Testing

As we get ready for lots of testing in May, my kids are reading a lot. They are doing lots of comprehension papers and they have to read the passage and all questions by themselves. They have been doing one a day for a couple of weeks to help build up their stamina. For the most part, they are doing really well. Some of my lower readers don't know some of the words, but they have learned testing skills to try and sound out the word and then to skip if if he/she can't figure it out. Most of them have learned that they can figure out what a word means by the other words around it.
Anyway, I have them do the passage and questions all by themselves, then I talk with any who missed some questions and explain the skill they missed. This seems to be helping as they are missing fewer correct answers overall.
Friday, my class begins the FAIR test (Reading skills test in Florida) and next week they will take the GATES test and they have to read it all by themselves. I think they will do very well if they just try to do their best. I will try to keep things positive and help them believe they will do well. They are easily influenced at this age.
Concerning stamina, here is a picture of a Daily 5 bulletin board in my classroom.

We have worked on this all year to help build stamina in reading. For a while, we graphed how many minutes everyone in the class could focus on reading before someone got off task. Eventually, we got to over 25 minutes regularly. All of my kids have become wonderful readers! They are at different levels, but I am very proud of all of them. Today, on the way back from the library, I had 5 kids who kept opening their library books to read as they walked. I know they're not supposed to be opening the books as they walk, I just couldn't fuss at them for wanting to read.

Earth Day & Vocabulary Activity

We did several activities around Earth Day last week. Over the course of three days, we read The Lorax,
The Lorax Helps the Earth, and Fancy Nancy Earth Day (I think this is the title. The book is at school.)
Before we read any of them, I had the children fill out post-it notes about their Earth Day Schema. Here is a picture of the Earth chart we made.

On the bottom of the chart is where the children wrote about what they learned about Earth Day.
Here is a web one of the groups made about Earth Day.

Today we did  a fun vocabulary activity. This is an idea I got from my friend Kelly, who teaches next door to me. I gave each group (5 groups total) a set of picture cards and word cards in a bowl. I told them to mix them up and dump them on the table. (They loved that part!) We had a contest to see which group could match up the words and pictures. They were so engaged in the activity! They higher level readers helped the lower level readers and some of the lower level readers actually have a better vocabulary than the higher level readers and were able to help their group with the names of the pictures. This worked so well- especially right now when they are already antsy for summer. I plan to do this each week with different words. Here are pictures of a couple of the tables working.

Math Material Organization

Here are some more pictures of my Math materials area.

These are the shelves my husband built. I have 5-6 baskets of the most frequently used manipulatives since I have 5 tables the children sit at. This makes it very easy to pass out materials and I don't have to get them ready ahead of time. The empty shelf holds the baskets of pattern blocks that we were using when I took these pictures. After trying many ways of organizing the items, I have found that this works best for me. I do have a few other materials put away that we don't use as frequently such as Base 10 blocks.
We start using math materials the very first day of school and go over the rules and procedures for getting them out, using them and putting them away. The children are very good at taking care of the materials. They love using them and this set-up has helped me avoid many headaches concerning the mess that materials can make.

Wizard of Oz Unit

This afternoon I finished a packet of Activities and Worksheets to go with The Wizard of Oz. I plan to do a Wizard of Oz unit the last week of school. I have seen many great ideas on other blogs such as having a "yellow brick road" in the classroom and making a rainbow cake on the last day.
I found this adorable set of clipart from Jessica Weible on Etsy.com. I put 2 of the images here to show how cute they are. In my papers I used all the characters, a picture of the Emerald City, yellow brick road and red ruby slippers.

I posted my pack of Activities and worksheets on Teachers Pay Teachers. You can see it in my store: 

SDH Creations. It is called "Wizard of Oz Activities & Worksheets". SDH Creations TpT store

Math Organization

Today I am home sick with strep throat. I thought I would show how I organize my Math games. I loooove teaching Math. (First Grade Math anyway). Here is a picture of the top of the wonderful math shelves that my husband made for me a couple of years ago. It is 8 feet long!

Anyway, I have been trying to adapt the Daily 5 reading to math. So, above the shelves is a display listing 5 areas of math activities. Under those are the names of some of our activities for each section. On the top shelf I have 5 file crates. They are the skinny ones you can find when all the school supplies come to the stores in the summer. The areas we use are: Partner Games, Working with Numbers, Fluency, Math Writing and Math by Myself.
In the crates I keep the activities and games for each section that the children choose from. I don't put a game or activity in the crate until the children have learned how to play it and we have practiced it a couple of times.
I will post a picture of the math materials another day.

Ladybug Excitement!

Today my kids got to experience ladybugs up close. I had them in containers on their desks when they came back from Music. They were thrilled! Kids always love animals.
After they looked at them (and let them crawl on their arms), they worked in groups. They have worked in groups of 2-4 before, but today I gave them each a specific job. The reader read a ladybug book to the group. The "cutter" cut out the labels for the ladybug lifecycle. The "gluer" glued the labels down as the group decided how to design their poster and the "writer" wrote the important information on the poster. Here are some pictures I took as they worked.

Apparently I didn't take a picture of the final posters so I will add that later. The children then created a Ladybug chart "Ladybugs are...do...have".

Last, the children wrote at least 5 sentences about what they learned about ladybugs today.

Ladybugs

Today is Sunday. I ordered ladybugs to have in class and they arrived in the mail yesterday- 300 of them! I looked on Amazon to order them since that is where I ordered the Ladybug set last year that also came with a container for them. For only $2.99 I could order 300 ladybugs. I thought that sounded good, so that's what I did. We have 5 acres of wooded land so I was thinking I could let them go here once we are done at school.
The package said that if you don't plan to let them out right away to put them in the refrigerator. I did that overnight and today I got out 10 small plastic Glad containers to put them in along with some leaves and grass from the yard.
Oh boy! About halfway through, they perked up. They had been very calm coming out of the refrigerator. I had about 5 containers closed and then I had ladybugs climbing on the counter, on my hands and a few even flew off. I think I finally caught them all. I did end up going ahead and letting many of them go in the yard. 300 ladybugs is a lot!
Anyway, yesterday I typed up a book for my class to use this week. We have been studying nonfiction text features so I included a Table of Contents, page numbers, bold words, diagram, labels and a Glossary. I also made 2 student worksheets and cards to make class/group charts. I posted this on Teachers Pay Teachers in case anyone else finds it useful.
Ladybug Book and Activities. I'll post pictures of the activities we do this week.