organizing instead)

This is from my TEACHING MONEY ACTIVITY PACKET.

This is one of the word work activities for this week that my students will be doing. They're going to be so excited!! 

This is from, ""What's That Blue Gew" - EW & UE Phonics Packet.

This is from my spring literacy stations packet that is not yet finished... I hope it will be by Wednesday! Life has been really busy with wedding and job search stuff so creating has went on the wayside for now. :(

I hope your have a fabulous week! Enjoy your kids and your rabbit non-fiction freebie above!

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Such A Fun Week!! Come Peek! :)

This week my little firsties had their wonderful standardized tests -- and can I just say that I'm glad it's over. They were worn out by the end of the weekend and ready for their weekend off! ;) -- so, was their teacher!!

Even with testing we had a super busy week! Here we go!!

1. This week in math our main focus was symmetry! I drew half of a flower and we completed a whole group lesson on symmetry together. The kids had indoor recess so I let them color the flower. :) 

Turned out pretty cute!!

 We discussed strategies to use when trying to make things symmetrical in terms of drawing. The kids tried really hard to make things the same width on each side and at the same level. I think they did a pretty good job!

After this whole group lessons the students faces were cut in half and they drew the other halves of their faces. I wish you could see them--they're so cute!

2. We squeezed in a little bit of living & non-living this week! This will be continuous lesson before and after spring break! We went over vocabulary here:

We looked at pictures of living and non-living things and then students got to draw a a picture of a living thing. Then they gave a reason to explain why it was a living thing. Love lessons like this! :) They're so open ended and I get so much creativity from the kids!

3. This week was also all about March Madness with a mix of dinosaurs!! I'll be doing a blog post on this unit when we finish it but here are some pictures for now! :)

Here we worked on predicting and learning to confirm our predictions.

These are the books we used because we learned all about fiction VS non-fiction!

This Dino-Basketball Unit can be found Here:

The literacy stations can found here:

We also dug into our basketball literacy stations to review lots of fun concepts!

4. Today, I finally finished updating my spring math station packet! There are 20 stations in here and right now it is 15% off!! Grab it while it's discounted!! 

I also finished updating another unit that I made last year and OMG I can't wait to dig into it with my kids!!

It focuses on how the sun provides energy which is a pretty big science standard that first graders need to hit! I also made it align with reading and writing standards! It's a fun and comprehensive unit!

5. Now, I just had to save the best for last! This past weekend I attended my first blogger meet-up! I literally had so much fun and I want to do it again like ASAP!! Here are some pictures!:)

 That's all for today!! I'll be back next time to share my Dino-Basketball Unit in full force!! :)

Meanwhile, enjoy your Friday & weekend! Let's pray it warms up!

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SNOW Day & Freebie

Today is a teacher's all time favorite day! It is an unexpected snow day.. or should I say ice day? I get a glorious phone call this morning around 5:55 that we are on a two hour delay? I think to myself... why? But, I will of course gladly take it.  So, I turn on the television to check the weather channel.  It says its raining ice... I think to myself... they better cancel school because last time this happened school was canceled and who got in a car wreck? That's right... this girl right here. I got another glorious phone call at 7:30 that said we are canceled.

It is now 11:30 and I am still sitting in my jammies on the couch... hanging out with my puppies...

Don't worry though I am not sitting here vegging in front of the TV. I am working on some spring activities!!!  I am loving my cover!!

 

I am trying to create a list of concepts to include in this packet .

 

I need to hit writing hard in these last two months of school so that will be a huge part of this pack!

 

Also, I love the book the tiny seed and I already have a glorious sequencing activity and power point that will be in the pack!

 

I am trying to think of/find another great springy children's book to use for another book study... hmmm... I think I may hit the library today if the ice decides to melt.

 

Stay tuned! My goal is to finish this pack by next Sunday. (next week is my spring break so I will need something productive to do with my time so I don't drive myself crazy staring at the wall ha ha!)

 

So, the whole point of this post was not to just tell you what I am working up but to provide you with a teeny tiny freebie.  This is just the idea stage of my pack but I am pretty sure it will stick in here!

 

Here are some writing prompt cards and a writing prompt paper for your enjoyment!!

Click below to grab it!

 

 

 

 



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