Five for Friday

I have had such a good week!  It was great to be back after spring break and start some new and exciting things.

I love love love the blog, A Day in First Grade. The other day I was reading one of her amazing blog posts and learned a new management technique for Guided Reading Groups. She connected a green and red Unifix cube to show when students needed help.

When students are working and don't need any assistance, their cube is flipped to green.

When a student is stuck on a word or needs some help, they flip their cube to red.

I tried this with my students this week, we ALL loved it so much!  So simple yet AMAZING!

Continuing on my stalking of A Day in First Grade, I recently purchased the Tall Tales unit from her TPT store.    We have had so SO SO much exploring these tales and doing all of our tasks.

Students came to school after spring break to find that our ocean room had been transformed into a western outpost.  Around the room were various tasks from the Tall Tales unit that I had purchased from Kristen Smith on TPT.

Books ready to be read.

ABC order task 1 station. You can see our tables were transformed as well.

Writing station was transformed with a little burlap for task 7.

Digging through chicken feed for synonyms at task 5.

Tall tales even found their way into our guided math stations this week!

Differentiated math group activities I created to go along with our Tall Tales unit. These will be available at my TPT store soon!

Pecos Place Value

Students pulled a card out of the bucket.

On the recording sheet, students would write the number.  Then, they would circle ones, tens, or hundreds, according to what their card said.  Then they would write the number that was in that place.

Sometimes students would pull a lasso and expand card.

On the backside of the recording sheet, students would write the number, draw the tens and ones, then write it in expanded form.

This activity was done with my guided group that has not quite grasped the concept of place value. 

Lasso and Expand

Each student got a 3 in a cube dice.   Students would make a three digit number and record it on the recording sheet.

Student would then draw the number in base ten blocks, and then write it in expanded form.

This was done with my groups that understand place value and need reinforcement of the skill.

Slue-Foot Sue Subtraction

Students would pull two dominoes from a cowboy boot.  Students would use the dominoes to make 2 two-digit numbers and write a subtraction equation on the recording sheet.

Students would build the top/largest number on the place value mat to model the problem and borrow if needed.  Then they would record the answer on the recording sheet.

Today we were privileged to have the NED show come to our school.  The NED show is a high energy, high excitement show that helps kids learn how to be champions at school.  The presenter was A-MAZ-ING!  The website offers lots of common core lessons that tie in the NED concepts into the various subject areas.

I highly recommend having this show come to your school!

Science is one of my very favorite subjects to teach...next to reading. :) 

Did I tell you that I stalk A Day in First Grade?

I started this week a Force and Motion unit that I found from A Day in First Grade/Kristen Smith.

We did lesson one this week, which introduced force.  My students loved the experiment!

Students used two pencils, a rubber band, and a marble to make a sort of sling shot.  Two students held the pencils and one student pulled back the rubber band.  

Students pulled the rubber band back a little and a lot. 

We recorded our observations.

I highly recommend this unit!

Well, I couldn't end this weeks Five for Friday with out mentioning April Fools!  Boy did I have fun with this one!

I started off telling my students that since it is April, it is the perfect time to see the Lirpaloof Bird.

We studied this fascinating creature.  We went back into the text to learn about it's beautiful color so that we could spot this bird.  We went back and learned that bird ate seeds, small insects and carrots. In fact it is the carrots that gives the bird it's orange color.  In our extensive reading, we learned that this bird is easily frightened, so we must not make sudden movements and must sing it's name.

Here is the video of us trying to attract the Lirpaloof bird.

They called and called the bird.  They looked high in the tree, since that is where they like to live.  Then, I said I noticed something about the birds unusual name.  I wrote the name Lirpaloof.  I showed  that students lirpa is APRIL spelled backward and loof is FOOL spelt backward!

They were not impressed!