A Delicious Freebie!

Hello Primary Peeps!

It's me...Deirdre from A Burst of First

Are your days merry and bright in your classroom right now?

Mine are....with a side of crazy too!!

I'm hoping to make your days a little easier with a freebie.

We haven't quite hit fact families in grade one yet this year.

But, it's coming and when we do it we do it 100 million ways!!

Wipe boards...worksheets...manipulatives...and more!

This isn't just a first grade skill either!

You "big kids" do it too.

One of my favorite ways to do most anything 

in grade one is with a quick and simple craft. 

This is simple and effective. 

It's perfect for the holiday season!

But, I enjoy milk and cookies anytime really =)

Click the cover to grab!

You may want to visit the blog for a 

few more holiday freebies here.

I'm all about giving in this holiday season!

Have a merry and bright holiday!

See you back here in 2015!

Four Ways to Retell

This is Chrissy from Buzzing with Ms. B! It's the eighth again, so that means it's my day to contribute to this fabulous collaborative blog!

I've chosen to make my post about something that's essential for student success in reading. Retelling!

Retelling is such an important skill for students. It's the foundation for almost all other comprehension strategies that come later - summarizing, making inferences, predicting, and so on. To help kids retell, we can do a few things that make it engaging and memorable.

#1 Props

Sometimes, students try to retell a story but they suddenly hit a memory wall. They can't remember what comes next. Who does the character meet? Where do they go? By having objects from the story - this could be a felt board with appropriate pieces, puppets, or actual objects - they can often remember the next event. They are prompted without anyone having to tell them anything!

#2 Pictures

A fun way we retell is having kids take pictures (copies of pages from the book) and sequence them in order. The students can point to each picture and tell a sentence about that event. This is also a great opportunity to have them use sequencing transition words like first, next, finally.

#3 Retelling Glove

I love using our retelling gloves with primary students. Students put the gloves on and point to each finger to retell that important part of the story. The parts of the story we include are the character, setting, what the character wants, the problem, a solution, and a lesson that can be learned.

#4 Drawing & Writing

This is the eventual step for students when they retell. We have scaffolded enough to this point to prepare them for retelling in writing and drawing. One fun way to get kids writing and drawing to retell is a sentence strip accordion. Take a sentence strip and fold it up into equal parts. On each part, students write and draw about the important events in the story.

How do you have students retell?

Student Christmas Gift Idea

Hi everyone! It's Angela from Hippo Hooray for Second Grade. How many days do you have left before Winter Break? We go all the way to December 23rd, and there is SO much to do from now until then! I alway seem to be in panic mode a few days before we leave to get my student gifts together. I always give my kiddos a book from Scholastic, but a few years ago, I upped my game and gave them this as well:

It's a box of crayons and a note pad tied together with a little sign I made that says "May your days be merry and bright!"What kid doesn't love new crayons and a little notebook? I was thinking ahead this year, and I scooped up all the crayons and notebooks I needed during the Back to School season, so I only paid $12 for a class set of notebooks and crayons! NICE!! This year I revamped the label I'm going to put on all my gifts, so now they'll have this on the front:

Want this? Click here to grab this freebie :)

Only 2ish more weeks until Winter Break. Hang in there, Friends!!

Let's Hear it for the Latke People!

Hi Everyone!

It’s Nicole, from Today, in Second Grade. How are our SUPER friends doing today?!?!  I’M so excited because the month of December is a ton of fun! We’ve had visits from an elf from the North Pole, we’ve received a package from Santa, and we are planning some fun activities for the last week of school. Some of these special activities include elf day, reindeer day, pajama day, and Hanukah day! 

To celebrate Hanukah with the kiddies, we plan to read some of our favorite stories: I have a Little Dreidel and Hershel and the Hanukah Goblins.

We also plan to create a Potato Latke Person! 

Guess what!!!! You can make Potato Latke People with your class too!!! 

Grab yourself a free copy of my Latke Person Craftivity HERE! 

Here are a few pictures from Hanukah’s past...

It’s a very simple craft, so I let my kiddies add their own personal touches.

Another fun twist to our Hanukah day... EATING Potato Latkes (YUMM). I think this might be my favorite part! 

So, grab yourself a copy of this freebie and make AND eat some potato latkes!

As we say here in Quebec... Bon Apetit!

A Christmas Carol Graphing Freebie

So we meet again!

It's me Christy from Crayons and Whimsy... and if you missed my first post on this lovely blog well you can read my "Meet Me" post right {here}

December has begun and it is just so hard. Right? Where should I focus my attention? On assessments? Eating chocolate? Report Cards? Holiday shopping? Teaching? Watching Elf?

Oh that's right.....

The answer is ALL of the above plus more!

So I wish us all luck to make it.

Today I am sharing a simple December math activity. I love to send this one home, but it works in class too.

It is a Christmas Carol Graph! We gather data about everyone's favorite carol and graph it.

I make a big deal about the gathering part.... I tell them...when you get home you need to talk with your parents about WHO will be your ten people to gather this important data from. And I suggest they are the ones to make that phone call {with an adult right there of course!}

I always push for family... because let's be honest, how much does a grandparent love getting the, "What is your favorite Christmas Carol call?" 

Here is a little sample action for you!

Now I need to switch gears for a minute... Can we talk about how much I adore the song Must Be Santa. Love it!!! 

It was brought to my attention that not everyone knows this one. What? How can this be? {It may account for the one sad bar colored in the above sample....probably from my vote!}

So two things:

1. Please listen to this song- I recommend that Raffi version. 

2. I provide ANOTHER VERSION with Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Don't even tell me you don't know that one!

It's ALL FREE right here:

Last thing.... did you know Primary Powers has joined forces with GoNoodle for some giveaway fun! There are a ton of things you can win! Click HERE to come on over to my little blog and you can click here to see the giveaway going on right here...for just a few more days.

P.S. It's Friday.... you made it to the first Friday in December! I am in serious countdown mode. Serious.

As in... I own this:

My sweet friend Renee at Colvie Creations made it for me and I think I need to ask her to make me a new one that counts down the days to Christmas break. Yeah, Christmas Day is pretty special, don't get me wrong... but a countdown to days in school could work well for me right about now.

Good luck and enjoy the weekend!

I'm Telling on You!

It's been a few months at school and boy are these kiddos getting comfortable! There is definitely a lot more chatting, breaking rules, and all around annoying each other {kids annoying kids, of course!}! One of my biggest pet peeves as a teacher is tattling! It drives me bananas! And now that these kids are comfortable, A LOT of tattling is going on! 

 So, I absolutely fell in LOVE with the idea of tattle notes I learned about this summer! 

I was fortunate to head to Vegas this past summer for the amazing I Teach 1st and Teachers Pay Teachers conference.  Hands down the BEST session I attended was Pat Pavelka's Creating Independent Writers. 

One of Pat's big messages was to get kids writing! It doesn't matter if they are writing notes to friends, in their journals or even tattle notes! 

So, if a kid needs to tattle, instead of telling me, I make them write it down! I direct the kiddos to this corner when they have a problem to "throw" out! {With the extra writing involved, it certainly cuts down on a lot of tattles!}

Click {here} to grab this freebie! 

 

I hope you'll pop over to Lucky to Be in First and say hi soon!

A Little Book Fair Fun

Hi friends! It's Haley from My Silly Firsties! Next week is one of my FAVORITE times of the year. IT's BOOK FAIR week. I LOVE books...but something about buying from the book fair is just more fun that buying from Amazon. Why is that?!

Anyway...the babies are super excited too. Yesterday we got to watch some little Scholastic previews about the books they would see at the fair and our fabulous librarian talked with them about how it would work.

They don't deliver the books until Friday, so our preview day is Monday. Until then, we let them look over the book orders and choose some books they were hoping to get. WELL...it just so happened that we are writing reviews and persuasive pieces in writing right now. So I whipped up these little books for them, and we read I Wanna Iguana as a mentor text. We talked about the ways Alex talked his mom into getting him the iguana and how they could use that in their writing.

Then I had them cut the books out that they were hoping to get and glue them on their little books.

I absolutely 100% love their letters to their parents! 

So...here's the thing. I whipped those up at school and they aren't as cute as I wanted. So I made some cuter ones for my friends! 

Just click the picture to grab your copy! :) I hope you can use this! I made an additional cover that says Book Order in case you want to do the activity with a monthly book order. 13 wake ups before Christmas Break! We can do it!! :)