Rules and the Pigeon

One of my favorite ways to apply Rules from Kaplan's Depth and Complexity is to read a series of books about one character and then determine what "rules" apply. What is always true about this character? It's challenging for the students because often they will say something from the last story we read-but I am looking for something that is ALWAYS true.

We are working on persuasive text and so we read the books from Mo Willems' Pigeon series this week. We discussed his traits then I asked the students to write about what the Rules fro the Pigeon were.

Inventing a New Holiday

If you know me at all you know that I am a big fan of using activities that will help our students learn to invent something new. 

In social studies one of our objectives has to do with holidays. How do we celebrate? Why do we celebrate? So to end that unit we make a map showing everything the holidays have in common. Do they have a certain color we associate with it? What kind of activities do we do to celebrate?

Then the students work in groups to invent their own holiday. I have to be very clear that I'm not talking about Christmas or Valentine's Day-they have to come up with something new. This is challenging for them.

Here's what my students came up with this year:

Emoji Day

Kids Day\

Persuasive Text

We have been working on the genre of persuasive text. I read books like these:

And then I asked the students to write their own. Some made good arguments, some said I was beautiful. :) 

Novelty in the Classroom

We spend about 7 hours a day in our classrooms. Routine is very important not only so we can make sure everyone is following the same schedule but also to help with SEL strategies of keeping predictibility in our day. 

However, it also helps to change things up from time to time just to keep things interesting. My dog is very smart. He gets bored easily with his toys. But if I link two toys together-look a new toy! He LOVES that. I think it's the same with our students. 

Ways I believe we can use novelty in the classroom:

1) Rearrange the classroom periodically. Let the students change seats. With the world of Covid we have to be strategic about this. We do it before going on breaks so they aren't sitting in someone else's germs.

2) Room Transformations-if we are learning about bats I buy black tablecloths at the dollar store and cover their desks to make caves. When we learn about the "qu" digraph we decorate for a wedding so q and u can get married.

3) Incorporating fun critical thinking activities like optical illusions or riddles.

4) Games! My students love to play Four Corners with their sight words or sight word snowball fight where the words are written on a paper and we throw them at each other for a minute and then read our words.

5) Different supplies-even just giving kids troll pens or colored printer paper can make an activity more exciting.

More than ever right now we need to make things as engaging as possible. Only 5 months left to get the students where they need to be.

What kinds of activity do you do to shake things up?

My One Word Resolution for 2022

I don't make actual resolutions, each year I choose a word that I can use to focus on bettering myself. This year it was tough to think of a word. Like many teachers, this year has been the most challenging of my career. Our promotion standard for 1st Grade is passing the high frequency word test. I had 2 students pass on the first try in October. 90% of my students did not know their letters and sounds the first day of school. Intervention blocks have been squeezed into our already crowded schedules. And I am seeing progress-it's just been slow which is discouraging. I am not sure my students are going to be ready for 2nd grade despite my best efforts and that makes me feel very ineffective.

As the numbers of people infected with this virus continue to climb, there is a lot of anxiety that goes along with that. As many of you know, I went through treatment for breast cancer 6 years ago which included chemo treatments. My immune system is not what it used to be. I am very careful, but all it takes is one germ. We are being pushed into trying to go back to a "normal" instruction-students collaborating in groups, etc. it's hard for me to put that into practice.  Part of me wanted to choose a word like "survive". But that seemed too easy.

My word for 2022 is FEARLESS. I am going to fearlessly do what I need to do in order to give my students what they need. I am going to fearlessly continue to grow and try new ideas. I am going to continue to fearlessly share my ideas with my colleagues and followers. And I am going to try to go to school fearlessly every day (armed with my masks and sanitizer of course). 

What is your One Word Resolution for 2022?

Edward Tulane and Love

I have posted before about my tradition of reading chapter books to my students. It is my favorite part of the day! The kids get to know the characters so well that they actually often miss them when the story is finished. I also believe it benefits comprehension and vocabulary skills greatly.

We just finished reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane-lots of ways to bring in Kaplan's Depth and Complexity with this book. One thing is it brings up many Big Ideas. One of those Big Ideas is love. Basically Edward goes through a bit of an existential crisis and at one point wonders like the famous quote "is it better to have loved and lost or never to have loved at all". I asked my 1st Graders to write about their thoughts on the subject.

My Favorite Activity to Boost Creativity

I believe our students come to us with an innate creativity. For some students this skill has never been taught and we have to activate those powers. :) In my experience, we often ask students to "be creative" in their writing but we never teach them the skills that would make progress in being creative possible.

One of my favorite activites to do is I split the class into groups of 4 students. I give them some letters of the alphabet and they have to come up with an animal or a place or a food that begins with that letter. But here is the catch-your team only gets a point for your answer if it is different than all the others. If the letter is A and 2 teams say "apple" and one team says "asparagus" only the asparagus team will get a point because that was the creative answer. If all 3 teams have a different answer then all 3 teams will get a point.

We did animals yesterday-so proud of how creative their answer were-we play this game probably every other week-I really think it is helping them develop creativity skills!