Writing Reviews, Accountable Talk, Subtraction and More!

Well, this momma is full swing back into teaching mode! My first graders and I are getting used to one another again and trying to continue our learning without skipping a beat. It is an interesting transition to come back after maternity leave. My classroom was in someone else's hands for longer than I had them, so in many ways this is her classroom that I am sort of "stealing" back. I am so grateful my sub kept my students safe, made a fun learning environment for them, and helped my students build their knowledge so I can come in and pick up where she left off! Now, it's my turn to grab the reigns and get my kids to where they need to be by the end of the year!

I wanted to share a little of what we have been up to in our cozy classroom.

In math, we have been finishing up subtraction and number bonds before we head into some geometry:

I will admit, I did miss making anchor charts!

A little number bond review thanks to Kelley Dolling's freebie: HERE

After we reviewed number bonds, we worked on missing addends in a number bond and completed my solve the room activity from Leprechaun Math.

In reader's workshop we spent the week reading Dr. Seuss books and practicing our fluency through partner reading and reader's theater! We have also been focusing A LOT on our accountable talk:

my little first graders need lots of help learning to be respectful listeners and we have been having great discussions through these sentence stems. Plus, it's pretty adorable to hear my littles speaking like such kind, mature adults.

In phonics, we are focusing on vowel teams! 

"igh" was on the agenda this week and it is a tricky one! We used my phonics poetms and real or nonsense sheets to help us decode and become more fluent with igh words. We are slowly building up our poetry journals that my students love to read during reader's workshop!

Writing has been all about reviews! We are learning to express out opinions through writing reviews and I have to say, I am impressed. These are the four parts of a review from my Writing Reviews Unit:

 We focus on one part each day, add it to our shared writing, and then I challenge my kids to add it to their individual reviews.

 Teacher modeling/shared writing

"Are you looking for something to eat? Well, not anymore! You could try Fridays!"

A catchy lead?! I think he nailed it! I love writer's workshop!

Well, that's just a little peek into my room as of late. I will go more into depth with some lessons and units we are working on soon :)

Happy weekend!

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Phonics Poetry for Grades K-2!

Do your young learners have poetry journals?! Mine do and we love them. 

The main question I have been asked in the past is what I put inside my journals and I created a resource to help answer that question. Most of the poems in our poetry journals are phonics poems, but I also am sure to include plenty of seasonal and holiday poems throughout the year.

I always had trouble finding poems that were appropriate for my first graders to decode on their own throughout the year, so I used to make up a few of my own. I decided this past year to make lots more, type them up, add some clipart and borders and voila! Here is my newest unit, Phonics Poetry for Grade K-2!

If you want to see how I set up my poetry journals in the class, click the picture below to read my previous post on Blog Hoppin' AND snag one of the poems for free!

Inside my phonics poetry pack, there are 27 different phonics poems that focus on common word families and phonemes taught in Kinder, 1st grade, and the beginning of 2nd grade. Each word family or phoneme has a short, simple poem written by me, a practice page for students to record their words and sort real vs. nonsense words, and there is also a visualization sheet. 

Here is a close up of each:

Poem: the above poem focuses on long vowel e, spelled /ee/. The set up of my poems are very similar so students can get used to them. Students read the poem many different times and ways and then glue it into their poetry journal and color in the picture.

Visualization Page: I find that poetry is the perfect time to teach visualization! Sometimes instead of the full-sized sheets, I will substitute the poem for that week with a visualization sheet. We still read the poem numerous ways and identify the words with the word family or phoneme we are learning that week. Instead of simply coloring in the clip art on the page, I have my students draw what the poem is about! It is a great way for me to see who can actually decode the poem and understand it.

Practice page: This is the page we complete after we read and illustrate our poems. It allows students to record some of the words they found in the poem as well as decode real and nonsense words with that word family/phoneme.

I also included a few sheets on how and when I use these sheets in my classroom:

My kids really love collecting these poems in their journal throughout the year and I allow plenty of time for students to read through their poetry journal. It also makes for quite the keepsake when they leave my classroom in June!

To see more, head over to view my Phonics Poetry unit on TPT and download the preview!

It is also on SALE through tomorrow night!

PS - as the year progresses I plan to add a few more phonemes, word families, and consonant blends to this unit. Feel free to let me know if there are ones you would like added! I just ask that you please be patient with me as THIS is what's going on in my life right about now:

...now THREE more days...

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Poetry Month!

Poetry month is here and my students are letting their creativity fly!

After teaching all the different types of poems with a structured lesson, I just let them go and have fun! They have been loving the freedom of poetry and they amaze me with their poems. During our Daily 5 my students are often found writing allllllll sorts of poems and reading their poems to others. They also love getting to *snap* their applause at the end of a poetry reading instead of clapping. I went through my students' poetry bins and pulled a few for out bulletin board. It is not finished yet... but this is how it looked when I left school today!

The beginnings of our bulletin board:

Here are a few of the poems up close:
Sleepover - Acrostic

Spring - Acrostic

Cinquain

Burning Popcorn! - Sensory poem

Shape Poems:

^The flower one is meant to be read from the bottom up^

SO cute! I love looking at students' writing and these poems have made me so proud! They have really expressed themselves and even my struggling writers had fun with this.

All the poems taught and published were from my Writing Poetry for Primary Grades unit available on TPT. There are still plenty of other poems we are going to get to throughout the month. We also need to finish that bulletin board!

Click on the image below to get my poetry unit:

Do you teach poetry in your classroom? Do you LOVE it like I do?!?

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Writing Poetry in the Primary Grades!

National poetry month is in April, but we are starting early this year!

Last week we worked on the Common Core Standard: RL.1.4: students will identify words and phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses.

Each morning we would read aloud some poems, practice visualizing the poem in our heads and then we would work together to identify the sensory and feelings words.

We read a lot of poems from the book, Shout! Little Poems that Roar! I bought this book a couple years ago from Scholastic and we just love it!

 After responding to these poems, we began writing poetry of our own!

We started off writing sensory poems about walking through a garden. 

What did we hear?  

"beards chirping" apparently

After using our senses our poems, we wrote the first drafts of our poems:

She has picked this poem as one of her favorites from the week, so she will be editing it so it can go in her poetry book!

To help guide us through writing poetry, I created a Poetry Unit that we will be using over the next few weeks:

 Here is a little sneak peek of what's inside:

(There are teacher examples, planning sheets, & final draft pages for each of the following)

{Sensory Poems}:

{Feeling Poems}:

{Form poems}:

I also have some poetry topic cards, poetry book cover pages, and more!

If you want to see more of this pack, make sure to download the preview at my TPT store.

I put my poetry pack on sale through Monday!

Happy writing!

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Poetry & Technology in the Classroom!

My good friend, Katie King, has been hosting a fantastic linky lately and I have been missing out!

I used a few fun websites this morning so I thought I would link up and share!

This morning I was the presenter for our grade level's lesson study.

(I am nosy...) Does your school do this?!?!

A couple times a year our grade level team gets together to design a lesson aligned to the common core. Then, we pick a name out of the hat to see who will present the lesson to their class.... in front of all the other teachers....well... lucky me! I got chosen!

The lesson we designed was to meet the Common Core Standard RL.1.4: Students will identify words or phrases in stories or poems that suggest feelings or apply to the senses.

Here was our 45 minute lesson:

First, I got two 2nd grade poems off of Super Teacher Worksheets {Snowy School Day & Reading Forever}! I have used this site since my first year teaching - it was free then. It is only 25$ for the whole year and I use it a lot for extra practice sheets and homework.

 I read both poems aloud twice. The first time for enjoyment and the second time we listened for feeling words and words that appeal to our senses. I had my kiddos close their eyes to help them visualize what I was reading. After we discussed the words we heard, we watched a Brain Pop Jr. video on writing with our senses:

 I seriously love me some Annie and Moby and my kids love them too! This video focuses on the reasons we should add details to our writing by using our 5 senses. It makes our writing much more exciting to read and helps the reader visualize the work.

Next stop, Read, Write, Think!

 

This website is free and has some great lesson plans. I searched the site last week and found these theme poems. As a class, we chose the sun poem and brainstormed some feeling/sensory words to describe the sun. Lastly, my kiddos went back to their seats and wrote cute poems to describe the sun!
There are plenty of other themed templates that have made their way to our writing center:

My kids were really excited to write their poems and share them with the class! It will be a perfect lead into our Valentine's Day poems we will write to our parents next week :)

That's all I have for Techy Teacher Tuesday (Thursday?)
Go link up with Katie and see all the other teachers' tips!

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