Celebrate "Ch" - Chocolate Chip Cookie Day!

What a super fun and delicious day this was! Chocolate Chip Cookie Day - to celebrate our study of the "ch" digraph. After making "ch" word cookie headbands, our whole first grade gathered in the kitchen: Mrs. Linnabary read the recipe and took pictures, Ms. Bishop helped the kids as they came up and followed the directions on the recipe, and Ms. Branch read The Doorbell Rang to the kids as the cookies baked. And SURPRISE! Perfect timing! The timer on our oven went off just as the Grandma rang the doorbell bringing a warm batch of fresh cookies to the kids in the book! NO kidding! The kids were absolutely thrilled and delighted!
Note: All but one teacher pre-baked cookies for our class the night before so we would only have to mix up and bake one batch of cookies at school. It worked out perfectly! :)

Short O Hot Dog Day!

Celebrate short o by having a hot dog day! After learning about the short o sound all week through poems, books, word sorts and word play, we made headbands and wrote short o words all over them. As the kids ate hot dogs on Friday, they read the words on each others' headbands and had a lot of tasty fun! The students wore red (hot dogs or ketchup), yellow (mustard), brown (buns) or I had one wear green (relish!) It was so fun and a great way to reinforce the short o sound! :)

Shoes, Birthdays, Favorite Fruits...All About Graphing

Since the first day of school we've been working on collecting, sorting and graphing data -transitioning from real object to picture to bar graphs. Above are just a few photos of the types of graphing we have done. The students enjoy the added relevance of conducting their own surveys to collect information... especially being allowed to go talk to friends and carrying their own clipboards. :) In the first picture we graphed our shoes sorting between those with laces and those without laces. The yardstick represents the line we draw when comparing two amounts to see how many more or less one is than the other. The second photos are pics of our class picture birthday graph. The last few photos show the kids in action completing a survey about Favorite Fruit. The students learn to use tally marks as they ask 10 friends to choose a favorite fruit from the list and then create a bar graph to show their results. The students then compare all of the results and we discuss similarities and differences between the different graphs. Finally, the students will write questions about their graph using question stems I provide, trade with a partner and answer each other's questions.

Student Calendar Teachers

Now that school has been underway for almost 9 weeks, some of my students are ready to be "student calendar teacher" for the week. My first "student calendar teacher" is pictured above refining her leadership skills!

Ten Black Dots - Numeration

I always love to read the book Ten Black Dots as many of you probably do! These are a few of my students' original creations this year. :)

What Do Moseley Thunderbirds Want to Learn in First Grade?

Our Social Contract

The beginning of school brings the writing of a new social contract. In the words of my first graders (I love this one) ..."Be nice no matter what!" Cute huh! Pretty much covers it I think. My first graders did the writing, and we left plenty of room at the bottom to add more if someone wants to. We revisit this many times a day, and my students have begun to quote from the contract when dealing with each other. It's refreshing to hear six year olds reminding each other of what we all agreed on.