The Sunday Scoop

Hello everyone.  I'm linking up with The Teaching Trio for The Sunday Scoop.  I've spent my Sunday afternoon finishing laundry, shooting hoops with my own children, and relaxing in front of the TV a bit.  Looking at the week ahead, here are a few things on my plate. 

If you have not thought about Read Across America day yet, it's right around the corner.  You know... Dr. Seuss's birthday!   To make sure all of my kiddos have access to plenty of Dr. Seuss books, in addition the traditional ones I have in my classroom library, I've made a set of QR codes for 20 of Dr. Seuss's favorites books.  If you want a set, click on the title or image below.  Simply print, and scan with a device that has a QR code reader.  You can download those from free from the App Store.  

QR Codes:  20 Dr Seuss Read Alouds for Read Across America Day

What was your favorite Dr, Seuss book as a kid and why, or even now?  I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

Are You Ready for Read Across America Day?

We are just a little more than half way through February, but its time to start planning for the events coming next month.  In less than two weeks, March 2nd, it will be time to celebrate NEA's Read Across America Day, in honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday.  Read Across America Day started as a way to motivate kids to read. We celebrate football with pep rallies.  We gather together to remember that Character Counts.  Why not do something to get kids excited about reading?  Those were the very thoughts that got this party started in 1997.

With the release of the new found Dr. Seuss book this year, there are lots of new resource ideas.  You can download this Read Across America activity guide from NEA's website.

Dr. Seuss books have been family favorites in our house for years.  Here are some of our favorites.  With the birth of our first child, my brother-in-law started us on a ever-growing collection of Dr. Seuss books.  For early readers, The Foot Book and One Fish, Two Fish... have repetitive and predictable texts.  However, before our children were ready to read, they loved being read to.  My oldest daughter and son loved for me to read Are You My Mother,  They loved their father to read Go, Dog. Go!  Their favorite part was the dog party at the top of the tree! My favorite has always been Green Eggs and Ham.  I just love the rhyme and the ending, when Sam realizes in fact, that he does like green eggs and ham.

Growing up, I'm sure you had your favorites.  I wonder if they were our favorites too...

I've listed our family's top 10 Dr. Seuss books here.  

#1 Go, Dogs. Go!

#2 Green Eggs and Ham

#3 Are You My Mother

#4 The Foot Book

#5 One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

#6 The Cat in the Hat

#7 There's a Wocket in My Pocket

#8 Ten Apples Up On Top

#9 The Sneetches

#10 How the Grinch Stole Christmas 

And now we have the newly found book titled What Pet Should I Get?  I was so excited when I realized this was a great book to launch our Opinion Writing Unit.  It spurred great conversations about which animals would make the best pets and why.  My students loved it!

Our library has a limited number of these classics, and I'm sure every teacher in our school will want them for their classroom.  So to make sure my students have access to them I created QR codes for 20 of these great books!  If you are not familiar with a QR code, it is a code that can be scanned by a QR code reader app, which is available as a FREE download here for an iPhone or here for an Android device.  Or you can visit your app store on your device.  You simply use an iPad, iPhone, or other tablet style device to scan the QR code.  For my QR Codes: 20 Dr. Seuss Stories for Read Across America,  a video will appear with someone reading the book.  These videos include the words to the books, so students can read along,  not just be read to.

Grab your copy of QR Codes: 20 Dr. Seuss for Read Across America from my TPT store now, so you'll have time print them and laminate to last for years.

So on March 2nd, during reading, and at a few other key times during the day, our focus will be on celebrating the wonderful stories brought to us by that wonderful American writer and illustrator Dr. Seuss, whose real name was Theodor Seuss Geisel.

Here is the official Dr. Seuss site, which features games, printable activities and information about Dr. Seuss himself.

If your school has a subscription to Brain Pop, Jr., click here for a great movie about Dr. Seuss.  If not, here is a more lengthy biography video from You Tube, without ads, but I suggest you view it first. Its about 10 minutes long.

In the comments section below, I would love to hear what Dr. Seuss stories were your favorites when you were growing up or even now.  

How Can You Help Your Students Read Words With Blends?

When children first begin to read, the best thing to use are repetitive books.  These are books that have a predicable structure and, for the most part, have the same words repeated over and over, adding just one new word per page.

Example:
    "I like cats."
    "I like dogs."
    "I like balls."

This gives children the support they need to review and repeat words they have learned and to see only a small amount of new words, in order for them to find the enjoyment in reading a book. Those beginning readers feel such pride and a sense of accomplishment when they have successfully finished reading a book.  This is a key component to future learning... a love of reading!

However, very soon, they will progress, learning the sounds and sight words needed to read lengthier text.  Once a student begins to read at level D (Fountas and Pinnell), blends are introduced.  Students need practice using these blends to become familiar with them.

I just made a set of Blend Puzzles to use in my classroom's literacy centers, so I thought I'd share them with you.  These are the first in a series of blend puzzles I will be creating and posting to TPT, so check back soon to see the next set.

Better yet, follow my blog, subscribe by email or bookmark this in your favorites, and you won't miss the post when I introduce the next set.
   

Simply laminate, cut apart puzzle pieces, and put them altogether in a baggie or file folder.  Then make them available for students to choose.  You may want to introduce them in your reading groups.  That will generate some excitement for sure.  I like to introduce all of my new material either in a small group or whole class, before putting it out.  Not only does it generate interest, it also gives me the opportunity to communicate my expectations for how I want the activity to be used.

I would love to hear from you...  How would you use these blend puzzles?  Just click on the "comment' button below.

Valentine's Day Math and Reading

MATH ROTATIONS

Right now my team of teachers and I are focusing our efforts on helping our students increase their fact fluency.  It is always a real eye-opener to see the actual results of the assessment our district uses to determine their fact fluency.  We call it the Hiding Assessment.  Once we determine the number at which the student hesitates more then three seconds or gives a wrong answer, we set up a series of activities to focus on that number.  Once the student becomes fluent at that number, they move up and work on the next number.  The goal is for our kindergarteners to be fluent to 5 before they come to us in first.  Our goal is for first graders to be fluent to 10 before moving on to second grade.  After my math mini-lesson and lesson application, my students participate in a math rotation which lasts about 20 minutes.  They rotate through four stations called: 

1. Computers 

2. Math by Myself

3. With Mrs. H. 

4. Centers   

The station "With Mrs. H." meets at my teachers table.   I meet with this group mainly to remediate or review earlier content.  

The station called "Math by Myself" is the station with activities designed specifically for the individual students. If a student is working on the number 6, everything in that folder helps them remember the various number combinations of the number 6.  

In the "Centers" station, I include new and past math concepts.  I also include fact fluency center activities.  I select the activities that go into the center stations, but the students can choose which ones they want to work on from the activities I put out.  I wanted a fact fluency center with a Valentine's Day theme, so I created Breaking Hearts Fact Fluency.  The students match the broken hearts by locating the sums and the number combinations that go together.   Students use the smaller pink hearts and white hearts along with the ten frame to help them determine the correct sum.  Afterwards, they provide answers on the recording sheet. 

Here is a preview of all of the number combinations, including the recording sheet.

Click to get your copy of Breaking Hearts Fact Fluency.

If you are teaching a bit older child, you will want to check out the FREE Valentine's Day multiplication fact game at my 3rd grade blog, 3rd Grade Grapevine.

SIGHT WORD PRACTICE

My sweeties love it when they come in first thing and find their morning work is one of my Color by Sight Word sheets.  I have pages created to go along with the seasons and holidays as they arrive.  I have three for the month of February, and each are with the Valentine's Day theme.

This is the cover of the packet you would see on TPT. The upcoming seasonal themes include:

• Winter/Snow
• Valentine'd Day
• St. Patrick's Day
• Lion/Lamb ("Spring comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.")
• Easter
• April Showers
• May Flowers

The sight words featured are a combination of Dolce and Fry words along with years of experiential knowledge of the words kids need to know how to read by the end of first grade.  

DISCOVERY EDUCATION

I am a huge fan of Discovery Education.  If you have not found that resource yet, bookmark it or save it to your favorites.  I can't tell you how many times I just pull up the site, type a topic in the search bar, and, WHA-LA!  ...several great resources to choose from that will fit whichever grade level I need.  All of the following videos can be found on Discovery Education and they are all about Valentine's Day.

Here is a video that tells the origins of Valentine's Day, and how the tradition of giving valentines all began.  

It's titled Holiday Facts and Fun:  Valentine's Day.  

Click on the image below to go there.  

You will need to set up a FREE account if you or your school do not already have one.

If we have rainy weather, I will often play a fun video on the smart board.  Clifford's Your Secret Valentine would be a fun choice.

If your school allows access to You Tube, here is the same Clifford Valentine's Day video.  You Tube used to be blocked in our district, but not any longer.  However it still it in many districts, so you may want to go through Discover Eduction. 

Click on the title, Breaking Hearts FREEBIE , to get your copy of the recording sheet below, just for visiting my blog.  Follow my blog and bookmark it so you don't miss updates and other FREEBIES offered here.  

I would love to hear from you...  When do you incorporate math centers, or do you have a similar math rotation as I do?  Do you use Discovery Education videos in your classroom, or do you have other video sites you like to use instead?    Just click on the "comment' button below. 

100th Day of School

Wow!  I can't believe we have already reached the 100th day of school!  I love my class and I knew they were going to enjoy all the things I had in store for them.  Monday was our 100th day.  I planned 3 centers for the morning:

1. 100th Day Crown

2. 100th Day Snack

3. 100th Day Necklace

1. 100th Day Crown
The Friday before,  I started gathering all of the materials at school to make their cute 100th Day crown.   I used sentence strips and 5 different colors of construction paper.  I cut the paper into one-inch strips.  Earlier in the week I printed off the "I am 100 days smarter!" headers.  I originally made those last year, so I was glad they were already on my computer - one less thing I had to make.  Since it was Friday, I was ready to get home, so I gathered everything up and packed it all, to be continued at home.   Here are a couple of pictures of the process.  This first one was taken at school.

So at home on Sunday afternoon, I finished the project.  I glued down the strips of construction paper about one inch apart, intentionally leaving about 4 to 6 inches on one end for sizing and stapling.  Once I had glued down one set of strips, I repeated the pattern so that there were 10 strips.  

Here is the set up at the center table with bingo daubers.

I put the rest of them on their desks and told them to pick them up and carry then to the table when it was their turn.  So you will see them on a few student desks in other pics, even though they are working on a different activity.

Here are three of my sweeties working on their awesome crowns.  I put out my bingo daubers for my kiddos to choose from.  With ten strips, they stamped 10 dots on each strip, making 100 dots. The sweetie in the white shirt in the picture got a little "dot-happy" and dotted the sentence strip portion too, before I could stop her.   Oh well, I couldn't bring myself to tell her she had way more than 100 dots.   LOL

When they finished, they took their crowns to their desk to dry.  That opened up the space for another group to come to the table.  To finish it off, I sized the sentence strip around each student's head, then stapled it together.  Lastly, I took hold of the end of each strip, laying the ends on top of one another.  Then I stapled all the ends together, making a crown.  They were so pumped to get to show off their new "I'm 100 Days Smarter" crowns  as we walked to the lunchroom!

I got the original idea for this crown from Pinterest.  I tried following the link to Mrs Morrow's Kindergarteners, but it was only available to invited members.   She used stickers,  but I like the bingo dauber dots, and my kids love anything to do with PAINT! 

2. 100th Day Snack
A week ahead of time, I sent out a letter to parents requesting a variety of snacks that we easily count to make our trail-mix style snack.   This list included the following:  bowls, Chex cereal, Cherioes cereal, gummy bears, raisins, marshmallows, Skittles, M&Ms, chocolate morsels, Goldfish, and red hots.  Ten snacks.

Friday evening,  before I left school, I assessed what students had brought.  I stopped by the store and picked up chocolate morsels (a student forgot to bring them) and a couple of extra bags of gummy bears.  Monday morning, even before the kids got to school, I began setting everything out, but this took a lot more time than I had remembered from last year.  So, if you think you want to do this too, have some engaging morning work out for them to do independently in case you need a few extra minutes to finish the set up.  I put out two sets of snacks.  One set for the left side of the table and one for the right side.  I set out hundred boards for my kiddos to use for counting their snack.  Ten frames or other sorting mats would work great too, but I just love using my hundred boards for counting on the 100th Day of School.  The idea... 10 rows of each of the 10 snacks makes 100 snacks.

In this picture, you can see another group of kids working at their desks.  They are working on the third center activity, the 100 Day Necklace.

Once their board was complete, together we slid their yummy snacks into a baggie and zipped it up for them to hold until morning recess.  Our recess is at 10:40, so I knew this activity had to be completed by then.  You may want to keep your snack or recess time in mind as you plan out your day.  They all thought it was funny that I made myself a snack bag as well.  YUM!

3. The 100th Day Necklace
In my parent letter, I also asked for a box of Fruit Loops.  I went to Hobby Lobby to find my Rexlace.  It only cost a couple of dollars.  I cut strips about 4 feet long.  That is more than you will need, but that length will give you enough to tie the knot.  To keep the front loops from falling off, I put a small paperclip on one end.

I had students use a hundred chart to layout their Fruit loops, so they could be more accurate, than if they were simply counting as they put the cereal on their string.  This worked GREAT!  First graders loose their place easily when counting if they are distracted, so using the hundred chart is a helpful tool for all sorts of counting activities.

When their hundred chart was full, they began threading their cereal onto their Rexlace.  I made these numbered tabs to indicate each group of 10 Fruit Loops.  (Aren't they cute?)  There were two sets to a page.  I printed them at home so I could have color (only a black and white printer at school), cut them out, punched a hole in the top and packed each set into a snack size baggie.

The next day, all I had to do was lay out a baggie on everyone's desk along with this "My 100th Day Necklace" sheet.  I wish I knew where I got this, but its at school and I'm typing this post at home.  I'll try to remember to look and come back to post the link. 

Here's what they looked like before I tied them off.  Rexlace is very slippery, so you'll need to tie a good and tight knot to keep the necklaces together, but mine worked great.  Using the numbered tabs really helped me quickly check to make sure the correct amount of cereal was on each student's necklace.  For example, when there are only 6 Fruit Loops between two numbered tabs, it is easy to spot the difference in length, compared to all the other length segments on the necklace.

THE FINISHED PRODUCT!

Both crown and necklace

This little jokester, thought he looked so funny peeking through the strips!   

These three activities and recess took up our morning.  

After lunch we read the book 100 Hungry Ants, which they absolutely love.   It is a perfect book for  the hundredth day of school for most any elementary class.  Click on the picture if you want to pick up a copy for yourself from Amazon.  

You can get your own classroom copy of this book by clicking on the link below.

Afterwards, we walked around the room using our clip boards, to write 100 words.  

We stacked 100 pennies.  

We painted 100 dots.  

They LOVE PAINTING!

EXTRA:  100th Day Puzzle

We put together this Hundred Day puzzle, and oh my goodness, this was one of their favorites!  They loved that they were making a puzzle that they could put back together later!  First, I had them glue it to a piece of construction paper.  I suggest glue sticks, but a generous amount.  Liquid glue makes paper buckle.  The construction paper made it more sturdy and gave them a colorful back.  You could also print them on card stock.  Next, they carefully cut out each piece.  I always demonstrate the best way to cut.  First graders need to see you model how to cut things.  Then under my document camera we put my puzzle together as a whole group, and they saw that if they counted by tens correctly, that would put their puzzle together correctly.  They were eager beavers to get to their puzzles!    After it was put together, they colored it.  Again, I modeled how to do this as well. (This took a lot of time too. I'm just saying! LOL)  They turned out great!   I gave each kiddo a baggie to hold their puzzle pieces.  If you would like a FREE copy of this puzzle, click here.

If you have any questions about anything I've presented on this blog post today,  please don't hesitate to ask.  Use the comment tab below and I'll respond back soon.  To make sure you don't miss any new posts, follow me and subscribe in box to the right, near the top, and you'll receive these posts directly to your inbox.   I hope you have an exciting 100th day of school!  

I would love to hear from you...  Name your favorite "100th Day" activity or favorite book to read on the 100th day.  Just click on the "comment' button below. 

January 2018 update... So many of you have asked if you could purchase the other materials I've used like the number circle dividers for the Fruit Loop Necklace and the header I use for the 100th Day Crown.  I just put it all together in one package that you can get at my TPT store here.