Sneaky E Has Struck Again!!

Hello Everyone!! Well, it's happened again! Sneaky E has struck our classroom!  That sneaky letter has been busy all day pinching short vowels and making them shout their names!  I have never seen such a comotion!!  :)
We started our day with a story about Sneaky E  and making some cute little puppets, complete with masks and mustaches! Original idea came from Ms. Gable's 2nd  Grade blog! Thanks, Ms. Gable! The kids did a great job practicing their favorite CVCe (consonant, vowel, consonant, e) words all over the puppet! We worked on several activities where Sneaky E was very helpful in changing short vowel words to long vowel words. Great Job, Sneaky!! 
Then, on the spur of the moment, we decided to break up into groups, and put on some little mini skits showing what Sneaky E does to unsuspecting short vowel words!!  Each group decided on the word, who would do each part and how they would show the process. We ended up filming all of the skits! We plan on showing the skits to the other first grade classes!!  I will try to upload them here as soon as I can figure it out! :)
Enjoy the pics for now!

I love our Sneaky E mustaches!!!  Thanks for a great day, VIK'S!!! 

Thanks for taking a peek into our wonder-filled day!!
Stop by again!
Joyfully!
Nancy

Mathemeticians

Hello Everyone!
Just had to post one more quick thing tonight.  Here's a pic of our anchor chart for "Mathemeticians..." We have been working so very hard on so many math concepts, and the kids are getting very good at problem solving and seeing past just the addition and subtraction fact memorization that, for some, is a huge part of first grade math.  We spend a lot of time talking about math and explaining how we got our answers.  For so many of my kids, solving tricky problems and finding the patterns in math is their favorite thing to do!!!  I love it when I see kids working on math at home and knowing answers to questions they know I'm going to ask the next day.  As in many first grade classrooms, we have a "number of the day."  It coincides with how many days we have been in school.The kids know that every day they are going to have to show me as many different ways as they can to get that number. That is easy to prepare for the night before!!  We just had our 90th day of school. Take it from there, kids!!!

Looking forward to a great week!!

Joyfully!

Nancy

A My Name is Alice

Hello Everyone! First of all, thanks for your patience as I am just learning how to blog and share.  I think I'm on the right track, but if you have any suggestions, please don't hesitate to holler at me! :)

 Just a quick post about alliteration.  We enjoyed that wonderful classic book "A, My Name is Alice" by Jane Bayer and illustrated by one of my favs, Steven Kellogg. We did some quick brainstorming about how we could make that important literacy connection by putting our name in the pattern and style of the author. Alliteration was an objective I needed to cover this week and this fit the bill!!!  Each kiddo had to come up with something he/she loved that began with the same letter as his/her first name.  They created a quick self portrait and an alliterative sentence to go with it!  The kids loved having fun with words like this and we cemented the concept of alliteration!!   I always love how the kids pics turn out to look like them!!! :) enjoy!
See you soon!
Joyfully!
Nancy

Scientists...

Hello Everyone!  What do scientists do?  In first grade we work hard on taking on the role of Scientist!  First graders are naturally curious about the world around them.  What a great age to develop those scientific minds!  Each kiddo in the class has a science notebook where they collect any and all recording sheets from all of our experiments.  Every week we add to the chart which reminds them what scientists do. Some of the things included on the chart, are Scientists...examine, discover, hypothesize, predict, make conclusions, read, share, organize, ask questions, research, and many other things. Scientists also have fun!  I hope to instill a love for science in my kids!!

scientists

Thanks for taking a peek into our Wonderful World!
Joyfully!
Nancy

Good Writers Anchor Chart

Hello Everyone!  Just a quick post about what I am looking for in my kids' writing at this time of the year. The target skills we have zoomed in on since the beginning of the year includes developing "readable" pieces, using upper and lowercase letters appropriately, spacing, adding details, reading back over our pieces, including a hook in the introduction, adding adjectives and adverbs, and many other skills.  I keep an anchor chart up as a reminder to the kids, and to keep an eye on during our writer's workshop time!  As we work on new target skills, we add them to our chart.

 While working on writing with your kids at home, you can refer to this chart!
Thanks for stopping!!  Have fun writing!
Joyfully!
Nancy

Adding Adverbs

Hello Everyone!  Thanks for stopping by to peek through our Window on Wonder!  I wanted to take a minute to share a lesson on adverbs.  We had a lot of fun the other day growing our sentences.  We worked on adding three different kinds of adverbs to a very simple sentence.  Working with a simple verb, we grew our sentence with a  "how," "when," and "where."  We did a ton of brainstorming and then the kids experimented with their own.  The next step is to notice adverbs in our reading and including them in our written expression. 

Click for adding adverbs printable

Thanks for taking a peek! Keep Adding those Adverbs!!
Joyfullt!
Nancy

Good Readers

Hello everyone!
We have been working very hard on what good readers do.  We decided to brainstorm and come up with an anchor chart which will help remind us on a daily basis!  Today we got to add "Good Readers Make Inferences" because we have become very aware of the need to do that with many of the books we read! Most of the time it happens before we even know it!  Sometimes the author makes us work hard on inferencing!!  Here's a picture of our chart! 


Good Readers!

Some of the other things we wanted on our chart were Good Readers...use pictures, make corrections, use schema, make predictions, set a purpose for reading, reread, talk about books, and retell stories. We have room for more that we will surely add later this year!!  Keep up the great work kids!!!

Stay tuned for a post about a special reader we had, some wonderful work we've done with writing, and some cute word work!!

Till then...thanks for taking a peek! Hope you are enjoying the view!!
Have a wonder-filled tomorrow!
Joyfully!
Nancy