A Giveaway and Getting Ready for Groundhog Day!

We are getting ready for Groundhog Day This week.
I made up a cute little unit for us to work on this week, it's got a bit of math, a little bit of literacy and a little bit of science. Groundhog Day Fundamentals is only in my TpT Store. 
There is so much to cover in the month of February that I want to make sure I do everything without burning my self out. I printed up everything, got it laminated and cut and ran my copies.
So Groundhog day here we come!

We are going to use the cards on the left for our class graph, and the cards on the right for our Sentence Mix-up Writing Center.

I Can't wait to read this tomorrow.

We've been using our BASE 10 Mats all week as well to gear up for the 100th Day and cover Common Core Standards for 1st Grade. We are celebrating on Feb. 6th, when is your 100th day?

Now for the giveaway! My new bloggy friend Khrys has reached 100 followers.  She has an amazing Giveaway going on, read on to check it out! or go to: Keepin it Kool in Kinderland

I am joining some fabulous bloggers to celebrate Khrys from Keepin' It Kool In Kinderland. She is throwing a HUGE 100 follower giveaway! One lucky winner will win over 25 products and 3 winners will win a product of their choice from Khrys' TeachersPayTeachers store. I hope you will check it out!

 
 
 
 


 
 
 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I hope you will enter this giveaway! This will end NEXT Wednesday February 6th when the clock strikes midnight. Can't wait to find out who the super lucky winner will be!

Free Attention Grabbers for your Classroom

Mrs. B’s Attention Grabbers:

You can use these when you are lining up the class, so all the kids on line are ready to leave the room. They have one last chance to say something silly and then it’s quiet on the line. But it can also be used for transitions- when they are returning to their seats or coming to sit on the rug. The idea behind this is similar to the Whole brain Teaching model of Class, Yes! Although, I have been using these for quite some time-before I heard of WBT. My kids really like it and expect it when we are lining up.

Here is an example:  I do 3 or 4 different ones, and try to make it quick.  Once they have the idea, I don’t always use the “I say, you say.”  They remember it (it’s a good memory game too)!

Teacher Statement in Blue.  Student’s response in RED.

“I say peanut butter, you say jelly”

Peanut Butter------Jelly

Peanut Butter-------Jelly

“I say Banana, you say split”

Banana -------Split

Banana-------Split

“I say Charlie, you say Brown”

Charlie-------Brown

Charlie------Brown

“I say Quiet, you say sshhh”(put finger on lip)

Quiet ------sshhhh

Quiet ------sshhhh

And we are ready to go!

Here are some more examples that roll off the tongue fairly easily

I say …………………….       You say…………………….

Peanut Butter—Jelly

Banana ---Split

Ice Cream –Sundae

Charlie ---Brown

Upside---Down

Quiet—Sshhh

Left---Right

Chocolate---Chip

I will also use material that we are working on or vocabulary words and  synonyms  to learn meaning

for example:

Eyes….sight

Mouth….taste

Hands……touch

Happy…..glad

North……South

I posted these on TPT in case you'd like a digital copy here.
What are some things you do in your classroom, to get your student's attention? I'd love to hear your ideas.

Common Core-Writing a Research Paper

Oh, my gosh!  Can you hear that?  It's peace and quiet!!!!

My hubby came home early, for the first time in forever.  He took my kids down to play some basketball.  I can't tell you how amazing this feeling is. I am actually writing this post with absolute quiet and no interruptions!  I don't know how long this will last, so I am going to try to get as much in as possible.  :0)

Now,  I don't know how your districts are implementing Common Core, but in mine, we are in full swing.
Each quarter we address a new writing standard, as well as review previous standards.
In the first 9 weeks we wrote opinions.
In the second 9 weeks we wrote opinions and narratives.
Now in the third 9 weeks we are to begin writing Research papers and Informational/Expository writing.
Frankly, when I think of writing a Research paper with 6 and 7 year olds, I get a little nervous.
My idea of research is from my days of writing my thesis paper in grad school. Of course, I know it doesn't need to be that complicated, but still it's a lot of work and preparation if you want to do it right.

This week, I started off just by introducing the word "research" and using a "text" to gather information.
We wrote about The President, using the Scholastic News as our source of information.(Since his inauguration was this Monday).
Because this was one of the first times we wrote a paper where we needed to summarize, we did this together as a class. We talked about what we wanted to say... Stated how we wanted it written (in a complete sentence) and then wrote it down.

Barack Obama is our President. He lives and works in the White House. He is important.        We wrote the first 2 sentences together. Each student chose what they wanted to write for their 3rd.

 

The President signs the laws of our country. He flies in his own plane called Air Force One. The little scribble after the first sentence, is the student's attempt to copy the President's signature.

 

I asked each student to design their own cover. This is Air Force One.

Flag cover

A few more varieties.

Being it our first attempt, they all really did a great job. We will continue with summarizing information this week. Next week, we will begin a full scale research paper.   I will post more as we do this.  In between I am also getting ready for Groundhog's day and the 100th Day of School.  These are apart of my  February Fundamentals Pack. Click the links to check them out on TPT.
 Here's a peek at what we will be doing:

 

Quick and Easy Math Game

With the new Common Core Standards becoming more rigorous for first grade; students need to acquire a sense of place value much quicker.  For the last couple of weeks since our return to school we've been focusing on the value of a number and counting to 120 and higher.

We used our 120's chart to count by 10's, 5's, and 2's. Students marked up their charts with different colors as they were counting.

We used yellow to color in the tens, a blue square to count by fives, orange to count by two's (even #'s,) and green to count by two's beginning with 1(odd #'s).

I gave each student a ones cube to use as a game piece, and 1 die. The dice I have are pretty cool. They are a dice in a dice. So, they had two options. When they rolled the dice to move their game piece they could either just count the 1 side or add up the two.  Most students started with 1.  They soon realized they would move quicker through the game board if they were adding the two dice instead.

Afterwards, I asked some questions to make sure they were really paying attention.
What was the highest value you rolled? (12)
What was the lowest value? (1 if you used just counted 1 dice)
Which was a faster way to get through the chart-1 die or 2? (of course, the unanimous answer was 2)
This game helped build their addition skills as well as their sense of place value and number sense.