Tales-of-a-First-Grade-Teacher: February 2016

Monday, February 29, 2016

Not just another handwriting book

Zaner-Bloser Handwriting recently contacted me about trying out their handwriting book for my first graders.
I've been teaching 18 years, 9 years in 1st grade and I've never had a "real" handwriting book / Curriculum for all of my students. Over the years I've had teacher's manuals or a freebies TPT. So, having the opportunity to use a real handwriting book for each of my students was not one I was going to pass up. I'm used to just teaching the letters and practicing 1 letter at a time. This book is set-up very differently and I see a big difference in my students desire to work on this book and their handwriting at this point in the year.

When I first handed the new handwriting books out, the first thing my class wanted to know was, could they keep them. They had not had a handwriting book before either. At the beginning, the students are shown how to position their book, and are given practice using pictures as well as handwriting lines.

Aside from the great quality and durability of the book, the teacher's manual has great tips and tricks in it as well. This book does not just include letters. It also includes, numbers, stroke direction, number sentences as you can see above. Another great feature in the books is the QR codes. You can scan the code on a page, and it will bring you or your students to further practice.

This students is a lefty. The book gave instructions for how lefties should position their books when writing. We are using this mid-year and my students are getting more and more independent. If I let them they would just want to fly through this book. They really enjoy doing the different activities provided. It's more than just letter writing.

So far, we have practiced writing all of the numbers and number sentences. Writing sentences for handwriting practice and completing sentence prompts. Also, we've practiced using question marks and exclamation points correctly in sentences. The students also practiced question words (who, what, when and where) along with the question marks.

My kids are so excited about doing their handwriting each day, writing sentences and practicing numbers. If you are in the market for a handwriting book, I highly recommend this one from Zaner-Bloser.

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Featured Teacher Tuesday: Stephanie Darling

It’s FEATURED TEACHER TUESDAY!

This week our Featured Teacher is Stephanie Darling from Special Adventures!

Stephanie Darling is currently a 1st Grade Teacher in Central Arkansas. This is Stephanie’s first year in 1st grade, she previously taught special education for 5 years.

Stephanie is married to her husband Kenny, who is also a teacher. They work in the same elementary school where they met just a couple years ago. They were engaged and “ran off to Vegas” to get married. Their little family has grown by 1 as they have a yellow lab, Ozzie keeping them on their toes.

Stephanie loves teaching! She is having a blast this year in first grade and is very passionate about helping all students learn in fun and engaging ways. Stephanie has really enjoyed learning so many new things from teachers in her online teaching communities such as facebook, blog, tpt and more. You can find Stephanie on

Facebook

Instagram @specialadventures

Periscope @StephaneDarling

Blab @StephaneDarling

Twitter @StephaneDarling

Pinterest https://www.pinterest.com/darlings123/

Besides running her blog, Stephanie is also a TpT Author! You can find her store at Special Adventures with Stephanie Darling. Some of her newest products include…

*Seasonal Mystery Passages for fun close reading practice.* Click the link to check out Stephanie’s latest Winter Themed Passage.

These packs are perfect for working on reading comprehension and close reading as well as vocabulary development.

Stephanie also has created an entire year of 2nd Grade Math Curriculum and has a growing bundle that when completed in June will be an entire year of 1st Grade Math Curriculum. These sets are aligned to CCSS and have all you need, games, hands on engaging lesson plans, reinforcement pages, differenciation, assessments, explicit instructions for use, to save any teacher time, money and energy in planning and teaching math.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Featured Teacher Tuesday: Lauren from Curriculum and Coffee

Welcome back for another week of Feature Teacher Tuesdays!

This week’s Feature Teacher is Lauren, over at Curriculum and Coffee!

Lauren is a wife, aunt, daughter, sister, and a dog mom to her Brittany Spaniel, Ace

Isn’t he cute?!

Lauren is in her third year of teaching first grade in Southwest Ohio. She loves to create, blog {when she can! The school year is SO busy}, and spend time outdoors with The Hubs and Ace. With a knack for tech, Lauren has taken those skills and applied them to the blogosphere, serving as her school’s Technology Learning Consultant, and to her TpT store.

One of Lauren’s Best Sellers in her TpT store is her Fact Family Activities!

These activities are interactive, and encourage student engagement with cutting, pasting & putting together fact family puzzles

Another one of Lauren’s favorite things to teach is grammar and writing conventions. She saw a need for a product that was engaging, and fun, but still served the need for her students to practice those capitals, punctuation marks, proper nouns, commas in a series, dates, and all of the other CCSS convention standards! The best thing? You can grab all THREE of her DOLs in one big bundle!

Lauren’s students LOVE taking a red pen to these pages and becoming the grader. Students gets to find all of the mistakes, and then rewrite the sentence. After, Lauren has her students complete a dictation sentence where she tells them how many points the sentence would be out of (capital, period, name title {Mr.}, commas, etc), and students get to grade each other’s dictation sentence.

Check out these other awesome products that you can find in Lauren’s TpT store that are 20% off this week, February 9-12!

Don’t forget to follow Lauren!

Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Featured Teacher Tuesday: ME!

This week’s featured teacher is ME- Jessica Berggren from Tales of a First Grade Teacher

http://tales-of-a-first-grade-teacher.blogspot.com/

Jessica is a wife, mother of 2 and First Grade Teacher. She has been teaching for 18 years and has a Master’s Degree in Math, Science and Technology for Elementary Education. Her teaching journey began in 1998, New York City in Queens, NY. She moved out to Long Island 2 years later, where she was a 4th grade teacher. In 2004, she moved to Florida with her husband and 1 month old baby girl. She taught 3rd grade for several years, before an opening popped up in 1st grade. She was looking for a change and decided to let her principal know she wanted to move to 1st grade. That was 9 years ago. And she’s never looked back!

This year she was voted Teacher of the Year at her K-8 School by the Faculty and Staff. What a tremendous honor!!

In 2012, Jessica heard of a website where you can share, buy and sell lessons plans. She began to create things for others that she had been using for years. You can see her store here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Tales-Of-A-First-Grade-Teacher-jessica-Berggren

One of her favorite products is her Chevron Chic Blends and Digraphs pack. chevronchic blends and digraphs dnealian1.jpg

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Chevron-Chic-Classroom-Blends-and-Digraphs-DNealian-Font-1378819

It combines her love of creating decor and sound pedagogy in 1 product. This beautiful set includes posters for your classroom as well as practice for all of the blends and digraphs. The chevron colors are turquoise, orange, lime green, red and light blue. Each blend is accompanied by a bright and beautiful graphic.

Jessica’s favorite subject to teach is Math. Her Common Core Geometry Unit (insert picture of geometry unit) is creative, and fun! It includes a fun character named Miss Polygon. She will help you introduce your unit, and get your students engaged and excited to learn shapes! https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Common-Core-Geometry-Unit-starring-Miss-Poly-Gon-641360

If you are looking for an engaging unit to get your students interested in shapes, and to get your own creative wheels spinning, then this unit is for you!

Of course, Jessica loves to share Freebies as well….

Here are 2 freebies she uses every year in her first grade classroom. Daily 5 Pacing Guide: Daily 5 pacing guidecover.jpg