Heartstrings and Teaching Things

Hello Everyone,
Well, this past week has certainly been a mix of both emotional joy, and at the same time emotional devastation. We enjoyed a beautiful week of heartstring activities in class, while dealing with the tightening of the strings of so many friends, fellow teachers, and schools in the Houston area because of Hurricane Harvey. At the time of this post there are over 40,000 fellow Texans in shelters, with damaged or demolished homes. At times, all we wanted to do was go down and help, rescue, and provide. Our school has, of course, started a donation drive, our district is collecting school supplies, and there are many opportunities to donate financially. Right now, is a great opportunity to teach kids about sharing what we have with those who have lost everything, to be  examples in this hard time. I know they will feel the tugging on their own little heartstrings.  

Want a printable of this mini poster? CLICK HERE!!

Besides the impact of Harvey on our hearts and minds,  we've had a great start to our school year.  With our pirate theme in full gear, the kids have had fun getting to know each other and showing what they know.

Meet the Teacher Night Message in a Bottle!

This past week we set up our writer's workshop and focused on the inspirations around us.  We know that we write best about what we know!  For the past gazillion years, we have had the kids create a map of their heart.  I love using the book "Treasures of the Heart" by Alice Ann Miller.  In this sweet story, a little boy shows his mom what treasures are hiding under his bed and that each of the treasures has a story.

After reading the story, I show the kids a large jar of treasures from under my son's bed when he was little!

I have done this same lesson a few times in years past, but this year I challenged my kids to build a "jar" with treasures of their own heart.  I gave them each a plastic container and added a sticker.  We wrote a note about what to include in the jar and slipped it inside to take home.  The kids brought them back the next day with their treasures.  They were able to share the "stories" behind the treasures with their writing partners. Writing inspiration!!!

After sharing their treasures, we started work on our "Maps."

I loved how this extra step has already inspired my kids to write from their heart!

For the specifics on this lesson, I have a little unit I shared a while back, but here it is again!

CLICK HERE for the printable unit!

Thanks for stopping by our "Window on Wonder." These kids have already stolen my heart, and I'm excited for the year. I can't wait to share more with you! 

Stop by again soon!!

Till then, please consider making a donation to your local Harvey Recovery Donation site. This is going to take the proverbial village!!! Thanks in advance!

Joyfully!

Nancy

firstgradewow@gmail.com

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Writing Tools, Uppercase Letters, and Johnny Appleseed

Hello Everyone!
Again, I have to apologize for my delay in posting.   Two more weeks down and we are moving right along, stronger than ever!  I wanted to post a little bit about how my writer's workshop is going.  I must say that I am not doing things in the order that Lucy Calkins suggests in her new series for first grade, but she really does make the suggestion to use her units as guidelines.  The kids and I have loved having a Writer's Toolbox and also a Workshop.  I've posted about these already, but I want to share a couple of new things that we've put into our tool boxes.
I found a cute little play tool box at Target the other day and whenever we have something to add to our writer's toolbox, I put a little clue in it for the kids to guess. 

We have added a few things to our Writer's Tool Box.

And the kids are rockin' the workshop!!

All these printables are available in my Writer's Workshop unit

You can get the writer's toolbox and workshop printables HERE!!!

Last week we worked hard on making sure our stories came from a small moment in our lives.

We call them our "pea" stories.

After reading Night of the Veggie Monster, and showing what the difference is between a pod story and a pea story, we of course had to check out some peas for ourselves! And then write our own pea stories!

(All but one little one wanted to try the peas!!-eating them, that is!) 

You can get the small moment PEA story printables HERE!

We also worked on when to use capital and lowercase letters! 

We made caps to remind us that caps go on the beginning of a sentence, names, and I.

You can get all these printables if you simply CLICK HERE!!

 I can't wait for writing every single day.  Lucy Calkins has inspired me to be an inspiration to my students!!  Thank you Lucy!!

Next week, with all of the testing we have going on, IStation, DRA, Spelling Inventories, Writing Samples, Accelerated Math Inventories, we will be having fun reviewing a lot of what we have done so far and enjoying some Johnny Appleseed.  I have shared my Johnny Appleseed unit before, but I have beefed it up and decided to cover via review most of what we have worked on already.  Take a quick peek!

If you think you can use this little unit, you can get it HERE! :)

Well, thanks for hanging on to the end of this post. I know it was long, but I hope it was worth it!!   I love sharing what has worked for me in my classroom, and love giving anyone and everyone the chance to try some of these crazy ideas too! I get so many e-mails from new teachers, new to first grade teachers, home school teachers, parents, and teachers who just need some fresh ideas.  It is my absolute pleasure to help out. In fact, you all inspire me to keep this little blog going.  I guess I kind of think of firstgradewow as being similar to a food or style blog in that they give away recipes and tips for free. Why not give teaching ideas away for free? It's all for the kids!!!  Right??

Anyway, thanks for taking a peek through this little first grade window.  Hope you come back soon!

I love you all!

Joyfully!

Nancy

  

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