Whew! The first two weeks of school have come and gone and I must say I am pretty happy with the way they’ve turned out! Actually, to be completely honest with you, I was nervous and freaking out during the first few days. This new batch of kids struck me as particularly challenging and needy, but they’ve adjusted well, are meeting expectations, embarking on new and exciting learning, and they’ve found a place in my heart!
As much as I do love them I think they gave me this rotten cold I’ve had all weekend, so in the interest of taking a nap I am going to keep this pretty brief and just share a few pictures of this and that from our first days in first grade.
To welcome my dears to first grade I put one of these on each desk at Open House. My kids were extremely excited, to say the least!
I also gave them a cupcake after they had successfully completed the first day of school. It was a long day for all of us! I may have eaten one myself as well…
We began our math workshop with games about counting and collecting. Here my students are working together to collect 20 together. On subsequent days they began using 20 frames to keep track of their counters.
To launch our reader’s workshop and hopefully set a positive tone for the year I had students bring in their favorite reading book. We gave them a place of honor in our classroom (this is at our carpet area) until everyone had brought one in. The students were so eager and excited to use their books.
We sat in a big circle and looked at one another’s books, discussing common interests and reasons that our books are special. It gave me a lot of insight and the students enjoyed sharing something important to them.
Everyone then completed this page. I brought in King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub as my favorite book. I’d forgotten how much first graders LOVE this book!
You can grab this page for free here!
We also began talking about story elements, particularly character and setting. I read a variety of books (Ira Sleeps Over, Corduroy, and Blueberries for Sal) over a few days time and we charted the characters and setting. This week we’ll dive into problem and solution.
We also started working on these darling paper dolls from The Teacher Wife. My students absolutely LOVE working on these and we are excited to share them with the parents at Open House next week.
Oh, and before I forget, here is my September Currently!
Well that is it for now. I’m off to grab my box of Kleenex and catch up on Once Upon a Time episodes :). Happy Labor Day, everyone!
I always seem to get sick at the beginning of the year too 🙁 Yuck! I hope you get to feeling better soon…have a restful day!
Elizabeth
Kickin' it in Kindergarten
I've been feeling the scratchy throat thing this weekend! Drinking lots of hot tea and Gatorade because getting sick is NOT ok right now!! 🙂
-Elyse @ A is for Apples
I love your smartie pants tags- cute!
That anchor chart is great! Pinned it!
-Maria
Being sick is the worst!!! I am a fellow first grade teacher and just found you through Farley!!! I love your blog!
Katie
This is amazing. According to the photos, I may say, that all your lessons are very interesting. I am always proud of such teachers like you.
You want to be equal with such teachers as you do everything so that the children are comfortable and interested in studying and learning a lot of useful things, custom-paper-writing.com/blog/admission-college-essay-help that will be useful to them in the further learning process.