Good Morning Texas Teacher of the Month Surprise!! Writing Poetry and Comparing and Ordering numbers to 120

Hello Everyone!!
I had the most wonderful surprise happen to me last month.  One afternoon we were in the middle of our science lesson, and all of a sudden, a whole group of people came into the room with cameras, microphones, and packages!  The Good Morning Texas and Care Now crew surprised me with the "Teacher of the Month" honor!  One of my sweet parents (I have had all three of her sweet children!) nominated me and I was selected for March!! I was almost speechless!!!  The honor came with a wonderful prize package and lots and lots of hugs!!! A little overwhelming for someone who doesn't like surprises!! HAHA!!  But so incredibly honored, humbled, and thankful!!!

The segment aired on Good Morning Texas on March 31. Here's a link to the broadcast if you want to see the surprised look on my face!!!
WFAA Teacher of the Month Video

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all involved!!!!

Now on to our poetry writing unit!  We finally finished our unit last week!!  I wanted to share some pics of some of the fun ways we published our poetry!

We also published all of our hard work in our very own anthology!!!   So proud of these kids!!!

I did add a few poetry ideas to my unit.  I know I already shared it, but if you want the jelly bean and egg

ideas, go ahead and download the file again using the following link.

Poetry unit updated March April 2018

And finally, in math we are working on comparing and ordering numbers to 120.  I worked on a little unit to add some fun to this objective. 

Here are a few pics of the 70 page unit!

And Click HERE for the link to the downloadable printables!!!

I hope you're having a good week!!! I am looking forward to next week!!!  Got some fun things planned!!!  We are starting a new writing unit on realistic fiction, so I've been gearing up for that.  I'll share that in a bit!!!  Till then, have a good one!!!  Thanks for stopping by our little Window on Wonder!  See you soon!!!

Joyfully!

Nancy

firstgradewow.blogspot.com

firstgradewow@gmail.com

Celebrating Spring with POETRY!!

Hello Everyone!!
Well, spring is here!  I love springtime in Texas!  Things warm up so quickly and all the signs of spring are evident!  Ahhhhhhh! Now, I know so many of you are still in the throes of old man winter, but spring is on the way.  Hang on!!  To help you feel a little better, how about some poetry celebrating spring? We started our four-week unit on poetry in reading and writing this week. I love how much kids love poetry!

Kids learn so much through poetry.  Our  unit will help teach all about the different types of poetry and help them read and analyze as well as write their own!  I highly recommend gathering as many poetry anthologies as you can and sharing as many selections as possible.  Along with enjoying the tongue ticklers, be sure to discuss the author’s message, tone, and purpose for writing.  As kids get into writing their own, discuss with them the same analysis ideas about their poetry!

This week we started with sensory poems. With spring as our springboard along with a good piece of literature for motivation, the kids did a great job writing sensory poems!!

Kids wrote a rough draft of their spring sensory poems.  We edited and published in a rainbow shape! I love this project and have done it for the last few years.  It feels like springtime in our room!!!

I am sharing our poetry unit once again with a few additions.  The unit includes examples of many different kinds of poems, templates for kids to try them on their own, creative ways to publish each poem, and final copy anthology pages. It is now about 105 pages of poetry power!! 

If you have a desire to climb the poet "tree" and need a little unit to get you started, 

You can simply CLICK HERE to get your printables.

My little poets are looking forward to the next three weeks, and so am I!!!

As always, please let me know of any typos or problems with anything!  

I appreciate your stopping by this little window of wonder!!!  

Have a great rest of the week!!

Joyfully!

Nancy

firstgradewow@gmail.com

MLK, Living and Non, adverbs, poetry, Oh My!

Hello Everyone!
First of all, I want to thank Feedspot for naming this little blog one of the top 30 Firstgrade Teacher blogs on the internet!!  What??? So honored! I haven't been blogging that long, and simply started as a way of sharing what we are doing in first grade. It has grown into a passion.  I love teaching and I love sharing. To be honored with this award is so cool!!! Thank you!!!
What a crazy busy week we've had!! And a busy weekend coming up! I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like I need more hours in the day!!  Both at school and at home.  The juggling continues. But I feel like as long as I'm making every moment count on both fronts, it's all good!! 
This week we finished up our study of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And talk about making every moment count, the lessons learned from the study, will last in the hearts of these little firsties.  I have shared my unit before, and will include a link a bit later, but I wanted to show a few pics of where our hearts took us.

I always include an impact lesson comparing the insides and outsides of apples.  On the outside, the apples all look different. On the inside they each contain a star!  Just like people. We are all different on the outside.  Every. Single. One. Of. Us.  

That should not ever stop us from letting the star on the inside of each of us shine brightly!!! 

As a teacher I try to help each kiddo find his inner star and shine!!! I strive to include many, many activities that nurture the learning styles of each little star!

I extended the apple lesson by having the kids create a star with their handprints.  With little direction, they were able to express themselves with color in a very hands on way. 

As we have worked through the MLK study, one early insight my students had was that they have dreams too.  Some of their dreams were that all kids would have books to read, food to eat, and clean water to drink.  

I love this picture so much! Even though our lives are very different from those during Mlk's time, I believe these kids are going to do everything they can to make their dreams come true!! Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that "If I can't do great things, I can do small things in a great way."  As teachers, we are doing small things...that will hopefully turn into great things!!! Thank you, MLK for your leadership!

If you would like my MLK Unit, simply CLICK HERE!!:)

In science, we finished up our unit on living and nonliving.  We have had so much fun comparing the two.

After learning about how we know if something is living or nonliving, we created and described pet rocks!

And as a culminating Sci Fri we were able to compare three things that looked similar, but proved to be very different....worms!!

I loooove that after learning about living and nonliving things, most of these sweet kiddos were not afraid to hold an earth worm!!  Again...small things!! :)

To get a printable of my Living vs. Nonliving unit, CLICK HERE!! :)

Finally, I wanted to share a bit of what we've been working on in writing! POETRY!!!  I love it so much and am so amazed at the fun we've been having with language, word choice, rhythm, etc.!   One of our first poems was a shape poem about winter, written with our senses.  Here's our brainstorming! Thinking about winter through our senses brought some deeper thinking!!

We have done so much more than what I was able to capture in a photo.  And we have just begun!! Most poems we are writing will be added to an anthology, and recreated in a visual. 

We turned our study of adverbs into a shape poem!

I love how these are turning out!!  And you should have seen those stars shining!!! First graders are poets , and they didn't even know it!!

I shared my poetry unit a couple of weeks ago.  Simply search above for poetry. And the snowball adverb study that we made into a poem is in my snowball unit that I just shared!!!

Wow!! This post turned out to be longer that I thought it was going to be!! But I have one more thing to share!!

Our 100th day of school is coming up in 9 days!!!  I reworked a few things on my unit and added a couple of other things!!! Even if you already have it, please download the new and hopefully improved unit!

HERE'S THE LINK TO THE UNIT! CLICK HERE!!! :)

Ok! that's it for today! Hopefully you got a bit out of this post!! Please know that the comment gadget is not working for some reason, but you can always e-mail me with questions or concerns about anything! We are all in this together!! 

Thanks for stopping by this window on wonder!!

I appreciate you!

Joyfully!

Nancy

firstgradewow@gmail.com

or nancyvb1@gmail.com