Alright, I am finally back with some writing ideas and freebies I promised! Be prepared for the longest. post. ever! In February, my teaching partner forced coerced asked me nicely to present a half-day session with her for our divisional P.D. day. I get so nervous talking in front of peers, but we had a lot of fun! We decided to do a session on writing because that was something we both chose as one of our focuses for professional growth this year. We spent the session talking about how we each do writing in our classrooms and gave some writing ideas (lots of Pinterest and TpT inspired!). To start this blog entry, I thought I would describe my whole literacy routine for you. I am by no means an expert on this, but this is what I have done this year that really works for me and my group. I spend pretty much all morning doing literacy activities. Here we go... 9:15am - Whole Group Literacy Activities Sight Word Work - I have been using Natalie's Daily Sight Words each morning and the kids love them! We do a little sight word chant (ex. Give me a G! Give me an E! Give me a T! What does that spell? Get!). I used to lead the cheer, but now I pick a student to do it and they really get into it. Then we write the sight word in the poem, share read the poem together, and add the sight word to our word wall. Read Aloud- I usually read a story by our author of the month or a theme/holiday book. I do a lot of modelling reading skills (left to right, expression, etc.) and comprehension activities together as a whole group--making predictions, making connections, talking about story elements, etc. Word Work - We usually do a whole group lesson or indivudual activity involving a phonics skill, word family, poem of the week, emergent reader, etc. I love Deedee Wills' monthly poetry packs. We have been using these a lot! 9:50am - First Round of Daily 5/Guided Reading I split my students into 5 centre groups. I actually have 26 students now and the colours have been moved around a bit, but you get the general idea. The different coloured stickies are my reading groups... The students who are orange and yellow are my pull out students. They are pulled out during Daily 5 daily/weekly for Literacy Support or EAL Support. So my centre groups are kind of heterogeneous, but kind of mixed up. I have five different centres - Read to Self (from book boxes), Listen to Reading (on mp3 players), Writing (free writing in journals), Computer (we have a subscription to Raz Kids), and Word Work (ten tubs they can choose from... I don't dictate where they go or how often, as long as they are working on something each time). I change these up whenever I feel like it. Some of them are from my monthly word work packs. Others have stayed the same since September, like Wikki Sticks and alphabet puzzles. I don't put myself as a centre because sometimes I spend longer with certain groups or I just want to pull students one-on-one to do running records. This gives me lots of flexibility! 10:10am - Clean Up and Round Two of Daily 5 Students clean up and go straight to their second station. 10:30am - Clean Up, Wash Hands, Eat Snack 10:45am - Recess 11:00-11:35am - Gym or Music (my prep) I usually read with 3 groups each day. I am also lucky to also have a Grade 12 student who volunteers in my room every morning from 9:00-11:30. She pulls out students one-on-one to practice sight words and reread books. It is awesome! I love her! :) It's also great because from 10:30 until 11:30am my students have snack, recess, and gym/music, so for an hour each day I have her to do random jobs for me... She is getting good at cutting out laminating! Hehe. 11:35am-12:05pm - Writer's Workshop This is the time where we learn about specific writing skills and genres. During Daily 5 time, writing is free choice... whatever they want to write about! We do spend a lot of time in September going over how to write in our journals though. We talk about what to write about, spaces/capitals/punctuation, beginning/middle/end, who/where/what, etc. Now here are some (random) writing ideas that I shared at our P.D. session. At the beginning of the year we create a heart map of things that are important to us. This map is a list of ideas that we can use when writing in our journals or when writing stories. It is based on the book "My Map Book" by Sara Fanelli. We keep these in our writing folders to reference when we are stuck on an idea! Download "My Heart Map" here. Border from Creative Clips Digital Clipart. To talk about writing on the same topic, we made "All About" books. I read this big book "All About Real Bears". This is from a Creative Teaching Press set called Learn to Write. I have the K-1 pack, but they have books for older grades as well. It has a book for each genre and the text is very simple for first graders to read. We did a few lessons on fact vs. opinion before we started writing our books. Then we talked about how everybody was an expert on something. We made a chart of everything we were experts on, then they picked one thing to write a book about. We just wrote one fact about our topic on each page. I had books about cats and Lego and Star Wars and gymnastics. Lots of variety. They were fun because the students got to write about something that they knew a lot about and that interested them. Download "All About Story" here. Frame by Fancy Dog Studio. For some fun writing story writing ideas we did sticker stories (got the template here from Castles and Crayons) and squiggle stories. For sticker stories, I have a huge bucket of stickers. They get to choose three sticks and stick them on their page. They have to draw and colour a background and write a story to go with their picture. For squiggle stories, they get a paper with a black squiggly line on it. They have to turn the line into a picture and write a story to go with it. I just draw a line with a Sharpie on the paper before I photocopy it. I found this cute book that goes perfect with these stories. It's called "Andrew Drew and Drew" by Barney Saltzberg. The boy draws lines that turns into exciting things. It's a perfect storry! "Harold and the Purple Crayon" is another good story to read. Download "Squiggle Story" here. Border from That Girl Designs. A big skill that we focus on in First Grade is writing stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. I try and do a variety of personal narratives and fictional stories. I tend to use picture books for modelling this. After I read aloud the book, we retell the story using a beginning, middle, and end frame. Then as they are writing I can refer back to the story to remind them of things. After reading the classic story "Harry the Dirty Dog", we wrote a fictional story about a cat or dog. In the beginning they had to tell the setting and if the character was a cat or dog and it's name. In the middle some sort of problem had to happen to the character. And in the end, the problem had to get solved. Unfortunately we had a lot of cats and dogs getting run over in our stories, but they always seemed to be okay in the end! :) Download "11x17 BME Writing Paper" here. A personal narrative story I did last year was writing about a time we lost something important to us. This cute story "Patches Lost and Found" is about a girl who loses her guinea pig. She even ends up writing a story about how she lost and found the guinea pig. It's perfect! Download "Lost and Found Story Map" here. We did a few different how-to writing activities. I started with something very familiar to the students--getting ready for recess! I told the class we were going to pretend a student from Mexico was going to be visiting us and he's never seen Winter before! We had to give good directions to help him get ready. After writing, we acted out a few to see just how accurate the instructions were and how much detail they needed to add. "Put your jacket on." Put it on my head? Put it on my feet? Gotta be clear! Download "How to Get Ready for Recess" here. The next lesson was fun because it involved food! I brought in all the fixins for PB & J sandwiches and had the students first orally tell me how to make a PB & J. When done, they created these adorable sandwich books (from Amy Lemons "Black History Month" unit). They are pretty cute! Of course we all had to taste some PB & J too. Here is something new I am trying this year and I just love it--a writing portfolio! I took a large piece of construction paper, folded it in half, glued a title page on the front, and laminated them. On the inside I staple one piece of writing from the first (or second) day of school on the left side. I forgot to have them do a separate writing page, so I just photocopied their first journal entry. Next year I will do a separate page. Then I have the students do an assessment journal piece each term and staple it on the right side. Each term I staple their newest writing page on top of the previous one. That way we can visually see how far their writing has come since September! You could even do once each month if you wanted. I just chose to do one for each reporting period. It helped me with my report cards and it was very useful at parent teacher conferences. I could show the parents the progress that was made in the term. Download "Writing Portfolio Title and Pages" here. Clipart from DJ Inkers. Frame from Fancy Dog Studio. Last up I want to share what we are working on right now... We are writing our own autobiographies! I bought The Teacher Wife's cute cute cute "All About Biographies!" pack. Look at these title pages. So cute! We will be making our paper dolls tomorrow. I wanted some more focused writing pages, so I created my own writing pages to go inside our books. We are writing about: 1. All About Me (what we look like, how old, birthday, etc.) 2. Things I Like 3. My Family 4. My House 5. My Friends 6. My School 7. When I Grow Up The books are turning out very cute so far. I am so impressed with how much they are writing. In journal time I'm excited if they write two sentences. For this project they are writing a page and a half for each topic. It's fantastic! I promise to show some pictures when they are all done. Download "Autobiography" pages here. Wow, that was probably way too much reading for one post, but I wanted to get it all out there. I hope you found something useful to use in your own classroom! Have a great Friday!

So, you have to teach writing, huh? Or maybe you already teach writing and you're looking for some fresh insight? Well, ladies and gentlemen, this is the blog post for you!I've compiled a video post

Alright, I am finally back with some writing ideas and freebies I promised! Be prepared for the longest. post. ever! In February, my teaching partner forced coerced asked me nicely to present a half-day session with her for our divisional P.D. day. I get so nervous talking in front of peers, but we had a lot of fun! We decided to do a session on writing because that was something we both chose as one of our focuses for professional growth this year. We spent the session talking about how we each do writing in our classrooms and gave some writing ideas (lots of Pinterest and TpT inspired!). To start this blog entry, I thought I would describe my whole literacy routine for you. I am by no means an expert on this, but this is what I have done this year that really works for me and my group. I spend pretty much all morning doing literacy activities. Here we go... 9:15am - Whole Group Literacy Activities Sight Word Work - I have been using Natalie's Daily Sight Words each morning and the kids love them! We do a little sight word chant (ex. Give me a G! Give me an E! Give me a T! What does that spell? Get!). I used to lead the cheer, but now I pick a student to do it and they really get into it. Then we write the sight word in the poem, share read the poem together, and add the sight word to our word wall. Read Aloud- I usually read a story by our author of the month or a theme/holiday book. I do a lot of modelling reading skills (left to right, expression, etc.) and comprehension activities together as a whole group--making predictions, making connections, talking about story elements, etc. Word Work - We usually do a whole group lesson or indivudual activity involving a phonics skill, word family, poem of the week, emergent reader, etc. I love Deedee Wills' monthly poetry packs. We have been using these a lot! 9:50am - First Round of Daily 5/Guided Reading I split my students into 5 centre groups. I actually have 26 students now and the colours have been moved around a bit, but you get the general idea. The different coloured stickies are my reading groups... The students who are orange and yellow are my pull out students. They are pulled out during Daily 5 daily/weekly for Literacy Support or EAL Support. So my centre groups are kind of heterogeneous, but kind of mixed up. I have five different centres - Read to Self (from book boxes), Listen to Reading (on mp3 players), Writing (free writing in journals), Computer (we have a subscription to Raz Kids), and Word Work (ten tubs they can choose from... I don't dictate where they go or how often, as long as they are working on something each time). I change these up whenever I feel like it. Some of them are from my monthly word work packs. Others have stayed the same since September, like Wikki Sticks and alphabet puzzles. I don't put myself as a centre because sometimes I spend longer with certain groups or I just want to pull students one-on-one to do running records. This gives me lots of flexibility! 10:10am - Clean Up and Round Two of Daily 5 Students clean up and go straight to their second station. 10:30am - Clean Up, Wash Hands, Eat Snack 10:45am - Recess 11:00-11:35am - Gym or Music (my prep) I usually read with 3 groups each day. I am also lucky to also have a Grade 12 student who volunteers in my room every morning from 9:00-11:30. She pulls out students one-on-one to practice sight words and reread books. It is awesome! I love her! :) It's also great because from 10:30 until 11:30am my students have snack, recess, and gym/music, so for an hour each day I have her to do random jobs for me... She is getting good at cutting out laminating! Hehe. 11:35am-12:05pm - Writer's Workshop This is the time where we learn about specific writing skills and genres. During Daily 5 time, writing is free choice... whatever they want to write about! We do spend a lot of time in September going over how to write in our journals though. We talk about what to write about, spaces/capitals/punctuation, beginning/middle/end, who/where/what, etc. Now here are some (random) writing ideas that I shared at our P.D. session. At the beginning of the year we create a heart map of things that are important to us. This map is a list of ideas that we can use when writing in our journals or when writing stories. It is based on the book "My Map Book" by Sara Fanelli. We keep these in our writing folders to reference when we are stuck on an idea! Download "My Heart Map" here. Border from Creative Clips Digital Clipart. To talk about writing on the same topic, we made "All About" books. I read this big book "All About Real Bears". This is from a Creative Teaching Press set called Learn to Write. I have the K-1 pack, but they have books for older grades as well. It has a book for each genre and the text is very simple for first graders to read. We did a few lessons on fact vs. opinion before we started writing our books. Then we talked about how everybody was an expert on something. We made a chart of everything we were experts on, then they picked one thing to write a book about. We just wrote one fact about our topic on each page. I had books about cats and Lego and Star Wars and gymnastics. Lots of variety. They were fun because the students got to write about something that they knew a lot about and that interested them. Download "All About Story" here. Frame by Fancy Dog Studio. For some fun writing story writing ideas we did sticker stories (got the template here from Castles and Crayons) and squiggle stories. For sticker stories, I have a huge bucket of stickers. They get to choose three sticks and stick them on their page. They have to draw and colour a background and write a story to go with their picture. For squiggle stories, they get a paper with a black squiggly line on it. They have to turn the line into a picture and write a story to go with it. I just draw a line with a Sharpie on the paper before I photocopy it. I found this cute book that goes perfect with these stories. It's called "Andrew Drew and Drew" by Barney Saltzberg. The boy draws lines that turns into exciting things. It's a perfect storry! "Harold and the Purple Crayon" is another good story to read. Download "Squiggle Story" here. Border from That Girl Designs. A big skill that we focus on in First Grade is writing stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. I try and do a variety of personal narratives and fictional stories. I tend to use picture books for modelling this. After I read aloud the book, we retell the story using a beginning, middle, and end frame. Then as they are writing I can refer back to the story to remind them of things. After reading the classic story "Harry the Dirty Dog", we wrote a fictional story about a cat or dog. In the beginning they had to tell the setting and if the character was a cat or dog and it's name. In the middle some sort of problem had to happen to the character. And in the end, the problem had to get solved. Unfortunately we had a lot of cats and dogs getting run over in our stories, but they always seemed to be okay in the end! :) Download "11x17 BME Writing Paper" here. A personal narrative story I did last year was writing about a time we lost something important to us. This cute story "Patches Lost and Found" is about a girl who loses her guinea pig. She even ends up writing a story about how she lost and found the guinea pig. It's perfect! Download "Lost and Found Story Map" here. We did a few different how-to writing activities. I started with something very familiar to the students--getting ready for recess! I told the class we were going to pretend a student from Mexico was going to be visiting us and he's never seen Winter before! We had to give good directions to help him get ready. After writing, we acted out a few to see just how accurate the instructions were and how much detail they needed to add. "Put your jacket on." Put it on my head? Put it on my feet? Gotta be clear! Download "How to Get Ready for Recess" here. The next lesson was fun because it involved food! I brought in all the fixins for PB & J sandwiches and had the students first orally tell me how to make a PB & J. When done, they created these adorable sandwich books (from Amy Lemons "Black History Month" unit). They are pretty cute! Of course we all had to taste some PB & J too. Here is something new I am trying this year and I just love it--a writing portfolio! I took a large piece of construction paper, folded it in half, glued a title page on the front, and laminated them. On the inside I staple one piece of writing from the first (or second) day of school on the left side. I forgot to have them do a separate writing page, so I just photocopied their first journal entry. Next year I will do a separate page. Then I have the students do an assessment journal piece each term and staple it on the right side. Each term I staple their newest writing page on top of the previous one. That way we can visually see how far their writing has come since September! You could even do once each month if you wanted. I just chose to do one for each reporting period. It helped me with my report cards and it was very useful at parent teacher conferences. I could show the parents the progress that was made in the term. Download "Writing Portfolio Title and Pages" here. Clipart from DJ Inkers. Frame from Fancy Dog Studio. Last up I want to share what we are working on right now... We are writing our own autobiographies! I bought The Teacher Wife's cute cute cute "All About Biographies!" pack. Look at these title pages. So cute! We will be making our paper dolls tomorrow. I wanted some more focused writing pages, so I created my own writing pages to go inside our books. We are writing about: 1. All About Me (what we look like, how old, birthday, etc.) 2. Things I Like 3. My Family 4. My House 5. My Friends 6. My School 7. When I Grow Up The books are turning out very cute so far. I am so impressed with how much they are writing. In journal time I'm excited if they write two sentences. For this project they are writing a page and a half for each topic. It's fantastic! I promise to show some pictures when they are all done. Download "Autobiography" pages here. Wow, that was probably way too much reading for one post, but I wanted to get it all out there. I hope you found something useful to use in your own classroom! Have a great Friday!

Alright, I am finally back with some writing ideas and freebies I promised! Be prepared for the longest. post. ever! In February, my teaching partner forced coerced asked me nicely to present a half-day session with her for our divisional P.D. day. I get so nervous talking in front of peers, but we had a lot of fun! We decided to do a session on writing because that was something we both chose as one of our focuses for professional growth this year. We spent the session talking about how we each do writing in our classrooms and gave some writing ideas (lots of Pinterest and TpT inspired!). To start this blog entry, I thought I would describe my whole literacy routine for you. I am by no means an expert on this, but this is what I have done this year that really works for me and my group. I spend pretty much all morning doing literacy activities. Here we go... 9:15am - Whole Group Literacy Activities Sight Word Work - I have been using Natalie's Daily Sight Words each morning and the kids love them! We do a little sight word chant (ex. Give me a G! Give me an E! Give me a T! What does that spell? Get!). I used to lead the cheer, but now I pick a student to do it and they really get into it. Then we write the sight word in the poem, share read the poem together, and add the sight word to our word wall. Read Aloud- I usually read a story by our author of the month or a theme/holiday book. I do a lot of modelling reading skills (left to right, expression, etc.) and comprehension activities together as a whole group--making predictions, making connections, talking about story elements, etc. Word Work - We usually do a whole group lesson or indivudual activity involving a phonics skill, word family, poem of the week, emergent reader, etc. I love Deedee Wills' monthly poetry packs. We have been using these a lot! 9:50am - First Round of Daily 5/Guided Reading I split my students into 5 centre groups. I actually have 26 students now and the colours have been moved around a bit, but you get the general idea. The different coloured stickies are my reading groups... The students who are orange and yellow are my pull out students. They are pulled out during Daily 5 daily/weekly for Literacy Support or EAL Support. So my centre groups are kind of heterogeneous, but kind of mixed up. I have five different centres - Read to Self (from book boxes), Listen to Reading (on mp3 players), Writing (free writing in journals), Computer (we have a subscription to Raz Kids), and Word Work (ten tubs they can choose from... I don't dictate where they go or how often, as long as they are working on something each time). I change these up whenever I feel like it. Some of them are from my monthly word work packs. Others have stayed the same since September, like Wikki Sticks and alphabet puzzles. I don't put myself as a centre because sometimes I spend longer with certain groups or I just want to pull students one-on-one to do running records. This gives me lots of flexibility! 10:10am - Clean Up and Round Two of Daily 5 Students clean up and go straight to their second station. 10:30am - Clean Up, Wash Hands, Eat Snack 10:45am - Recess 11:00-11:35am - Gym or Music (my prep) I usually read with 3 groups each day. I am also lucky to also have a Grade 12 student who volunteers in my room every morning from 9:00-11:30. She pulls out students one-on-one to practice sight words and reread books. It is awesome! I love her! :) It's also great because from 10:30 until 11:30am my students have snack, recess, and gym/music, so for an hour each day I have her to do random jobs for me... She is getting good at cutting out laminating! Hehe. 11:35am-12:05pm - Writer's Workshop This is the time where we learn about specific writing skills and genres. During Daily 5 time, writing is free choice... whatever they want to write about! We do spend a lot of time in September going over how to write in our journals though. We talk about what to write about, spaces/capitals/punctuation, beginning/middle/end, who/where/what, etc. Now here are some (random) writing ideas that I shared at our P.D. session. At the beginning of the year we create a heart map of things that are important to us. This map is a list of ideas that we can use when writing in our journals or when writing stories. It is based on the book "My Map Book" by Sara Fanelli. We keep these in our writing folders to reference when we are stuck on an idea! Download "My Heart Map" here. Border from Creative Clips Digital Clipart. To talk about writing on the same topic, we made "All About" books. I read this big book "All About Real Bears". This is from a Creative Teaching Press set called Learn to Write. I have the K-1 pack, but they have books for older grades as well. It has a book for each genre and the text is very simple for first graders to read. We did a few lessons on fact vs. opinion before we started writing our books. Then we talked about how everybody was an expert on something. We made a chart of everything we were experts on, then they picked one thing to write a book about. We just wrote one fact about our topic on each page. I had books about cats and Lego and Star Wars and gymnastics. Lots of variety. They were fun because the students got to write about something that they knew a lot about and that interested them. Download "All About Story" here. Frame by Fancy Dog Studio. For some fun writing story writing ideas we did sticker stories (got the template here from Castles and Crayons) and squiggle stories. For sticker stories, I have a huge bucket of stickers. They get to choose three sticks and stick them on their page. They have to draw and colour a background and write a story to go with their picture. For squiggle stories, they get a paper with a black squiggly line on it. They have to turn the line into a picture and write a story to go with it. I just draw a line with a Sharpie on the paper before I photocopy it. I found this cute book that goes perfect with these stories. It's called "Andrew Drew and Drew" by Barney Saltzberg. The boy draws lines that turns into exciting things. It's a perfect storry! "Harold and the Purple Crayon" is another good story to read. Download "Squiggle Story" here. Border from That Girl Designs. A big skill that we focus on in First Grade is writing stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. I try and do a variety of personal narratives and fictional stories. I tend to use picture books for modelling this. After I read aloud the book, we retell the story using a beginning, middle, and end frame. Then as they are writing I can refer back to the story to remind them of things. After reading the classic story "Harry the Dirty Dog", we wrote a fictional story about a cat or dog. In the beginning they had to tell the setting and if the character was a cat or dog and it's name. In the middle some sort of problem had to happen to the character. And in the end, the problem had to get solved. Unfortunately we had a lot of cats and dogs getting run over in our stories, but they always seemed to be okay in the end! :) Download "11x17 BME Writing Paper" here. A personal narrative story I did last year was writing about a time we lost something important to us. This cute story "Patches Lost and Found" is about a girl who loses her guinea pig. She even ends up writing a story about how she lost and found the guinea pig. It's perfect! Download "Lost and Found Story Map" here. We did a few different how-to writing activities. I started with something very familiar to the students--getting ready for recess! I told the class we were going to pretend a student from Mexico was going to be visiting us and he's never seen Winter before! We had to give good directions to help him get ready. After writing, we acted out a few to see just how accurate the instructions were and how much detail they needed to add. "Put your jacket on." Put it on my head? Put it on my feet? Gotta be clear! Download "How to Get Ready for Recess" here. The next lesson was fun because it involved food! I brought in all the fixins for PB & J sandwiches and had the students first orally tell me how to make a PB & J. When done, they created these adorable sandwich books (from Amy Lemons "Black History Month" unit). They are pretty cute! Of course we all had to taste some PB & J too. Here is something new I am trying this year and I just love it--a writing portfolio! I took a large piece of construction paper, folded it in half, glued a title page on the front, and laminated them. On the inside I staple one piece of writing from the first (or second) day of school on the left side. I forgot to have them do a separate writing page, so I just photocopied their first journal entry. Next year I will do a separate page. Then I have the students do an assessment journal piece each term and staple it on the right side. Each term I staple their newest writing page on top of the previous one. That way we can visually see how far their writing has come since September! You could even do once each month if you wanted. I just chose to do one for each reporting period. It helped me with my report cards and it was very useful at parent teacher conferences. I could show the parents the progress that was made in the term. Download "Writing Portfolio Title and Pages" here. Clipart from DJ Inkers. Frame from Fancy Dog Studio. Last up I want to share what we are working on right now... We are writing our own autobiographies! I bought The Teacher Wife's cute cute cute "All About Biographies!" pack. Look at these title pages. So cute! We will be making our paper dolls tomorrow. I wanted some more focused writing pages, so I created my own writing pages to go inside our books. We are writing about: 1. All About Me (what we look like, how old, birthday, etc.) 2. Things I Like 3. My Family 4. My House 5. My Friends 6. My School 7. When I Grow Up The books are turning out very cute so far. I am so impressed with how much they are writing. In journal time I'm excited if they write two sentences. For this project they are writing a page and a half for each topic. It's fantastic! I promise to show some pictures when they are all done. Download "Autobiography" pages here. Wow, that was probably way too much reading for one post, but I wanted to get it all out there. I hope you found something useful to use in your own classroom! Have a great Friday!

We are off to a great start in Writer's Workshop. Our first unit is Drawing. This week we've been reading GREAT drawing mentor te...

Alright, I am finally back with some writing ideas and freebies I promised! Be prepared for the longest. post. ever! In February, my teaching partner forced coerced asked me nicely to present a half-day session with her for our divisional P.D. day. I get so nervous talking in front of peers, but we had a lot of fun! We decided to do a session on writing because that was something we both chose as one of our focuses for professional growth this year. We spent the session talking about how we each do writing in our classrooms and gave some writing ideas (lots of Pinterest and TpT inspired!). To start this blog entry, I thought I would describe my whole literacy routine for you. I am by no means an expert on this, but this is what I have done this year that really works for me and my group. I spend pretty much all morning doing literacy activities. Here we go... 9:15am - Whole Group Literacy Activities Sight Word Work - I have been using Natalie's Daily Sight Words each morning and the kids love them! We do a little sight word chant (ex. Give me a G! Give me an E! Give me a T! What does that spell? Get!). I used to lead the cheer, but now I pick a student to do it and they really get into it. Then we write the sight word in the poem, share read the poem together, and add the sight word to our word wall. Read Aloud- I usually read a story by our author of the month or a theme/holiday book. I do a lot of modelling reading skills (left to right, expression, etc.) and comprehension activities together as a whole group--making predictions, making connections, talking about story elements, etc. Word Work - We usually do a whole group lesson or indivudual activity involving a phonics skill, word family, poem of the week, emergent reader, etc. I love Deedee Wills' monthly poetry packs. We have been using these a lot! 9:50am - First Round of Daily 5/Guided Reading I split my students into 5 centre groups. I actually have 26 students now and the colours have been moved around a bit, but you get the general idea. The different coloured stickies are my reading groups... The students who are orange and yellow are my pull out students. They are pulled out during Daily 5 daily/weekly for Literacy Support or EAL Support. So my centre groups are kind of heterogeneous, but kind of mixed up. I have five different centres - Read to Self (from book boxes), Listen to Reading (on mp3 players), Writing (free writing in journals), Computer (we have a subscription to Raz Kids), and Word Work (ten tubs they can choose from... I don't dictate where they go or how often, as long as they are working on something each time). I change these up whenever I feel like it. Some of them are from my monthly word work packs. Others have stayed the same since September, like Wikki Sticks and alphabet puzzles. I don't put myself as a centre because sometimes I spend longer with certain groups or I just want to pull students one-on-one to do running records. This gives me lots of flexibility! 10:10am - Clean Up and Round Two of Daily 5 Students clean up and go straight to their second station. 10:30am - Clean Up, Wash Hands, Eat Snack 10:45am - Recess 11:00-11:35am - Gym or Music (my prep) I usually read with 3 groups each day. I am also lucky to also have a Grade 12 student who volunteers in my room every morning from 9:00-11:30. She pulls out students one-on-one to practice sight words and reread books. It is awesome! I love her! :) It's also great because from 10:30 until 11:30am my students have snack, recess, and gym/music, so for an hour each day I have her to do random jobs for me... She is getting good at cutting out laminating! Hehe. 11:35am-12:05pm - Writer's Workshop This is the time where we learn about specific writing skills and genres. During Daily 5 time, writing is free choice... whatever they want to write about! We do spend a lot of time in September going over how to write in our journals though. We talk about what to write about, spaces/capitals/punctuation, beginning/middle/end, who/where/what, etc. Now here are some (random) writing ideas that I shared at our P.D. session. At the beginning of the year we create a heart map of things that are important to us. This map is a list of ideas that we can use when writing in our journals or when writing stories. It is based on the book "My Map Book" by Sara Fanelli. We keep these in our writing folders to reference when we are stuck on an idea! Download "My Heart Map" here. Border from Creative Clips Digital Clipart. To talk about writing on the same topic, we made "All About" books. I read this big book "All About Real Bears". This is from a Creative Teaching Press set called Learn to Write. I have the K-1 pack, but they have books for older grades as well. It has a book for each genre and the text is very simple for first graders to read. We did a few lessons on fact vs. opinion before we started writing our books. Then we talked about how everybody was an expert on something. We made a chart of everything we were experts on, then they picked one thing to write a book about. We just wrote one fact about our topic on each page. I had books about cats and Lego and Star Wars and gymnastics. Lots of variety. They were fun because the students got to write about something that they knew a lot about and that interested them. Download "All About Story" here. Frame by Fancy Dog Studio. For some fun writing story writing ideas we did sticker stories (got the template here from Castles and Crayons) and squiggle stories. For sticker stories, I have a huge bucket of stickers. They get to choose three sticks and stick them on their page. They have to draw and colour a background and write a story to go with their picture. For squiggle stories, they get a paper with a black squiggly line on it. They have to turn the line into a picture and write a story to go with it. I just draw a line with a Sharpie on the paper before I photocopy it. I found this cute book that goes perfect with these stories. It's called "Andrew Drew and Drew" by Barney Saltzberg. The boy draws lines that turns into exciting things. It's a perfect storry! "Harold and the Purple Crayon" is another good story to read. Download "Squiggle Story" here. Border from That Girl Designs. A big skill that we focus on in First Grade is writing stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. I try and do a variety of personal narratives and fictional stories. I tend to use picture books for modelling this. After I read aloud the book, we retell the story using a beginning, middle, and end frame. Then as they are writing I can refer back to the story to remind them of things. After reading the classic story "Harry the Dirty Dog", we wrote a fictional story about a cat or dog. In the beginning they had to tell the setting and if the character was a cat or dog and it's name. In the middle some sort of problem had to happen to the character. And in the end, the problem had to get solved. Unfortunately we had a lot of cats and dogs getting run over in our stories, but they always seemed to be okay in the end! :) Download "11x17 BME Writing Paper" here. A personal narrative story I did last year was writing about a time we lost something important to us. This cute story "Patches Lost and Found" is about a girl who loses her guinea pig. She even ends up writing a story about how she lost and found the guinea pig. It's perfect! Download "Lost and Found Story Map" here. We did a few different how-to writing activities. I started with something very familiar to the students--getting ready for recess! I told the class we were going to pretend a student from Mexico was going to be visiting us and he's never seen Winter before! We had to give good directions to help him get ready. After writing, we acted out a few to see just how accurate the instructions were and how much detail they needed to add. "Put your jacket on." Put it on my head? Put it on my feet? Gotta be clear! Download "How to Get Ready for Recess" here. The next lesson was fun because it involved food! I brought in all the fixins for PB & J sandwiches and had the students first orally tell me how to make a PB & J. When done, they created these adorable sandwich books (from Amy Lemons "Black History Month" unit). They are pretty cute! Of course we all had to taste some PB & J too. Here is something new I am trying this year and I just love it--a writing portfolio! I took a large piece of construction paper, folded it in half, glued a title page on the front, and laminated them. On the inside I staple one piece of writing from the first (or second) day of school on the left side. I forgot to have them do a separate writing page, so I just photocopied their first journal entry. Next year I will do a separate page. Then I have the students do an assessment journal piece each term and staple it on the right side. Each term I staple their newest writing page on top of the previous one. That way we can visually see how far their writing has come since September! You could even do once each month if you wanted. I just chose to do one for each reporting period. It helped me with my report cards and it was very useful at parent teacher conferences. I could show the parents the progress that was made in the term. Download "Writing Portfolio Title and Pages" here. Clipart from DJ Inkers. Frame from Fancy Dog Studio. Last up I want to share what we are working on right now... We are writing our own autobiographies! I bought The Teacher Wife's cute cute cute "All About Biographies!" pack. Look at these title pages. So cute! We will be making our paper dolls tomorrow. I wanted some more focused writing pages, so I created my own writing pages to go inside our books. We are writing about: 1. All About Me (what we look like, how old, birthday, etc.) 2. Things I Like 3. My Family 4. My House 5. My Friends 6. My School 7. When I Grow Up The books are turning out very cute so far. I am so impressed with how much they are writing. In journal time I'm excited if they write two sentences. For this project they are writing a page and a half for each topic. It's fantastic! I promise to show some pictures when they are all done. Download "Autobiography" pages here. Wow, that was probably way too much reading for one post, but I wanted to get it all out there. I hope you found something useful to use in your own classroom! Have a great Friday!

I love creating Interactive Writing charts with my students. This is a great foundation for creating informational pieces of writing. We just finished up our unit on creating “How To” pieces of writing and have

Tiny shed designed for a writer by Matt Gibson Architecture + Design, located in Melbourne, Australia.

Writer's Workshop Three writing activities {+ rubric} are included in this FREEBIE: "Would You Rather" "How To Carve A Pumpkin" "I Can Write A Letter" Fall-themed rubrics Everything in this FREE download is from my Fall Writing pack. Take a look at the description below or click HERE to get a better look! These themed printables and activities have everything you need to get your writer's workshop started right! These writing pages can be used for creative writing lessons, writing centers, small writing groups, homework, & summer packets! Writing Pages Would You Rather How To Letter Writing All About… Writing A Story Making A List Beginning Middle End Mini Writing Books Rubrics Writing Checklist Picture Prompts - Small Cards - Full-page charts to display on Smart Board These printables are perfect for kindergarten, first grade, and struggling second grade students. Want to see more? Click on the links below. Summer Writing Fall Writing Growing Bundle For The YEAR! Thanks for visiting my store, Valerie

2nd grade teacher blog

Our writing requirements are very rigorous. By the end of Kindergarten, kinders are expected to write 3-5 page stories with two sentences on each page, using phonetic spelling, sight words spelled correctly, punctuation, first letters of sentences and "I" capitalized, and the rest of the sentence mostly lowercase. They have to write opinion pieces, informational/research, biographies, and stories with a beginning, middle, and end, a problem and a solution! We start encouraging writing right away! We are using our opportunity to get to know our friends to get us started. Right now our Writer's workshop is separate. I am hoping to integrate it more with our inquiries and projects soon! I am noticing some kids are starting to do this during our exploration time on their own! Each day a special friend brought items from home that would help us get to know them better! Some friends brought favorite toys. Some brought pictures of family, pets, and vacations. Some made posters and some made books using photos about themselves to read to the class. The kids enjoyed listening as their new friends got up in front of them and told them about themselves. We created a web map for each friend to illustrate and have been discussing the purpose of web maps to organize information. They will use web maps many times this year as one way to organize what they learn from inquiries! Here are a couple web maps of our friends. After we get to know our friend, we prepare to each write a story about them. They have been learning that pictures tell stories and are a very important part of stories. We have been studying authors such as David Shannon and noticing how his pictures tell us more than the words say. They have learned that the details in their picture are important for the reader to know where the story is taking place and what is happening in their story! We are spending a lot of time learning to add detail to our pictures and using them to tell our stories! We have also learned that there are certain things they have to do to be successful as a writer. They have to always do their personal best. We read Leo the Late Bloomer and talked about how everyone's personal best looks different. One child might still be using only one color in their pictures, but if that is their personal best, that is okay and they are successful. But if someone uses one color and we know they can use multiple colors, that is not their personal best and they were not successful. Hurrying to get work done is also not doing their personal best. We have learned that they have to focus on their work to be successful. They also have come to the conclusion (with guidance) that it is not kind to steal someone's focus away from their work! Their friends can't be a successful if their focus is taken away. Of course, they are allowed to discuss their writing with each other. We have learned that we need a plan to be successful. The kids have learned to first close their eyes and visualize what their story will look like, including all of the details. They have all been assigned a writing partner. After they visualize their story, they tell their writing partner their plan as they show them with their finger where all the details of their story will go. After they "point and plan" they may get their tools and start writing their story. These kids love to write! They have such a positive mindset and attitude about writing! They also see how useful and needed writing is in what we do every day! They watch me take notes, make lists and create plans. They are starting to create their own notes, lists and plans. During exploration time, they are also choosing to create books. Their favorite subject to write about is their family. One child wrote a book about how dragonflies are different colors, connecting it to our dragonfly inquiry! I'm excited for more to start integrating writing with our inquiries! We have been learning how to try to spell words. They are trying this by adding labels to the stories about their friends. We won't tell them how to spell anything! They stretch the word slowly and write down the letters they hear. If they don't know the sound, they guess. They will get more sounds correct as they know more letter sounds. They know that they are not adults and we do not expect them to spell like adults when they are 5! I want them to have the freedom to pick up a writing tool and write something at anytime. I don't want them to worry about if they are spelling the words right or not. This will also help them feel free to write down what they see, think or wonder during our inquiries. Some of the kids have started writing sentences in their stories. After I showed the class what they did, more have tried! We will model sentence writing this next week since they are now showing interest!

Hi everybody! I'm so excited to be back here at iTeach First! It's been awhile since I've posted here, so I can't wait to share with you today! Today I'm going to show you and tell you about how I tea

Alright, I am finally back with some writing ideas and freebies I promised! Be prepared for the longest. post. ever! In February, my teaching partner forced coerced asked me nicely to present a half-day session with her for our divisional P.D. day. I get so nervous talking in front of peers, but we had a lot of fun! We decided to do a session on writing because that was something we both chose as one of our focuses for professional growth this year. We spent the session talking about how we each do writing in our classrooms and gave some writing ideas (lots of Pinterest and TpT inspired!). To start this blog entry, I thought I would describe my whole literacy routine for you. I am by no means an expert on this, but this is what I have done this year that really works for me and my group. I spend pretty much all morning doing literacy activities. Here we go... 9:15am - Whole Group Literacy Activities Sight Word Work - I have been using Natalie's Daily Sight Words each morning and the kids love them! We do a little sight word chant (ex. Give me a G! Give me an E! Give me a T! What does that spell? Get!). I used to lead the cheer, but now I pick a student to do it and they really get into it. Then we write the sight word in the poem, share read the poem together, and add the sight word to our word wall. Read Aloud- I usually read a story by our author of the month or a theme/holiday book. I do a lot of modelling reading skills (left to right, expression, etc.) and comprehension activities together as a whole group--making predictions, making connections, talking about story elements, etc. Word Work - We usually do a whole group lesson or indivudual activity involving a phonics skill, word family, poem of the week, emergent reader, etc. I love Deedee Wills' monthly poetry packs. We have been using these a lot! 9:50am - First Round of Daily 5/Guided Reading I split my students into 5 centre groups. I actually have 26 students now and the colours have been moved around a bit, but you get the general idea. The different coloured stickies are my reading groups... The students who are orange and yellow are my pull out students. They are pulled out during Daily 5 daily/weekly for Literacy Support or EAL Support. So my centre groups are kind of heterogeneous, but kind of mixed up. I have five different centres - Read to Self (from book boxes), Listen to Reading (on mp3 players), Writing (free writing in journals), Computer (we have a subscription to Raz Kids), and Word Work (ten tubs they can choose from... I don't dictate where they go or how often, as long as they are working on something each time). I change these up whenever I feel like it. Some of them are from my monthly word work packs. Others have stayed the same since September, like Wikki Sticks and alphabet puzzles. I don't put myself as a centre because sometimes I spend longer with certain groups or I just want to pull students one-on-one to do running records. This gives me lots of flexibility! 10:10am - Clean Up and Round Two of Daily 5 Students clean up and go straight to their second station. 10:30am - Clean Up, Wash Hands, Eat Snack 10:45am - Recess 11:00-11:35am - Gym or Music (my prep) I usually read with 3 groups each day. I am also lucky to also have a Grade 12 student who volunteers in my room every morning from 9:00-11:30. She pulls out students one-on-one to practice sight words and reread books. It is awesome! I love her! :) It's also great because from 10:30 until 11:30am my students have snack, recess, and gym/music, so for an hour each day I have her to do random jobs for me... She is getting good at cutting out laminating! Hehe. 11:35am-12:05pm - Writer's Workshop This is the time where we learn about specific writing skills and genres. During Daily 5 time, writing is free choice... whatever they want to write about! We do spend a lot of time in September going over how to write in our journals though. We talk about what to write about, spaces/capitals/punctuation, beginning/middle/end, who/where/what, etc. Now here are some (random) writing ideas that I shared at our P.D. session. At the beginning of the year we create a heart map of things that are important to us. This map is a list of ideas that we can use when writing in our journals or when writing stories. It is based on the book "My Map Book" by Sara Fanelli. We keep these in our writing folders to reference when we are stuck on an idea! Download "My Heart Map" here. Border from Creative Clips Digital Clipart. To talk about writing on the same topic, we made "All About" books. I read this big book "All About Real Bears". This is from a Creative Teaching Press set called Learn to Write. I have the K-1 pack, but they have books for older grades as well. It has a book for each genre and the text is very simple for first graders to read. We did a few lessons on fact vs. opinion before we started writing our books. Then we talked about how everybody was an expert on something. We made a chart of everything we were experts on, then they picked one thing to write a book about. We just wrote one fact about our topic on each page. I had books about cats and Lego and Star Wars and gymnastics. Lots of variety. They were fun because the students got to write about something that they knew a lot about and that interested them. Download "All About Story" here. Frame by Fancy Dog Studio. For some fun writing story writing ideas we did sticker stories (got the template here from Castles and Crayons) and squiggle stories. For sticker stories, I have a huge bucket of stickers. They get to choose three sticks and stick them on their page. They have to draw and colour a background and write a story to go with their picture. For squiggle stories, they get a paper with a black squiggly line on it. They have to turn the line into a picture and write a story to go with it. I just draw a line with a Sharpie on the paper before I photocopy it. I found this cute book that goes perfect with these stories. It's called "Andrew Drew and Drew" by Barney Saltzberg. The boy draws lines that turns into exciting things. It's a perfect storry! "Harold and the Purple Crayon" is another good story to read. Download "Squiggle Story" here. Border from That Girl Designs. A big skill that we focus on in First Grade is writing stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. I try and do a variety of personal narratives and fictional stories. I tend to use picture books for modelling this. After I read aloud the book, we retell the story using a beginning, middle, and end frame. Then as they are writing I can refer back to the story to remind them of things. After reading the classic story "Harry the Dirty Dog", we wrote a fictional story about a cat or dog. In the beginning they had to tell the setting and if the character was a cat or dog and it's name. In the middle some sort of problem had to happen to the character. And in the end, the problem had to get solved. Unfortunately we had a lot of cats and dogs getting run over in our stories, but they always seemed to be okay in the end! :) Download "11x17 BME Writing Paper" here. A personal narrative story I did last year was writing about a time we lost something important to us. This cute story "Patches Lost and Found" is about a girl who loses her guinea pig. She even ends up writing a story about how she lost and found the guinea pig. It's perfect! Download "Lost and Found Story Map" here. We did a few different how-to writing activities. I started with something very familiar to the students--getting ready for recess! I told the class we were going to pretend a student from Mexico was going to be visiting us and he's never seen Winter before! We had to give good directions to help him get ready. After writing, we acted out a few to see just how accurate the instructions were and how much detail they needed to add. "Put your jacket on." Put it on my head? Put it on my feet? Gotta be clear! Download "How to Get Ready for Recess" here. The next lesson was fun because it involved food! I brought in all the fixins for PB & J sandwiches and had the students first orally tell me how to make a PB & J. When done, they created these adorable sandwich books (from Amy Lemons "Black History Month" unit). They are pretty cute! Of course we all had to taste some PB & J too. Here is something new I am trying this year and I just love it--a writing portfolio! I took a large piece of construction paper, folded it in half, glued a title page on the front, and laminated them. On the inside I staple one piece of writing from the first (or second) day of school on the left side. I forgot to have them do a separate writing page, so I just photocopied their first journal entry. Next year I will do a separate page. Then I have the students do an assessment journal piece each term and staple it on the right side. Each term I staple their newest writing page on top of the previous one. That way we can visually see how far their writing has come since September! You could even do once each month if you wanted. I just chose to do one for each reporting period. It helped me with my report cards and it was very useful at parent teacher conferences. I could show the parents the progress that was made in the term. Download "Writing Portfolio Title and Pages" here. Clipart from DJ Inkers. Frame from Fancy Dog Studio. Last up I want to share what we are working on right now... We are writing our own autobiographies! I bought The Teacher Wife's cute cute cute "All About Biographies!" pack. Look at these title pages. So cute! We will be making our paper dolls tomorrow. I wanted some more focused writing pages, so I created my own writing pages to go inside our books. We are writing about: 1. All About Me (what we look like, how old, birthday, etc.) 2. Things I Like 3. My Family 4. My House 5. My Friends 6. My School 7. When I Grow Up The books are turning out very cute so far. I am so impressed with how much they are writing. In journal time I'm excited if they write two sentences. For this project they are writing a page and a half for each topic. It's fantastic! I promise to show some pictures when they are all done. Download "Autobiography" pages here. Wow, that was probably way too much reading for one post, but I wanted to get it all out there. I hope you found something useful to use in your own classroom! Have a great Friday!

A complete guide on how to build a garden room or office, with expert advice from three industry experts with experience creating garden studio spaces.

Today was Presidents Day. Unlike some lucky teachers who got to stay home, I had to go to work today. We had a full day of workshops. On top of that, we ended up getting 5+ inches of snow this morning. It started in the morning and it fell hard and fast! My first part of the morning was spent learning how to do my web page. I loved that we were walked through...step by step...how to set up our pages. We then had to go our home school to work with our PLC's on goals that we set. I am excited that I will be doing Reader's Theater with my group. I found these fun plays from Kristin at A Teeny Tiny Teacher. I am so excited to use them. After lunch, we spent the rest of the day at another school in our district. We listened to Steve Dunn talk about writing. My head is spinning with all the great ideas that he gave us. I loved that he gave us examples and ideas of how to teach writing in our classroom. I can't wait to go back to my classroom and try some of the things that he shared with us. The afternoon went by so fast! Tonight I created some different writing papers that I want to use during Writer's Workshop based off the ideas that he gave us. This paper is meant to be used for kindergartners who are in their beginning stages of writing. They will draw a picture in the box and then write their sentences below it. This paper is meant to be used for kindergartners in January and first graders throughout the school year. The page on the left side of their journal will have the box on it. That way when they are done writing, they can go to the next page and still see their picture. Finally, this paper is meant for first graders and higher. Students will draw pictures of what happens in the beginning, middle and end of their stories. The boxes are on the left side of their journal and the extra lines are on the right side so they can still see the pictures. You can find all these papers HERE. I hope you find them helpful to you. I hope you had a great day! Sara

Completed in 2017 in Elsternwick, Australia. Camouflaged and nestled into a modest residential garden, the Writers Shed provides an isolated workspace for a creative writer. The outbuilding sits...

Alright, I am finally back with some writing ideas and freebies I promised! Be prepared for the longest. post. ever! In February, my teaching partner forced coerced asked me nicely to present a half-day session with her for our divisional P.D. day. I get so nervous talking in front of peers, but we had a lot of fun! We decided to do a session on writing because that was something we both chose as one of our focuses for professional growth this year. We spent the session talking about how we each do writing in our classrooms and gave some writing ideas (lots of Pinterest and TpT inspired!). To start this blog entry, I thought I would describe my whole literacy routine for you. I am by no means an expert on this, but this is what I have done this year that really works for me and my group. I spend pretty much all morning doing literacy activities. Here we go... 9:15am - Whole Group Literacy Activities Sight Word Work - I have been using Natalie's Daily Sight Words each morning and the kids love them! We do a little sight word chant (ex. Give me a G! Give me an E! Give me a T! What does that spell? Get!). I used to lead the cheer, but now I pick a student to do it and they really get into it. Then we write the sight word in the poem, share read the poem together, and add the sight word to our word wall. Read Aloud- I usually read a story by our author of the month or a theme/holiday book. I do a lot of modelling reading skills (left to right, expression, etc.) and comprehension activities together as a whole group--making predictions, making connections, talking about story elements, etc. Word Work - We usually do a whole group lesson or indivudual activity involving a phonics skill, word family, poem of the week, emergent reader, etc. I love Deedee Wills' monthly poetry packs. We have been using these a lot! 9:50am - First Round of Daily 5/Guided Reading I split my students into 5 centre groups. I actually have 26 students now and the colours have been moved around a bit, but you get the general idea. The different coloured stickies are my reading groups... The students who are orange and yellow are my pull out students. They are pulled out during Daily 5 daily/weekly for Literacy Support or EAL Support. So my centre groups are kind of heterogeneous, but kind of mixed up. I have five different centres - Read to Self (from book boxes), Listen to Reading (on mp3 players), Writing (free writing in journals), Computer (we have a subscription to Raz Kids), and Word Work (ten tubs they can choose from... I don't dictate where they go or how often, as long as they are working on something each time). I change these up whenever I feel like it. Some of them are from my monthly word work packs. Others have stayed the same since September, like Wikki Sticks and alphabet puzzles. I don't put myself as a centre because sometimes I spend longer with certain groups or I just want to pull students one-on-one to do running records. This gives me lots of flexibility! 10:10am - Clean Up and Round Two of Daily 5 Students clean up and go straight to their second station. 10:30am - Clean Up, Wash Hands, Eat Snack 10:45am - Recess 11:00-11:35am - Gym or Music (my prep) I usually read with 3 groups each day. I am also lucky to also have a Grade 12 student who volunteers in my room every morning from 9:00-11:30. She pulls out students one-on-one to practice sight words and reread books. It is awesome! I love her! :) It's also great because from 10:30 until 11:30am my students have snack, recess, and gym/music, so for an hour each day I have her to do random jobs for me... She is getting good at cutting out laminating! Hehe. 11:35am-12:05pm - Writer's Workshop This is the time where we learn about specific writing skills and genres. During Daily 5 time, writing is free choice... whatever they want to write about! We do spend a lot of time in September going over how to write in our journals though. We talk about what to write about, spaces/capitals/punctuation, beginning/middle/end, who/where/what, etc. Now here are some (random) writing ideas that I shared at our P.D. session. At the beginning of the year we create a heart map of things that are important to us. This map is a list of ideas that we can use when writing in our journals or when writing stories. It is based on the book "My Map Book" by Sara Fanelli. We keep these in our writing folders to reference when we are stuck on an idea! Download "My Heart Map" here. Border from Creative Clips Digital Clipart. To talk about writing on the same topic, we made "All About" books. I read this big book "All About Real Bears". This is from a Creative Teaching Press set called Learn to Write. I have the K-1 pack, but they have books for older grades as well. It has a book for each genre and the text is very simple for first graders to read. We did a few lessons on fact vs. opinion before we started writing our books. Then we talked about how everybody was an expert on something. We made a chart of everything we were experts on, then they picked one thing to write a book about. We just wrote one fact about our topic on each page. I had books about cats and Lego and Star Wars and gymnastics. Lots of variety. They were fun because the students got to write about something that they knew a lot about and that interested them. Download "All About Story" here. Frame by Fancy Dog Studio. For some fun writing story writing ideas we did sticker stories (got the template here from Castles and Crayons) and squiggle stories. For sticker stories, I have a huge bucket of stickers. They get to choose three sticks and stick them on their page. They have to draw and colour a background and write a story to go with their picture. For squiggle stories, they get a paper with a black squiggly line on it. They have to turn the line into a picture and write a story to go with it. I just draw a line with a Sharpie on the paper before I photocopy it. I found this cute book that goes perfect with these stories. It's called "Andrew Drew and Drew" by Barney Saltzberg. The boy draws lines that turns into exciting things. It's a perfect storry! "Harold and the Purple Crayon" is another good story to read. Download "Squiggle Story" here. Border from That Girl Designs. A big skill that we focus on in First Grade is writing stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. I try and do a variety of personal narratives and fictional stories. I tend to use picture books for modelling this. After I read aloud the book, we retell the story using a beginning, middle, and end frame. Then as they are writing I can refer back to the story to remind them of things. After reading the classic story "Harry the Dirty Dog", we wrote a fictional story about a cat or dog. In the beginning they had to tell the setting and if the character was a cat or dog and it's name. In the middle some sort of problem had to happen to the character. And in the end, the problem had to get solved. Unfortunately we had a lot of cats and dogs getting run over in our stories, but they always seemed to be okay in the end! :) Download "11x17 BME Writing Paper" here. A personal narrative story I did last year was writing about a time we lost something important to us. This cute story "Patches Lost and Found" is about a girl who loses her guinea pig. She even ends up writing a story about how she lost and found the guinea pig. It's perfect! Download "Lost and Found Story Map" here. We did a few different how-to writing activities. I started with something very familiar to the students--getting ready for recess! I told the class we were going to pretend a student from Mexico was going to be visiting us and he's never seen Winter before! We had to give good directions to help him get ready. After writing, we acted out a few to see just how accurate the instructions were and how much detail they needed to add. "Put your jacket on." Put it on my head? Put it on my feet? Gotta be clear! Download "How to Get Ready for Recess" here. The next lesson was fun because it involved food! I brought in all the fixins for PB & J sandwiches and had the students first orally tell me how to make a PB & J. When done, they created these adorable sandwich books (from Amy Lemons "Black History Month" unit). They are pretty cute! Of course we all had to taste some PB & J too. Here is something new I am trying this year and I just love it--a writing portfolio! I took a large piece of construction paper, folded it in half, glued a title page on the front, and laminated them. On the inside I staple one piece of writing from the first (or second) day of school on the left side. I forgot to have them do a separate writing page, so I just photocopied their first journal entry. Next year I will do a separate page. Then I have the students do an assessment journal piece each term and staple it on the right side. Each term I staple their newest writing page on top of the previous one. That way we can visually see how far their writing has come since September! You could even do once each month if you wanted. I just chose to do one for each reporting period. It helped me with my report cards and it was very useful at parent teacher conferences. I could show the parents the progress that was made in the term. Download "Writing Portfolio Title and Pages" here. Clipart from DJ Inkers. Frame from Fancy Dog Studio. Last up I want to share what we are working on right now... We are writing our own autobiographies! I bought The Teacher Wife's cute cute cute "All About Biographies!" pack. Look at these title pages. So cute! We will be making our paper dolls tomorrow. I wanted some more focused writing pages, so I created my own writing pages to go inside our books. We are writing about: 1. All About Me (what we look like, how old, birthday, etc.) 2. Things I Like 3. My Family 4. My House 5. My Friends 6. My School 7. When I Grow Up The books are turning out very cute so far. I am so impressed with how much they are writing. In journal time I'm excited if they write two sentences. For this project they are writing a page and a half for each topic. It's fantastic! I promise to show some pictures when they are all done. Download "Autobiography" pages here. Wow, that was probably way too much reading for one post, but I wanted to get it all out there. I hope you found something useful to use in your own classroom! Have a great Friday!

During our writer's workshop time, we started off the year writing in our journals. We have been practicing putting capitals at the beginnign of our sentences, periods or exclamation marks at the end, and using buble gum writing (s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g out the sounds we hear, like a piece of bubble gum!). They were doing very well, so we started our first writing project! A book called "Things I Like". It's a very simple book where the students write about things they like. It has six pages that go "I like..." and the seventh page ends the story with, "But I don't like.." Simple, but cute! So I started off the lesson by modelling a brainstorming session. Before we can write a book, we have to think about WHAT we are going to write. I made my bubble map on chart paper and wrote down six things that I like/like to do. I also thought of one thing I don't like to do. Then I gave my little bunnies their own sheet to write about what they like. I had them write the one thing they DON'T like either on the bottom of the page or on the back. I tried to stress that these were just ideas... not the whole sentences. But of course, you still have some that write all the words! Then we worked on our rough copies. I printed the paper on 11 x 17" paper and my students had to write one sentence in each box and draw/colour a picture to go with it. We did a mini-lesson on making our drawings WOW! We looked at this anchor chart that showed what it looked like to make a Wow! 5 drawing. It had to use lots of colours, have many details, be outlined, and look neat! Now I always ask them, "Is your drawing a Wow! 5 drawing?" They always go back and add more details or colours. It has really helped so far! Finally, we turned our rough copies into a good copy .We made a title page on half of an 8.5 x 11" paper and glued it to a piece of construction paper, which was then laminated. I put all the pages together and bound them. The books turned out super cute! They shared them with their parents at our parent-teacher conferences. Parents were quite impressed with all the work that went into these books! If you are interested in any of the papers we used, you can download them below. Brainstorm Map Rough Copy 11 x 17" Good Copy Writing Paper

Alright, I am finally back with some writing ideas and freebies I promised! Be prepared for the longest. post. ever! In February, my teaching partner forced coerced asked me nicely to present a half-day session with her for our divisional P.D. day. I get so nervous talking in front of peers, but we had a lot of fun! We decided to do a session on writing because that was something we both chose as one of our focuses for professional growth this year. We spent the session talking about how we each do writing in our classrooms and gave some writing ideas (lots of Pinterest and TpT inspired!). To start this blog entry, I thought I would describe my whole literacy routine for you. I am by no means an expert on this, but this is what I have done this year that really works for me and my group. I spend pretty much all morning doing literacy activities. Here we go... 9:15am - Whole Group Literacy Activities Sight Word Work - I have been using Natalie's Daily Sight Words each morning and the kids love them! We do a little sight word chant (ex. Give me a G! Give me an E! Give me a T! What does that spell? Get!). I used to lead the cheer, but now I pick a student to do it and they really get into it. Then we write the sight word in the poem, share read the poem together, and add the sight word to our word wall. Read Aloud- I usually read a story by our author of the month or a theme/holiday book. I do a lot of modelling reading skills (left to right, expression, etc.) and comprehension activities together as a whole group--making predictions, making connections, talking about story elements, etc. Word Work - We usually do a whole group lesson or indivudual activity involving a phonics skill, word family, poem of the week, emergent reader, etc. I love Deedee Wills' monthly poetry packs. We have been using these a lot! 9:50am - First Round of Daily 5/Guided Reading I split my students into 5 centre groups. I actually have 26 students now and the colours have been moved around a bit, but you get the general idea. The different coloured stickies are my reading groups... The students who are orange and yellow are my pull out students. They are pulled out during Daily 5 daily/weekly for Literacy Support or EAL Support. So my centre groups are kind of heterogeneous, but kind of mixed up. I have five different centres - Read to Self (from book boxes), Listen to Reading (on mp3 players), Writing (free writing in journals), Computer (we have a subscription to Raz Kids), and Word Work (ten tubs they can choose from... I don't dictate where they go or how often, as long as they are working on something each time). I change these up whenever I feel like it. Some of them are from my monthly word work packs. Others have stayed the same since September, like Wikki Sticks and alphabet puzzles. I don't put myself as a centre because sometimes I spend longer with certain groups or I just want to pull students one-on-one to do running records. This gives me lots of flexibility! 10:10am - Clean Up and Round Two of Daily 5 Students clean up and go straight to their second station. 10:30am - Clean Up, Wash Hands, Eat Snack 10:45am - Recess 11:00-11:35am - Gym or Music (my prep) I usually read with 3 groups each day. I am also lucky to also have a Grade 12 student who volunteers in my room every morning from 9:00-11:30. She pulls out students one-on-one to practice sight words and reread books. It is awesome! I love her! :) It's also great because from 10:30 until 11:30am my students have snack, recess, and gym/music, so for an hour each day I have her to do random jobs for me... She is getting good at cutting out laminating! Hehe. 11:35am-12:05pm - Writer's Workshop This is the time where we learn about specific writing skills and genres. During Daily 5 time, writing is free choice... whatever they want to write about! We do spend a lot of time in September going over how to write in our journals though. We talk about what to write about, spaces/capitals/punctuation, beginning/middle/end, who/where/what, etc. Now here are some (random) writing ideas that I shared at our P.D. session. At the beginning of the year we create a heart map of things that are important to us. This map is a list of ideas that we can use when writing in our journals or when writing stories. It is based on the book "My Map Book" by Sara Fanelli. We keep these in our writing folders to reference when we are stuck on an idea! Download "My Heart Map" here. Border from Creative Clips Digital Clipart. To talk about writing on the same topic, we made "All About" books. I read this big book "All About Real Bears". This is from a Creative Teaching Press set called Learn to Write. I have the K-1 pack, but they have books for older grades as well. It has a book for each genre and the text is very simple for first graders to read. We did a few lessons on fact vs. opinion before we started writing our books. Then we talked about how everybody was an expert on something. We made a chart of everything we were experts on, then they picked one thing to write a book about. We just wrote one fact about our topic on each page. I had books about cats and Lego and Star Wars and gymnastics. Lots of variety. They were fun because the students got to write about something that they knew a lot about and that interested them. Download "All About Story" here. Frame by Fancy Dog Studio. For some fun writing story writing ideas we did sticker stories (got the template here from Castles and Crayons) and squiggle stories. For sticker stories, I have a huge bucket of stickers. They get to choose three sticks and stick them on their page. They have to draw and colour a background and write a story to go with their picture. For squiggle stories, they get a paper with a black squiggly line on it. They have to turn the line into a picture and write a story to go with it. I just draw a line with a Sharpie on the paper before I photocopy it. I found this cute book that goes perfect with these stories. It's called "Andrew Drew and Drew" by Barney Saltzberg. The boy draws lines that turns into exciting things. It's a perfect storry! "Harold and the Purple Crayon" is another good story to read. Download "Squiggle Story" here. Border from That Girl Designs. A big skill that we focus on in First Grade is writing stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. I try and do a variety of personal narratives and fictional stories. I tend to use picture books for modelling this. After I read aloud the book, we retell the story using a beginning, middle, and end frame. Then as they are writing I can refer back to the story to remind them of things. After reading the classic story "Harry the Dirty Dog", we wrote a fictional story about a cat or dog. In the beginning they had to tell the setting and if the character was a cat or dog and it's name. In the middle some sort of problem had to happen to the character. And in the end, the problem had to get solved. Unfortunately we had a lot of cats and dogs getting run over in our stories, but they always seemed to be okay in the end! :) Download "11x17 BME Writing Paper" here. A personal narrative story I did last year was writing about a time we lost something important to us. This cute story "Patches Lost and Found" is about a girl who loses her guinea pig. She even ends up writing a story about how she lost and found the guinea pig. It's perfect! Download "Lost and Found Story Map" here. We did a few different how-to writing activities. I started with something very familiar to the students--getting ready for recess! I told the class we were going to pretend a student from Mexico was going to be visiting us and he's never seen Winter before! We had to give good directions to help him get ready. After writing, we acted out a few to see just how accurate the instructions were and how much detail they needed to add. "Put your jacket on." Put it on my head? Put it on my feet? Gotta be clear! Download "How to Get Ready for Recess" here. The next lesson was fun because it involved food! I brought in all the fixins for PB & J sandwiches and had the students first orally tell me how to make a PB & J. When done, they created these adorable sandwich books (from Amy Lemons "Black History Month" unit). They are pretty cute! Of course we all had to taste some PB & J too. Here is something new I am trying this year and I just love it--a writing portfolio! I took a large piece of construction paper, folded it in half, glued a title page on the front, and laminated them. On the inside I staple one piece of writing from the first (or second) day of school on the left side. I forgot to have them do a separate writing page, so I just photocopied their first journal entry. Next year I will do a separate page. Then I have the students do an assessment journal piece each term and staple it on the right side. Each term I staple their newest writing page on top of the previous one. That way we can visually see how far their writing has come since September! You could even do once each month if you wanted. I just chose to do one for each reporting period. It helped me with my report cards and it was very useful at parent teacher conferences. I could show the parents the progress that was made in the term. Download "Writing Portfolio Title and Pages" here. Clipart from DJ Inkers. Frame from Fancy Dog Studio. Last up I want to share what we are working on right now... We are writing our own autobiographies! I bought The Teacher Wife's cute cute cute "All About Biographies!" pack. Look at these title pages. So cute! We will be making our paper dolls tomorrow. I wanted some more focused writing pages, so I created my own writing pages to go inside our books. We are writing about: 1. All About Me (what we look like, how old, birthday, etc.) 2. Things I Like 3. My Family 4. My House 5. My Friends 6. My School 7. When I Grow Up The books are turning out very cute so far. I am so impressed with how much they are writing. In journal time I'm excited if they write two sentences. For this project they are writing a page and a half for each topic. It's fantastic! I promise to show some pictures when they are all done. Download "Autobiography" pages here. Wow, that was probably way too much reading for one post, but I wanted to get it all out there. I hope you found something useful to use in your own classroom! Have a great Friday!

I'm Kayla Root and this is my personal blog about my student teaching experience in early childhood education.

Nature is just the coolest thing. We started our sunflower sprouts about 2 weeks ago, in a nice warm & wet sandwich bag. This past week they were ready to be moved into some soil!

Completed in 2017 in Elsternwick, Australia. Camouflaged and nestled into a modest residential garden, the Writers Shed provides an isolated workspace for a creative writer. The outbuilding sits...

Setting up a writer's notebook to collect all your creative ideas in an organized way. Work through the writing process with these easy tips!

How do you teach writing to Kindergartners? I am sharing some tips on Teaching Guided Drawing to Beginning Writers. Drawing is an important skill!

Looking for Writing Celebrations for your Writer's Workshop? You will find 4 tips to celebrate your young authors all year long. From share time, writing portfolios, young author crowns and certificates, writing goals and brag tags along with using a microphone, your students will look forward to writing workshop with these engaging culminating activities for any writing unit!

Alright, I am finally back with some writing ideas and freebies I promised! Be prepared for the longest. post. ever! In February, my teaching partner forced coerced asked me nicely to present a half-day session with her for our divisional P.D. day. I get so nervous talking in front of peers, but we had a lot of fun! We decided to do a session on writing because that was something we both chose as one of our focuses for professional growth this year. We spent the session talking about how we each do writing in our classrooms and gave some writing ideas (lots of Pinterest and TpT inspired!). To start this blog entry, I thought I would describe my whole literacy routine for you. I am by no means an expert on this, but this is what I have done this year that really works for me and my group. I spend pretty much all morning doing literacy activities. Here we go... 9:15am - Whole Group Literacy Activities Sight Word Work - I have been using Natalie's Daily Sight Words each morning and the kids love them! We do a little sight word chant (ex. Give me a G! Give me an E! Give me a T! What does that spell? Get!). I used to lead the cheer, but now I pick a student to do it and they really get into it. Then we write the sight word in the poem, share read the poem together, and add the sight word to our word wall. Read Aloud- I usually read a story by our author of the month or a theme/holiday book. I do a lot of modelling reading skills (left to right, expression, etc.) and comprehension activities together as a whole group--making predictions, making connections, talking about story elements, etc. Word Work - We usually do a whole group lesson or indivudual activity involving a phonics skill, word family, poem of the week, emergent reader, etc. I love Deedee Wills' monthly poetry packs. We have been using these a lot! 9:50am - First Round of Daily 5/Guided Reading I split my students into 5 centre groups. I actually have 26 students now and the colours have been moved around a bit, but you get the general idea. The different coloured stickies are my reading groups... The students who are orange and yellow are my pull out students. They are pulled out during Daily 5 daily/weekly for Literacy Support or EAL Support. So my centre groups are kind of heterogeneous, but kind of mixed up. I have five different centres - Read to Self (from book boxes), Listen to Reading (on mp3 players), Writing (free writing in journals), Computer (we have a subscription to Raz Kids), and Word Work (ten tubs they can choose from... I don't dictate where they go or how often, as long as they are working on something each time). I change these up whenever I feel like it. Some of them are from my monthly word work packs. Others have stayed the same since September, like Wikki Sticks and alphabet puzzles. I don't put myself as a centre because sometimes I spend longer with certain groups or I just want to pull students one-on-one to do running records. This gives me lots of flexibility! 10:10am - Clean Up and Round Two of Daily 5 Students clean up and go straight to their second station. 10:30am - Clean Up, Wash Hands, Eat Snack 10:45am - Recess 11:00-11:35am - Gym or Music (my prep) I usually read with 3 groups each day. I am also lucky to also have a Grade 12 student who volunteers in my room every morning from 9:00-11:30. She pulls out students one-on-one to practice sight words and reread books. It is awesome! I love her! :) It's also great because from 10:30 until 11:30am my students have snack, recess, and gym/music, so for an hour each day I have her to do random jobs for me... She is getting good at cutting out laminating! Hehe. 11:35am-12:05pm - Writer's Workshop This is the time where we learn about specific writing skills and genres. During Daily 5 time, writing is free choice... whatever they want to write about! We do spend a lot of time in September going over how to write in our journals though. We talk about what to write about, spaces/capitals/punctuation, beginning/middle/end, who/where/what, etc. Now here are some (random) writing ideas that I shared at our P.D. session. At the beginning of the year we create a heart map of things that are important to us. This map is a list of ideas that we can use when writing in our journals or when writing stories. It is based on the book "My Map Book" by Sara Fanelli. We keep these in our writing folders to reference when we are stuck on an idea! Download "My Heart Map" here. Border from Creative Clips Digital Clipart. To talk about writing on the same topic, we made "All About" books. I read this big book "All About Real Bears". This is from a Creative Teaching Press set called Learn to Write. I have the K-1 pack, but they have books for older grades as well. It has a book for each genre and the text is very simple for first graders to read. We did a few lessons on fact vs. opinion before we started writing our books. Then we talked about how everybody was an expert on something. We made a chart of everything we were experts on, then they picked one thing to write a book about. We just wrote one fact about our topic on each page. I had books about cats and Lego and Star Wars and gymnastics. Lots of variety. They were fun because the students got to write about something that they knew a lot about and that interested them. Download "All About Story" here. Frame by Fancy Dog Studio. For some fun writing story writing ideas we did sticker stories (got the template here from Castles and Crayons) and squiggle stories. For sticker stories, I have a huge bucket of stickers. They get to choose three sticks and stick them on their page. They have to draw and colour a background and write a story to go with their picture. For squiggle stories, they get a paper with a black squiggly line on it. They have to turn the line into a picture and write a story to go with it. I just draw a line with a Sharpie on the paper before I photocopy it. I found this cute book that goes perfect with these stories. It's called "Andrew Drew and Drew" by Barney Saltzberg. The boy draws lines that turns into exciting things. It's a perfect storry! "Harold and the Purple Crayon" is another good story to read. Download "Squiggle Story" here. Border from That Girl Designs. A big skill that we focus on in First Grade is writing stories that have a beginning, middle, and end. I try and do a variety of personal narratives and fictional stories. I tend to use picture books for modelling this. After I read aloud the book, we retell the story using a beginning, middle, and end frame. Then as they are writing I can refer back to the story to remind them of things. After reading the classic story "Harry the Dirty Dog", we wrote a fictional story about a cat or dog. In the beginning they had to tell the setting and if the character was a cat or dog and it's name. In the middle some sort of problem had to happen to the character. And in the end, the problem had to get solved. Unfortunately we had a lot of cats and dogs getting run over in our stories, but they always seemed to be okay in the end! :) Download "11x17 BME Writing Paper" here. A personal narrative story I did last year was writing about a time we lost something important to us. This cute story "Patches Lost and Found" is about a girl who loses her guinea pig. She even ends up writing a story about how she lost and found the guinea pig. It's perfect! Download "Lost and Found Story Map" here. We did a few different how-to writing activities. I started with something very familiar to the students--getting ready for recess! I told the class we were going to pretend a student from Mexico was going to be visiting us and he's never seen Winter before! We had to give good directions to help him get ready. After writing, we acted out a few to see just how accurate the instructions were and how much detail they needed to add. "Put your jacket on." Put it on my head? Put it on my feet? Gotta be clear! Download "How to Get Ready for Recess" here. The next lesson was fun because it involved food! I brought in all the fixins for PB & J sandwiches and had the students first orally tell me how to make a PB & J. When done, they created these adorable sandwich books (from Amy Lemons "Black History Month" unit). They are pretty cute! Of course we all had to taste some PB & J too. Here is something new I am trying this year and I just love it--a writing portfolio! I took a large piece of construction paper, folded it in half, glued a title page on the front, and laminated them. On the inside I staple one piece of writing from the first (or second) day of school on the left side. I forgot to have them do a separate writing page, so I just photocopied their first journal entry. Next year I will do a separate page. Then I have the students do an assessment journal piece each term and staple it on the right side. Each term I staple their newest writing page on top of the previous one. That way we can visually see how far their writing has come since September! You could even do once each month if you wanted. I just chose to do one for each reporting period. It helped me with my report cards and it was very useful at parent teacher conferences. I could show the parents the progress that was made in the term. Download "Writing Portfolio Title and Pages" here. Clipart from DJ Inkers. Frame from Fancy Dog Studio. Last up I want to share what we are working on right now... We are writing our own autobiographies! I bought The Teacher Wife's cute cute cute "All About Biographies!" pack. Look at these title pages. So cute! We will be making our paper dolls tomorrow. I wanted some more focused writing pages, so I created my own writing pages to go inside our books. We are writing about: 1. All About Me (what we look like, how old, birthday, etc.) 2. Things I Like 3. My Family 4. My House 5. My Friends 6. My School 7. When I Grow Up The books are turning out very cute so far. I am so impressed with how much they are writing. In journal time I'm excited if they write two sentences. For this project they are writing a page and a half for each topic. It's fantastic! I promise to show some pictures when they are all done. Download "Autobiography" pages here. Wow, that was probably way too much reading for one post, but I wanted to get it all out there. I hope you found something useful to use in your own classroom! Have a great Friday!

Through the years I have had many questions about and requests for more information on the writing offices shown here: Sorry for ...

We had a fun-filled week full of gingerbread activities. If you have not purchased Deanna Jump's Gingerbread Unit, DO IT!! It is full of amazing activities! She has some freebies on her blog too. So we started out by making our gingerbread journals. I followed Deanna's steps to make the gingerbread man, but for the booklet, I just folded a large piece of construction paper in half, stapled our activity pages inside, and rounded the top corners. It was so easy to make and a lot less cutting! The gingerbread boys and girls turned out so cute! Here's a view of the inside of our activity books. It was a collection of gingerbread pages I've found from different resources. Each day we read a different gingerbread book and filled in this chart from Deanna's unit. During our writing time each day, students had to write a response about each of the books. If you would like to download my journal pages for these four books, you can click here. We just finished our mapping unit in Social Studies, so I decided for a fun wrap up activity that would create a Gingerbread Town! I collected small milk cartons, covered them with brown construction paper (hot glued a strip around the bottom and two rectangles to the top... very easy!) and let the kids decorate them with crayons, markers, and pictures of candy! I found a photocopy page of a bunch of different candies from some gingerbread unit (maybe a Teacher Created Resources book) that they coloured and cut out. They placed their houses on the large map. Using the compass on our map, we played a little game! I would draw names and the first person would take the little toy car to their house. The second person I drew would have to explain to the first student how to get to their house (using the cardinal directions). When they arrived, the second person would get the car and I would draw another name. The third person would then explain to the second person how to get to their house. We went until everyone got a turn to drive the car and give directions. It was so much fun and the kids were so engaged!! What is a gingerbread unit without TASTING some gingerbread cookies!! We sat on the carpet with our gingerbread activity books and I passed out a cookie to everybody (store bought.... I don't have time to bake yet!! lol) with the instructions they could LOOK and SMELL, but NOOOOO eating!! Yes, I'm sooooo mean! ;) We came up with some descriptive words about the gingerbread cookie. After that, I allowed them have ONE bite! Then we graphed which part of the cookie we ate first (idea from Deanna's unit) in our graphing pocket chart. Students had Deanna's graph worksheets in their activity book, which they completed AFTER we ate the rest of our cookies :) If you would like my graph labels, you can download them here. In Math we are practicing counting by 5's, so I created these gingerbread men activities to reinforce this skill. I started by handing out these gingerbread cards. The students had to rearrange themselves in order, from 5 to 100. Then we placed the cards in the pocket chart. Then we did this little cut and paste activity that was a lot of fun. I gave each student 3 strips of brown construction paper (about 2x18") and they glued them together to make one LOOOOOONG strip (I think this was the fun part... working on the floor or on TWO desks). Then they got a page of gingerbread men that they had to cut out and glue in the correct counting by 5's order. We coloured them after. Later in the week we did a little worksheet that had the students write the numbers out on the gingerbread men's tummies. If you are interested in these gingerbread men counting by 5's activities, I put them together and put them in my TpT store for {free}. You can download them by clicking on the picture below. I'm hoping to get my "Christmas Around the World" unit up on TpT this weekend. I'm starting the 9-day mini-unit on Monday with my class, and it will take me to next Thursday, the last day before Christmas break! Yahoo!! I can't wait to have 17 wonderful days of relaxing! Happy weekend, everyone!

Favorite color is blue? There are a lot of blue succulents that you can begin growing, some are even rare! Read on to see 8 different blue succulents.

Teaching writing is so much easier using Google. Here are seven of my favorite ways that using Google Docs or Google Slides helps with writing instruction.

I’ve been spending some serious amounts of time this summer leading conversations around the country focused on the integration of social studies and literacy. And for the last few years, I…

Camouflaged and nestled into a modest residential garden, the Writers Shed provides an isolated workspace for a creative writer. The outbuilding sits in the...

Garden Library - shortlisted for the best new home improvement project in London. The brief was for a study, spare room and storage for a ...

I love happy art lessons. The ones that engage children right from the get-go. These painted paper butterflies are a perennial favorite in my art room. My first graders make painted paper and then use the paper to create butterfly wings. I set out wing templates but encourage the children to make their own wing

We have just 4 days left until we are done for the year! I don’t have much for you – I guess I’ve been a slacker in taking pictures these la...

From small wooden potting sheds to large garden studios that function as guest rooms and offices, here are our favourite ideas for garden sheds.