Hi there! I hope you had a wonderful week last week and truly felt appreciated! This month we are going to share some fun ways to teach time or money during our Math Tip Monday Link up. My school district (and the 1st grade Common Core Standards) doesn't place a huge emphasis on learning about money. While I still think it is important to teach, my focus today is going to be on teaching time. Anchor Chart First, like always we start with our "Who Cares About Time" discussion and anchor chart. We brainstorm why knowing how to tell time is important and which professions find it especially important. For example, time is very important in baking (setting a timer so food doesn't burn), sports (certain amount of minutes per game/time-outs), and at airports (making sure planes come and go without accidents). Of course there are tons of other real world examples! Vocabulary & Concepts Once we set the stage for learning I make sure my students have a han......

I must admit, I was so excited when we recently began our opinion writing unit. In fact...I accidentally planned for it 3 weeks before I was supposed to- oops! Hopefully today I can share a few ideas from my classroom..because in my opinion, this writing unit is the most fun!  We began by discussing the difference between facts and opinions. This concept is a tricky one for my first graders to grasp. After providing them with multiple examples, we dove right in to some sorting. One way to help them remember was by defining a fact as something they would find in an informational text, not something they could argue. An opinion means people may have different views and believe that their thinking is correct. I then used my Fact & Opinion Movement Sort by hanging the Opinion Ocean sign on one side of my classroom and Real Reef on the other. I read each statement while students "swam" to the correct sign. This worked well to get them up and moving and was also an easy ......

Hello again! Today I am linking up with tons of great teacher bloggers for Five for Friday . I may be a day late, but hey, no judgements right? We just finished up week 5 and you know what that means- back to school germs are full swing. It amazes me every year how many gallons of hand sanitizer and cases of tissues we seem to go through in just a few short weeks. Now that my turn with with germs is done, I can finally see straight long enough to share about our week :)    We began Monday with our school's annual Pinwheels for Peace event. Every student in the school creates and decorates a pinwheel in art class. The music teacher also teaches everyone a song about peace. Our entire school community gathered in a circle to watch the pinwheels and sing for peace. Something about all of the children dreaming about a peaceful world always brings a tear to my eye. It's such a powerful event and one I look forward to each year.    Last week I got a little "Pins......

Phew! I made it through the first week of first grade for the 7th year in a row :) I am loving my little guys so far and am excited for a new year. Last year I had 14 students and this year I am blessed with 21! Let me tell you, I thought the bathroom line was slow before....now is a whole other story. Last week we focused on getting to know each other and routines/procedures. One of the class favorites was our Find Someone Who game. Students had to learn about new friends and record their names on the scavenger hunt sheet. I was nervous about my non readers at first but the pictures really seemed to help. I was pleasantly surprised at how well they all did talking, recording, and moving around the room. We spent a lot of time reading stories together (Chrysanthemum, The Crayon Box that Talked, My Mouth is a Volcano) and discussing the lessons learned. We also created our Teacher Job/Student Job anchor chart. We discussed what each of our roles looks like, sounds like, ......