All About Verbs

This week in first grade we are learning all about verbs! What is a verb you ask? Well, it's something that you DO! Explaining this to kiddos is super fun, mostly because they get to act out whatever they suggest (you should see the roller skating one). When kiddos realize that they cannot act it out, the dots are connected that it is in fact, not a verb. We will make an anchor chart of verbs, 

and also sing a cheesy little song like this one. 

You wouldn't believe how much singing helps us out! 

We will also learn a little bit about verb tenses, but only on the "normal" words. We are not ready for doubling a consonant or dropping an E just yet!

We will also do an interactive notebook, and I love this one from Rowdy in Room 300!

Verbs and parts of speech are some of my favorite things to teach, and I could not be more excited to jump into this super fun topic! 

Altered Image

Hi! For my Web Tools 2.0 I was required to alter two images. Well, as a person who is friendly with Instagram and Pic Tap Go, this was right in my ball park, and better yet, I got to use the most adorable pictures of my sleepy puppy! Check them out below!

 You can see the changes I made with each photo listed underneath it. 
Now I added the text in PowerPoint. Why do they save SO blurry? I am going to have to play with the compression. That's the only thing I can think of. Have you ever had this problem? 

So here you are. Two adorable pictures of my dog edited. Does it really get any cuter?

Favorite Resources

We all have them. Our go-tos, our must haves, our *always works* tool. I know I have mine! These tools have helped me get through non-readers, overachievers, and everything in between.
Here are my go-to's for everything ELA:

This is my go-to for guided reading. We have a designated 40 minutes a day to use on intervention and enrichment, and this makes planning those 40 mins SO much easier. I just use one of the books a week, and plan all of my activities around them. The kids love them because they are hand on, and let them use highlighters, and even better.... BINGO DABBERS! That is a win in any first graders book. 

THESE ARE SO FANTASTIC! I have never gone into this pack of interactive notebooks and not seen the skill that I was working on. NEVER. They are all there. This is my go-to for phonics and grammar skills. My kiddos love them, they are easy to check, and I can show them once and throw these in a station and be good to go! 

These two pair really nicely. I am able to practice those really low level reader skills and have a seamless assessment to pair with it. These binders include everything from letter identification to building fluency. 

Hello Station City! I LOVE these for my stations! They are engaging (HELLO! BLOCKS!), and very useful. The building/writing/tapping/tracing part is great, but where it really forces the kids to focus is when it asks them to use the word in a sentence. This is SUPER hard for these little kiddos and takes a lot of brain force, but I am slowly seeing progress being made and it's fantastic. I am trying to make sure that my kiddos have any and all opportunities to write, and this is another added to the list. 

These two are AWESOME for teaching kids the basics of writing. The Daily Oral Language Bundle comes with four months worth of DOLs, and includes all of the first grade writing conventions standards. Students get to fix a sentence (WINNER! Red Pens!!!) and then be the *Star Writer* to show the class how they fixed up their sentence. So good. The Question of the Day Bundle is great because it's daily writing. There are graphic organizers for each prompt and room to write. Whenever I feel like we need to get back to the basics or take a break from the writing process, we dig these out of our writing folders!

What are your go-to's? 

Parent Survey

In a perfect world, I would be able to get all of my parents to log in with a Google account and answer these few questions about their kiddos. I do work in an urban low income district, so this is not always a real possibility for me, but here it is!


How would you use a form in your classroom? I am going to LOVE them once I get my kiddos logging into Google!

Lesson Plans

As a teacher, I am constantly thinking about my lesson plan format, and how to make it more useful. I have gone from an excel format that was very detailed (I used this my entire first year) that was broken down by day, to broken down by subject, to what I am doing now that is broken down by subject and day. 

These were the lesson plans that just would not end. They printed out like three pages back to back for ONE DAY! It took so much time to go back through and read my plans that I never did. Timeeessssss areeee a changggiinnnn!!!

So this is what I went to next:

This was better. By far. I used these from about November 2014- May of 2015. They worked. They were very effective. SO much easier to read and refer back to and PLAN! 

Well... this year I wanted another change. I found that I was not referring back to my plans (bad teacher bad), and was instead just going by the routine. I needed some fun. Some color. Some visually appealing yumminess. So this is where I have landed:

TWO PAGES! TWO PAGES PEOPLE! I print these out just like this, IN COLOR (WHOOHOOOOOOO!!!!). I love me some color. I lay them down just like this (like a folder opening facing each other) so it's nice and flat. I can look at the subjects, and then by the days across. It's like magic and I am in L-O-V-E love {for now}. So far, works like a dream. I am going back to my plans, thinking ahead, and the visual reminders of the products I am using help me remember what I need to do and when! 

What do you use? Do your plans work for you? If not, MAKE THEM!