1-1000 Booklet FREEBIE!

So my teacher friend Lauren always has great ideas for the classroom. Here is one she shared recently.

She has her students work on this booklet throughout the week/weeks. They work on one chart at a time until they make it to 1,000! LOVE IT! Cant wait to use this in my room this week! I think we may take it a step further and have students color code by 2's, 5's, and 10's. Thanks for sharing Lauren!! To get this freebie click here!

Sentence Flip Books

Another week has come and almost gone! My assistant has reminded me several times, "Only 4 more Mondays!" Where did this year go? Maybe because it was my first year in first grade that I just never had time to look up at the calendar! I have to admit, I have had a great year, but I am starting to get that summertime itch! Disney here we come! The past two weeks we have worked on declarative, interrogative, and exclamatory sentences. Today I was trying to think of a fun way to wrap up this unit that the kids would enjoy. So I went to the old trusty flip book.

These are so simple to make, and my kids always love them! Start with two sheets of paper. I stagger the sheets and fold hamburger style. I decided I wanted something colorful and fun, so we used some bright paper to make labels for each page.

Then I glued down the labels on my example. On each page I wrote that type of sentence and illustrated the sentence.

I hope the kids enjoy these tomorrow!

Prefix Match

We have now moved on to prefixes! I took our suffix activity from last week and adapted it for prefixes. The kids really enjoyed putting the pieces together and changing the meaning of the words.

We started by looking at the prefix posters and talking about how the meanings of the words changed with the prefix added.

Then they each took a bag and began matching prefixes and base words. I had the bags in a pink sand bucket for the kids to trade out for the next set of words. (We did this same activity with suffixes, so the kids were able to work very independently.)

And there ya go! Easy peasey, lemon squeezy! To get this activity click here!

Bananagrams

Since we came back from Christmas break, I started using the Scholastic Book Club once a month. My kids are LOVING IT! I remember how excited I was as a kid when that red box came to our classroom. Every day at least one kid asks, "When is the box coming?" Not only is Scholastic great because it encourages kids to read, but teachers are able to accumulate points and get great resources for the classroom. Our classroom library is pitiful, so I usually get books with the points that we earn. Library books are great, but I saw these Bananagrams for grabs, and I couldn't pass them up! Introducing....Bananagrams!!!

Here are the goods!

Bananagrams in action!

So glad I ordered these with my points! (So are the kids!)

Sentence Types

This week I'm am teaching my kids to use big "college" words like "D-e-c-l-a-r-a-t-i-v-e". We have focused on statements, questions, and exclamations this year, but it is time to get SMART! So now we are working on these big fancy words. To help, I created some fun owl posters for our class. WE LOVE OWLS!

We reviewed these in whole group, and I introduced the new "college" words. Then, in one of our small groups, we sorted sentences into three types: declarative, exclamatory, and interrogative. With my higher groups, we also created our own sentences for each type.

This one is for those of you that are familiar with Soso, MS. One of my boys is turning 7 this weekend and here is his exclamatory sentence. LOVE IT!

Visit one of my stores to pick up these posters, lables, and differentiated sentence activities!

Under the Sea Sentence Scramble

So throughout the week, we have started decorating the classroom for summer... wait summer? I can't believe this year is almost over! During the digging, we found a red fish net and lots of laminated fish which were screaming "FIND US AN ACTIVITY!" So... we did! We created a sentence scramble game, and it was a hit!

I started by pinning the fish net over the cubbies. This made for a fun place to unscramble the sentences!

Then I used the laminated fish to create the sentences and sorted them into three bags. Each bag contains one declarative, one exclamatory, and one interrogative sentence.

I put clothespins in one basket for the students to use for hanging the fish. Here are the cute labels for the bags!

And of course they had to have something to record all this on, so here ya go!

The kids really enjoyed going fishing today! If you are interested in the complete activity visit my store TN or TPT store!

Bossy "R"

Today we continued talking about "r" controlled vowels in our phonics group. My personal favorite is "ar", because the kids all make funny pirate faces! LOVE IT! Today I just wanted to touch back on this skill that we covered last week, so we made flip books in our phonics center. SO EASY! WE LOVE FLIP BOOKS!
Steps:
1. Fold paper hotdog style.
2. Cut front flap into 5 sections.
3. Label each section (ar, ir, er, ur, or)
4. Color code the vowels by sound.
ex. ar - orange
ir, er, ur - blue
or - green
5. Open one flap at a time and think of a word with that vowel sound and write inside the
flap. (For differentiation my higher groups wrote sentences with the words and some
used more than one matching vowel word. WOW!)
6. Draw a picture inside to go along with your sentence.

The kids really enjoyed this fun review! Favorite sentence of the day: "Her shirt is purple!"

Here is one picture of the kids on step 4.

This is the front of the flip book. (Color coded by sound)

This was one of my high group's flip book with sentences.

And the inside...

For differentiation, the lower group did words instead of sentences.

Suffixes and the Sea

Next week our class is working on suffixes, so my teacher friend Lauren suggested creating a fun game to go along with what can be a difficult skill for some first graders. So here ya go! This activity has posters to explain to the kids what -ful, -ly, and -y mean at the end of a word. I am in the process of decorating the room in a ocean/Hawaiian style to get ready for summer, so I HAD to use these cute sea creature graphics from KPM Doodles! Visit my shop on Teachers Notebook to get the full download!

We grouped the like animals into ziplock bags and placed in a sand bucket for the small group. Each student took turns working through a ziploc bag. This one shows the clam puzzles. Each bag contains a -ful, -ly, and -y word. The kids LOVED the sea creatures!

Fun with ABC Order

This week our story was "The Surprise Family". It is cute book about a chicken who discovers that her babies are actually ducklings instead of chicks. My kids LOVED this book! They enjoyed talking about how important it is to love others even if they are different. So glad I have a job where I can love on and teach kids how to treat others!

SO... I had a TON of leftover plastic Easter eggs that I brought to school. (Teachers always can find a use for JUNK!) I crumbed up some brown construction paper, making a bird nest. Then I put a word in side each egg and SHAAZAMM, an ABC order activity is readY! (Well almost! I also made a recording sheet for the kids to write their answers.) Each table had different colored eggs, and the groups rotated from nest to nest. THEY LOVED IT! Here are a pictures of the kids hard at work! Enjoy!

New Ideas

So maybe blogging has not turned out to be my thing!  Maybe next year I will be on my feet enough to actually get this blog going! 

We have had a great year in first grade!  I'm learning new things everyday!  Since the last post we celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Valentine's Day, Read Across America, and Easter.... yeah I stink at blogging!  

This year I have fallen in love with teacherspayteachers and teachersnotebook.  These are great resources to find Common Core centered activities that are great to use in my reading centers.  As I kept downloading these great documents I decided to try to make some of my own.  Let's hope I am better at making classroom materials than blogging!

Next week we are reviewing "r" controlled vowels and "oy", "oi" vowels sounds.  Here are two of the games I have made so far.  For all of my teacher friends, please download and let me know what you think!  Hope your students enjoy these!

We are also using Venn Diagrams to help organize our thought during the writing process.  I created this short mini-lesson for my teacher led center.  We will be using a crab and a sea turtle for our compare/contrast activity.  I also included a blank Venn Diagram for use anytime.  This is a FREEBIE so ENJOY!