December?!?

New month for the calendar :)

Y'all.  I cannot believe how fast November flew, although with the speed that September and October passed, I should have guessed it.  My apologies that I have not posted for an entire month (my last post had the same title, but of the previous month--eek!), but after a computer crash (lost my hard drive) and then the holidays, I've been playing a little bit of catch-up!  I just want to blog and I feel like I've had other things that just needed to get done in this year that just keeps flying by (does it ever stop!?!)!  This is gearing up to be quite a long blog post, so I'll quit it with the intro and get to the good stuff :)  Here goes a month of highlights...


Mrs. W visits!
One of my November highlights was that my mom came to visit!  She came to Virginia for a whole week from the West Coast, and spent two days in my classroom :)  It was such a joy to have her join me at school, and my kiddos loved her--I already knew that was going to happen!  (In fact, the first day she wasn't there, almost half my class walked into the classroom in the morning, looked around, saw that Mrs. W wasn't there and asked where she was...no mind that I was still there, it was all about mom!)  We had a paper chain countdown until she got there, and still talk about her often.  Mrs. W--we miss you!

Our paper chain countdown--three days to go!

Proposals
We didn't have school on Veteran's Day, so I spent the day down in Richmond in one of my best friend's 8th grade classroom.  She teaches Civics, and on that particular day, the class was learning about the amendment process.  One of the vocabulary words that was being reviewed was "propose."  The definition that we were looking for was something along the lines of "to suggest," but one student said, "to see if they'll say yes."  Looks like weddings are already on the minds of thirteen-year-olds!

Ms. Klement, thanks for letting me be a part of your class for the day :)


The "_____s"
You know how you can get the measles or the mumps or the chicken pox?  Well, one of my kiddos said to me a couple of weeks ago, "Ms. W, I think I've got the coughs."  I didn't know coughing fell into the category of "the ____s," but apparently it does!


Overheard

• "It ripped"--to describe what happened when a pencil broke.
• "It needed a haircut"--I was trimming up the edges of a paper that I was going to hang in the classroom, and this is what cutting paper was compared to.
• "You look just like an ox!" ...I am notorious for putting a pencil behind my ear--a habit that many of my kids have picked up on and copy (which is really cute and endearing).  The other day,without realizing it, I had a pencil behind one ear and a pen behind the other, and apparently I looked like an ox!  Funny, but also heartwarming that my students remembered an animal that we studied during our habitats unit :)
• Justification for rainy days: "Maybe the sun is sick," "Maybe he has a cold," and "Hopefully he'll get better tomorrow!" ...all while I was turning around to get a new book for a reading group.  Sometimes I wish I could have a whole day of moments like these!
• "Welcome to your new home...I think you're really going to like it here!"--what a student said as he was putting a book that we had just finished reading in a reading group into his book basket with other books that he has for independent reading.

Rhyming
A few weeks ago, something was up with the lights in our cafeteria--all of the lights in the kitchen part of the cafe were on, as were all the lights in the school, but for some reason, the ones in the eating part of the cafeteria were not on.  So, all teachers ate with their classes for the day to help keep things (especially volume) under control.  I occasionally eat with my kids at lunch, and sometimes we have lunch in the classroom as a reward, but the no-lights-ambiance was quite an experience.  During lunch, I was talking with my class, and for some reason, we started making rhyming combinations.  There were a lot of good ones mentioned, and then all of a sudden, one of my kiddos excitedly said, "circle!  Circle...bircle!!!"  Oh, rhyming...


New words to add to the 1st grade dictionary:
wanid = wanted
jriv = drive
jres = dress
caterpillar (because this word, I found out when one of my reading groups was reading a book about them, is very difficult for first graders to say!)


Parent/Teacher conferences
During parent/teacher conferences, I had kind of a sporadic schedule.  For the two days that I had scheduled conferences, I had a mostly free morning, and then meetings all afternoon.  During these kiddo-free mornings, I learned that I don't think I could ever work a "desk-job."  I mean, I already sort of knew this, but having a couple of free hours without 21 little ones to teach, I went a little stir-crazy!  Even though I say this, I did find a perk or two about having time to spend at my desk:

• I was able to leave my classroom at the drop of a hat if I needed. I had a couple cups of coffee and tea throughout the morning, and when I needed to go make a quick copy, I could just leave. Not something I'm used to, and I did enjoy having a full coffee cup for hours at a time!
• I wore slippers all morning.  Pretty comfortable!
• I left the building to grab lunch instead of packing one.  Even though my deli sub was delicious, I did sort of miss my packed lunch...

Even with these perks, I still wouldn't give up my job for anything :)


Greetings
I've been given a lot of great advice about my first year of teaching, but I think I was given the best piece yet by another teacher who recently told me that when she walks into her classroom in the morning, she wants "the classroom to greet me, not me greet my classroom."  Ever since being told this, I have made sure that I leave my classroom in the afternoon/evening in a state of such that when I walk in the next morning, it is in order and "greets" me.  What a difference this makes!


Family Game Night
A few weeks ago, we had a Family Game Night, where our reading and math specialists organized a night full of activities for families to come and enjoy (I know, I know, that's exactly what you would think "Family Game Night" meant...).  It. Was. AWESOME.  I was able to help out by running the 1st grade math table, and it was such a joy getting to play math games with a bunch of my kids and their families.  Almost half of my class came!  And I got to play math games with students from the other first grade classes, too.  Not only did the kiddos get to play math and reading games while they were at Family Game Night, but they got to take some of the games home with them.  The night was such a success, and I was so glad to be part of it.


Click!
We just finished an author study of David Adler, who writes some of my favorite chapter books about Cam Jansen.  Since I was going to read Cam Jansen: The Mystery of the Babe Ruth Baseball, I started by reading another Babe Ruth book by Adler, The Babe and I to introduce the class to this baseball legend.

My favorite thing about Cam Jansen is that when she takes her mental pictures, she says "click!" to capture the image that she sees.  Mid-way through the book, my class started chiming in every time Cam would "click!" another picture.  Just makes me smile to see them engaged and enjoying books!


Moonbear flashback
You may remember that back in October we did an author study on Frank Asch and read books like these.  Well, one of my students took out a book from the library that had the word shadow in it, and when she got back to class and was reading it, she ran over to me, read the sentence, pointed to the word "shadow," and said, "it's just like Moonbear, Ms. W!  Remember, Frank Asch??"  Y'all, sometimes I feel so discombobulated and can't remember yesterday, let alone a couple of weeks ago, but to see and hear that my kiddos remember it is so refreshing.  Let's just hope that everything they learn this year sticks this well!


Tomie
I feel like I don't really need  to say it anymore after posts like this and this, but I love Tomie de Paola.  So anytime that I get to read more of his books, I'm a happy camper :)  Recently, I got to read these two favorites for a writing lesson:

For the lesson, we were learning about how one author can write about many things.  For instance, even though you might love going to the park, you don't have to have that be the only thing that you write about.  I chose these two books because they are by the same author, but are about different characters doing different things.  Bill and Pete is funny and quirky, and The Art Lesson is one of my "Top 5" books.  It is about Tomie himself, and is a great lesson in putting your mind to something and accomplishing your goals.

As if reading these books and others to my class hasn't already been wonderful enough, we are doing an author study on Tomie de Paola later this month...heaven. I'm beside myself with delight and excitement!  More updates to come!


More bulletin board fun!
You might remember that the first grade classes got together for this bulletin board this fall--I love bulletin boards.  I get the gist that decorating bulletin boards might be something that teachers enjoy more earlier in their career than later, but I don't know if I'll tire of it anytime soon.  It gives me a sort of creative outlet.  Luckily, another first grade teacher and I share the same passion for crafts, and have become the ones that decorate the staff appreciation bulletin board.  Check out our November creation!  I can't take credit for the turkey--that was all Jaime!--but I will take credit for the coming up with the saying and cutting out the letters.  I can't wait to get December's board up soon!

Teeny Tidy visits again
Our Desk Fairy came back!  She made two visits recently...these were her notes to our class.  This first one was left after the class decided that they didn't want to leave the room very clean:

Dear Ms. Weissberg’s class,

I stopped by your classroom yesterday evening,

Just to see what I would find.

And I’m so, so sorry to tell you,

That the state of your classroom blew my mind :(

There were book baskets still at your tables,

And crayons all over the floor.

It seems like the school day ended,

And without picking up, you ran out the door!

So here’s what I did in your classroom,

I hope you can see that I was trying to help.

I cleaned up your cubbies for you,

And made sure everything was back on its shelf.

I stacked the rest of your chairs, too,

And did the Hoovers’ job.

So now your classroom is nice and neat,

There is no sign of any slobs!

Here’s the deal I’ll make with you,

To try and keep your classroom oh-so-neat.

If you can keep your classroom clean today,

Then you will earn this treat.

Here are twenty-one marbles:

One for each kiddo in the class.

Please leave them on Ms. Weissberg’s desk,

I’ll be back at the end of the day, after school to check.

If your room is nice and clean,

Like I’ve left it for you today.

Then I will give you a marble,

For each student that helped keep it this way.

But if your room is not oh-so-neat,

For every messy cubbie I see.

I will take a marble out of your jar,

Until your room can be clean!

I would love to give you all these marbles,

So please think about how you’re treating your classroom today.

I’ll come back to visit after you all have gone home,

And I hope I am blown away!

Goodluck!

Love,

Teeny Tidy

I've never seen a classroom neater than mine was left that afternoon.  It was magical!  As the kiddos were packing up, I could hear them saying to each other, "let's make sure this is nice and neat!" and "we can't forget to pick up all the trash off the floor!" and "here, let me help you so that we can earn all 21 marbles!"  I love Desk Fairies!

Then, earlier this week, she visited again:

Ms. Weissberg’s class,

Your room was oh-so-neat,

When you left your classroom yesterday.

That I couldn’t help but stop by your room,

Just so I could say:

Thank you thank you thank you!
For putting all your things away!

I would like to give you a reward,

I hope that that’s okay.

Here are 10 marbles for your jar,

It looks like it’s filling up fast!

Keep up all the great cleaning work,

And this visit won’t be my last :)

Happy Cleaning!

Love,

Teeny Tidy

I'm so glad that Teeny Tidy has picked our class as one to visit this year ;)

Being Multi-lingual
I speak English, and can get by (that is being very generous to my skill level!) in Spanish conversation, but now I have another language to add to my repertoire: dinosaur.  I read the class Liza Donnelly's Dinosaurs' Thanksgiving, and in the book, the dinosaurs talk.  They speak in a "language" that looks like hieroglyphics, and there are "translations" at the bottom of each page.  A couple of my students were speechlessly shocked that I could read dinosaur talk--haha!

A Plump and Perky Turkey
Written by Teresa Bateman and illustrated by Jeff Shelley, this book is probably my new favorite Thanksgiving book.  Honestly, I didn't even remember that I had it in my book collection, but am so glad that I did!  While my mom was visiting my classroom, she and I got to "buddy-read" this book (she read the pages on the left, I read the ones on the right as we sat together on my reading chair--you might remember how much the kiddos loved when I buddy-read with Mrs. B earlier this year), which is probably why I love it so much, but if you need a turkey book to add to your libraries, I highly recommend this one :)

It starts off:
"The people in Squawk Valley,
were downhearted and depressed.
Thanksgiving was approaching,
but without its special guest."  ...and it only gets better as the book goes along!

It's all about a town that tries to con a turkey into "modeling" for them so that they can capture it for the town to have a Thanksgiving feast.  The turkey is too smart, though, and figures out the scheme, and escapes, after collecting his "modeling fee."  So good!

Math Revelations
Some number sense that my students have gained that I am thrilled to share:

• We were playing with cards that had dice patters on them, and I was asking the students to make all different numbers; they could use as many dot cards as they wanted to show me.  (For example, for 8, they could do 2/2/2/2 or 4/4 or 4/2/2 or 3/5.)  I asked the students to make 9, and one of mine did it faster than I could clap my hands.  When I asked her how she knew so fast, her response was, "You know how I know that just like that?  [Snapped her fingers.]  Because I know that 5 and 5 is 10 [held up her two hands to show me], and I know that 4 is really close to 5, but a little less.  So I just know that instead of 5 and 5, I need 5 and 4, because that's one less than 5.  So if I take one dot away from the 5 and 5, I get 5 and 4, which makes 9!"
• I made a set of arrow cards (you can find online templates by looking at websites like this one)--they are very easy to make and have added a whole new dimension to learning place value when we do our calendar each day.  When you take them apart, you can see each place value; so, for the picture below, 45, the 4 is really a "40" when you pull them apart, and the 5 is a "5" (you can see the red card extends all the way to the end of the arrow).  I wasn't expecting my kids to really grasp this concept as fast as they did, but so many of them know that "the 4 really means 40 and the 5 really means 5, and 40 and 5 make 45!"  As someone who loves math a lot, this number sense thinking warms my heart :)

Other calendar additions:

New tools to build number sense!

Counting by tens and ones with unit cubes...

Counting by fives with tally marks (and learning to make/group tally marks, too!)

Zero the Hero comes every 10 days of school when we switch "decade" numbers--10, 20, 30, 40...

Zero the Hero came to visit on the 50th day of school!  Yes, I wore this home-made shirt and cape :)

Past, Present, and Future
Our current social studies unit is on the past, present, and future...some of the highlights:

• After discussing that the future is what is going to happen, we talked about how sometimes the future is soon, like tomorrow, and sometimes it's far away, like in hundreds of years.  Yesterday, one of my students came into class, dropped her backpack on the table, and declared to me, "Ms. Weissberg, it's the future!"  Precious, y'all.
• Along with baby pictures/current pictures to talk about "change," I also brought in an old cell phone to show how technology has changed.  The phone was not even that old--it was an LG Chocolate from about five years ago--but some of the responses that I got to it were, "you mean that phone can only call and text people?!?" "Ms. W, that's a rip off!" "Where's the touch screen?"  My, my, my how times have changed!
• I asked the class how people change over time and got, "you grow up and up, and when you stop growing up, you just start growing sideways!"

Reading to the "class"
During our Language Arts centers, we use the Daily 5, and an option that the students have is "reading to self," where they read independently.  Some of my readers will sit on our front carpet and "read to the class," where they will read their books, but will hold it out for a pretend audience to see the pictures when they are done reading each page.  I want to give them a round of applause each time they do this because I think it is so darn cute and I am so darn flattered that they are copying "teacher behavior."


New books!
When Mrs. W came to visit, she came bearing gifts for my classroom!  Since she knew how much my kiddos love Mo Willems, she added these to our classroom library:

A pigeon stuffed animal that my mom found--when you press it's stomach, it says "Let me drive the bus!"  Mrs. W brought a Knuffle Bunny stuffed animal, too, but I forgot to take a picture of it!

My mom and I got to buddy read a couple of these books to the class, too :)  The kiddos love Knuffle Bunny and the Pigeon!  In fact, "Don't let the pigeon drive the bus!" is a new favorite recess game!  (One of the parts of our playground has a pretend steering wheel as part of the equipment.)  It's hilarious and heart-warming to see--I love that the kids have fallen in love with this author enough to take his ideas and put them into their free time!


Another great read
Can you tell I love books?  Another great book that I used to talk about diversity, families, and how communities work together is Sylvia Roas-Casanova's Mama Provi and the Pot of Rice.  The illustrations are also wonderful!

"Word Work"
An option that my kiddos have during Language Arts centers is to work on their words (their read-and-spell words for the week).  After spending the first part of the year having the kids do a-little-bit-of-this and a-little-bit-of-that to practice their words, I came up with these options.  These six signs hang on our front board and when the kids are working on their words, they come up and pick one of the cards to practice their words.  It's been a month now with these, and so far, so good!  I think I will add a card or two each month to spice things up (and maybe take a card or two out to keep things fresh), but these are the activities we started with:

Class quilts
We've been done with our patterns/geometry unit for a while now, but I never got to share my favorite part with you!  To demonstrate repeating patterns, my class made small quilt squares, and then repeated this pattern nine times to make a small paper quilt.  Then, I had the students write about the patterns that they saw, and finally, each kiddo got to "stitch" around the edge of their quilt.  This is probably one of my favorite things I've done in math yet this year, and it was so convenient that I was able to incorporate math, writing, and fine motor skills into one assignment!

My "tool box"
I swear I have things all around the room, and I really just needed all of my essentials in one place.  So, I made my own little classroom toolbox, which has everything I really need in it--pencil, pen, stapler, crayons, scissors, highlighter, clips, post-its, white out, and a pencil sharpener--that I can carry around when I move from place to place in the classroom.  If I know I'm going to be spending an extended period at the reading table, the toolbox goes there.  If I am conferencing with students as they work on their writing during writers' workshop, it goes from table to table with me.  If I am working at the side counter for a while on a project, that is where the toolbox travels.  Might not work for every teacher, but this certainly works for me!

BuBu
Please let me introduce you to our class pet: BuBu.  He is a sock monkey and was named after a character in the Magic Tree House Book Good Morning, Gorillas that we read earlier in the year.  Sort of like Flat Stanley, he is a traveling class pet; he goes home with a student on Thursday, and returns to school Monday, and the student that spent time with BuBu gets to write in his journal and share the experience with the class.

I took BuBu on his first adventure--we went to Washington, D.C. together when I ran the Marine Corps 10K race the last weekend in October.  Since then, he has gone home with two classmates (he left with his third friend this afternoon).  Here are some pictures of BuBu's journal so far:

The beginning of my journal entry with BuBu...

My oh-so-creative drawing of BuBu on the Metro...

Pictures of BuBu's visit with me: one of him and the Washington Monument, and one of the two of us in front of it on the National Mall.

BuBu's first visit with a first grader: he got to walk down the street, go to the park, and go on the swing and slide!

Next journey with a friend: playing hide and seek!

Community helpers
As we studied different types of communities, we talked about all the different people that help to make a community function.  Just wanted to share some of my students' work!  Here are a few jobs that are important to our community:

"Vets help our community by taking care of and helping our pets."

"Teachers help our community by teaching kids to learn to read and do math."

"A science man helps our community by his magic and sometimes it goes boom!"

Fraction Kites
We learned about fractions, and to show these, we made fraction kites.  Each student made a kite that showed 1/2, a kite that showed 1/3 and a kite that showed 1/4.  They turned out SO great that I just had to show 'em off!  Here they are in the hallway and in our classroom!

The tails of the kites aren't long enough that the kids run into them, but they are just long enough for me to have to duck down a little bit when I'm around them.  I'm not going to lie, when I'm at my desk, I sort of feel like I am swimming in a sea of jellyfish with all of the strings hanging around me, but as long as the kiddos learned what fractions are, it's worth the ducking!

Whew!  A month's worth of postings to catch up on...I know I've left things out, but I hope you enjoy all that I've included about my class from November.  I couldn't resist ending on a "tasty" note...these were some pumpkin whoopie pies that my mom and I baked to bring into school and share.  Yummm!  This will be a new fall baking tradition for me :)

If you have made it this far, you deserve a medal of honor in reading!  Thanks for putting up with my delayed posts and lengthy catch-all catch-ups...hopefully I will get better now that I have a working computer again!

December is off to a wonderful start in first grade...I hope your Decembers have started off on just as great of a foot as ours has!

Love from Room 106,
Allie