We had a Wonders Unit review built into our reading series this week.  The kids had a great time practicing their sight words with Bingo, Boo! Sight Word game, Sentence Scrambles and I Have, Who Has.  All four activities can be found HERE.       One of our county's focuses this year is writing across the curriculum.  Thinking maps are key in organizing information and students' thoughts.  We focused on double bubble maps during reading this week to compare and contrast information about characters in the text.  This was our first go round of students making their own maps and including their own information after several times modeling this thinking map.        We are loving our Go Noodle Brain Breaks! I feel like this has been mentioned so many times, but I still talk to people all the time who have never heard of Go Noodle! This was our new yoga pose this week.  The kids actually said their legs hurt after this 3 minute activity!!  CRAZY:)       Occasionally, my son leaves me "love" notes  before he leaves my room to go to class this year! They are so sweet and I can't believe that this is his last year in elementary school with me!!  Where has the time gone?  (Insert sigh...)      

I am liking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching today with a quick recap of my week.  I can't believe we are down to one week of school before Christmas vacation! Hold onto your hats!



My kids adore Magic Elf!  Magic Elf has a new message every day for the kids.  You can check out this amazing pack HERE! It is by Kerri B from Teacher Bits and Bobs.  It brings a little bit of the TRUE meaning of Christmas into our classroom!



I passed out some red and blue cubes as we discussed related facts and started to make fact families today.  The children were instructed to  write the two addends in the bottom corners of the triangle and then add and record the sum on the top,  My firsties then constructed their 4 fact family sentences in base of the house. The Gingerbread men just happened to be on my table and the rest was history.  The activity was one of those spontaneous lessons that the kids loved!  It wasn't anything fancy, but that just reminds me that kids don't need (or even want) fancy! 

I though I would write a little follow up to yesterday's post.  I introduced the FLEE map to my class as a way to organize their thoughts.  A FLEE map is a perfect choice for the retelling of a story as well as an outline for their own story.  In first grade, this can help my students write up to eight sentences on a given topic! In the older grades, it is a frame for a five paragraph essay.


So as you can see a FLEE Map is combination of a Flow Map (great for showing sequence) and a Tree Map (used for categorizing information).  I have to say, the first time around it was challenging for my firsties to create and use the map.  I decided to create the map for them for our second go round.  My goal is to alleviate their frustration so all their effort goes into their planning and writing.


If you are looking for a little more direction, I inserted some helpful hints below:)


If you would like to snap this little freebie, you can click HERE! Hope your kids enjoy it and it makes the writing process go a little smoother for you too:)

Last week, I introduced my class to The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush by Tomie dePaola.  I used a unit from Reagan over at Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits.  We explored this complex text as we pulled it apart and discussed main character, setting, and opinion.

The children were given a project grade on this. At our school, we were asked to come up with a grading policy across each grade level.  Our first grade team decided our reading grade would consist of 25% tests, 25% high frequency words/fluency, 25% projects and 25% assignments.

We loved that this unit came with a rubric.  You can check out The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush in Reagan's TpT store by clicking on the picture below.


As we wrapped up the story last week, the students were asked to retell the story.  They were asked to include an introduction, beginning, middle, end and a conclusion.  We worked together to organize their thoughts in a FLEE map!  There will be more to come on this, but here is a snapshot of a student work sample. A FLEE map is a combination of a flow map and a tree map.  This was our first attempt at is and at took lots of modeling, directions and re-directions, but we made it!


The students then had to use the FLEE map as a guide to write their retelling of The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush.  A writing grade was taken on this.  Our language arts grades now consist of 25% spelling, 25% sentence dictation, 25% grammar and 25% writing.
 
I would love to hear your thought on grading.  Do you give numerical grades, letter grades or more general grades such as S's and N's?