Sending a Letter

We have been reviewing the rules for Mailbox Center, since I had to take it away and now I am bringing it back. I wrote about how I use the center here. I started with the www.brainpopjr.com video, "Sending a Letter". Then, we took the online quiz.

We used a flow map to brainstorm and sequence.

Then we used our maps to write 4 sentences.

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High Expectations

Yesterday, I began teaching our class the songs for our First Grade Promotion. We are using six songs by The Beatles, which are tough. I would sing and teach the motions, expecting the kids to memorize the lyrics. As I left school, I started to panic, as we only had 22 days left of school. How were we EVER going to learn it all?! I started thinking we would never be ready and how it was going to be awful, since I have never used these songs before!

After my class, I went home and printed out 24 copies of the lyrics for each kid to keep on their table. As part of our reading time, we used our "magic reading fingers" (pointer fingers) to trach the print. They did SO much better! They can refer back to them and practice them if they finish early.

My kids are reading and I thought they would be overwhelmed by the three pages of size 12 font. We will only learn the words this week and next week I'll start teaching the motions. They were ready for lyrics and eased my anxiety. I should've had higher expectations to begin with...

Clean Up Song

I made up this song to transition during centers rotations, to the tune of "The Ants Go Marching"...

The children are cleaning up the room

Hurrah! Hurrah!

The children are cleaning up the room

Hurrah! Hurrah!

The children are cleaning up the room

The little one stops to grab a broom

And they all keep cleaning

Until the job is done

Until the job is done

Progress Reports

We send progress reports home every other week-ish. :) I include the child's behavior, missing assignments, and academics. It is a carbon copy and the parents have to sign it and return it the following day. Here's what it looks like...

Rainy Day Schedule

Yesterday, we had rain, so our school was on a rainy day schedule, which means no recess. It's very rare in Las Vegas. We eat our afternoon snack (provided by the parents) on the playground during recess. The children ate inside during recess, so I used the projector to go to www.sesamestreet.org. I clicked videos and searched "rain". If you watch any of the video results, it goes through all of videos involving rain on a loop without interruption. It was awesome to fill the silence and it was a special treat.

Songs

I have been taking a class on songs and finger plays, which inspired me to organize my music. I have a pink iPod I use for my classroom and I printed all of the song titles on labels. I also printed the titles of the www.brainpopjr.com and www.sesamestreet.org videos I use. I put them in my theme file folders so I would remember all of the songs and clips to play.








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Organization

I have started adding labels to all of my previous posts, in hopes of making posts easier to find. You can find them on the bottom, right side. :)