I cannot believe that it has been almost 2 months since my last post! Life just seems to consume so much of me! You can always see some of the things I have going on in my
other life
here!
As far as my school life - things are going great! Prior to our 3 week break I had 13 students - 8 second graders and 5 first graders. I lost 2 second graders and gained 1 first grader after break, and am up to 6 first and 6 second right now! It is a great mix of kids and they have been working super hard since returning from vacation in January!! (That makes a happy teacher =) )
During out first week back, we focused on Nouns, completing lots of activities! Some of these fun activities from
Amy Lemon's
Parts of Speech Unit. We also read one of my
favorite books,
Chrysanthemum, talked about what our name means and why we are important! We discussed our New Year's Resolutions and created some
'Rockin' Resolutions'! At the beginning of June, our school hosts and HUGE Science Fair, so we also started reviewing and working with the Scientific Method and completed the
Ant Farm Experiment!
Working so well together on their Noun Towns!
Noun Towns!
Our Rockin' Resolutions!
As we moved into our second week, we switched gears from nouns to adjectives, which my kids totally ROCKED! They were adjective champs, and are
still using them in their daily writing and speaking! *I*LOVE*IT* We continued to use some activities from Amy's Parts of Speech Unit I mentioned in Week 1 and also incorporated our adjectives into our writing! Since MLK day was just around the corner, we also spent some time discuss him, why he was important to us in our lives today, and that led us into a small Hero Project! We learned about a variety of heroes from the past, the present time and we also discussed and wrote about how each of us can be a hero in our future professions. Since we were learning about adjectives, we included lots of adjectives into our Hero writing! Check that activity out on TPT
here!
Adjectives that describe me!
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| fisher, bug lover, animal lover, handsome, climber |
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| Awesome, smart, beautiful, kind, funny |
Hard at work with our groups completing our Hero Projects!
When you've learned about Nouns and adjectives - what must come next other than Verbs?! We spent majority of the next week finishing up our Adjective activities, starting verbs and working through our Hero Projects! The kids have produced some great writing!! *Insert proud teacher here!* This week in Math, I took a break from teaching separately and to teaching whole group. We back-tracked a little and focused on place value, base 10 blocks, making numbers, exchanging ones for tens, adding with and without regrouping using the base 10 blocks - and I feel like they finally GET that! PHEW! Now back to grade level teaching! ugh..........said the teacher teaching two grades in a teeny-tiny room!
Verb Flowers with 'verbs' that show what each student likes to do and a sentence on the stem using one of their verbs!
Base 10 Block FUN!
Week 4 brought us into a new Science Unit - Plants.. Which went great with the planting of our classes 'box' in the school garden! Since I am
a plant killer not such a great gardener, we planted some basic greens, which are apparently hard to kill! We will see =) My students are now responsible for weeding the garden once a week and keeping it alive! YIKES! Such simple things should not put such fear in me (I'd hate to be the only class who has a dead garden...) but I am nervous! We have had a wonderful parent who owns a Rosta farm in St. Kitts helping us, so my hope is that his expertise will far outweigh my lack of expertise! Aside from our exciting time gardening, we also began studying about Literary Elements. We are sticking to the basic: Setting, Character, Problem and Resolution for now! My goal is that they will recognize those 4 in their reading and use those, as well as their knowledge of beginning, middle and end, to continue to better their writing! You can check out my posters, some practice readings, and a guided writing
here on TPT!
Here are some gardening photos!
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| This precious girl brought her own gardening gloves and shovel! |
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| Hard at work! |
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| My sweet darlings <3 |
Well - that brings us into this week, its now 10:30 and I'm BEAT!! So, to bed I shall go! Here are a couple last pictures to help brighten your night, day, or whatever it might be as you're reading this!!
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| Is this not the BEST note ever?!?!?! From one student to another! |
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| This is my view from the school/lunch/recess..Everyday! =) Yah, that IS the Caribbean Sea! And although you cannot see them in this picture, there ARE monkey's running down the fence at the back of the field... Just a normal lunch in St. Kitts! |
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| If you look REALLY careful at the middle of this picture - there is are MONKEYS! I am pretty sure there are some in the tree to the right as well! The field was filled with them this day!! |
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| There is a close up! |
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| The daily view! |
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| Not too bad! |
