Brain Breaks!

Everyone needs a little break from sitting and working every now and then! In our classroom we use "brain breaks", which are often video clips and fun songs that we put up on the board and dance to! Check out our moves!

Reach for the Stars!

Our hopes and dreams board is finished! Each star has a student's hope or dream for first grade. Every student has a hand that they've decorated that is reaching toward their dream! Let's reach those goals!

Name of the Day

You may have heard about (or seen) our Name of the Day routine. Each day I make a chart with a student's name all scrambled up with sticky notes. The student whose name it is comes up and rearranges the letters to spell his or her name. Then we talk about the vowels and consonants in the name and we try to make words with it! Once we are done, the special student gets to bring their Name of the Day poster home! This time of our day is definitely a favorite in Room 8!

Read to Self

We started readers' workshop by talking about how readers love to read, and I read aloud many books that were either about loving to read, or just books that I loved so that I could share my passion for reading! Then we talked about special places to read books, and we made a class book sharing our favorite places to read. Once we had a strong handle on those ideas and students were really excited to start reading, we began our read to self routine and started building our reading stamina. Students have picked one spot that they read in every day (unless it is their turn for the bathtub!). They also have bookbags that they read from during read to self time that contain books at their reading level. The expectations during read to self time are that students stay in their seats, they keep their voices off, and they keep their eyes glued on their books. Each day I time how long the students can practice reading to self. We began the routine a few weeks ago at three minutes, and now we are all the way up to ten! These kids wouldn't even look away from their books when I followed them around with my camera!