Stone Soup: A Literacy & Community Unit

Do your students read Stone Soup around Thanksgiving?!

I have done this unit 4 of the 5 years I taught first grade and both my students and I L-O-V-E it!

I always complete this literacy unit the week before Thanksgiving and we tie in the relation between the holiday of giving thanks and the importance of community and helping one another. I find that these books exemplify the thoughts of coming together and helping one another. Many students can also relate the feasts shown in this book to the feasts they have themselves on Thanksgiving!

There are so many versions of the Stone Soup folk tale, but the four I choose to compare, contrast, and dive into are by the following authors:

Marcia Brown

Ann Mcgovern

Jon J Muth

Jess Stockham

They are each a little different, but share the same sentiments of sharing, caring, and working together for a greater good!

For each book, I included some story responses, writing prompts and read aloud lessons that we have discussed over the past few years.

The story responses touch on sequencing, inferring, vocabulary development, comparing/contrasting, and story elements. While the writing prompts are a mix of opinion and contrasting stories!

There are also a few crafts included as well a recipe and parent notes in case you want to re-create the stone soup experience for your students!

You can grab everything you need for a stone soup mini-unit by clicking the image below:

Download the preview to see a closer look at what's included in this unit!

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St. Patrick's Day Activities!

St. Paddy's Day is around the corner and we are getting started with the fun here in 102!

We have a few stories we will be reading and re-reading this week! After we read, That's What Leprechauns Do, we retold the story using a sheet from Katie King's Busy Teacher unit. 

We also made these adorable leprechauns using First Grade and Blue Skies directed drawing. If you don't already own this freebie, you need to RUN over to her blog and get it. They are to die for!

 We also got to work on our first story problem booklet since I've been back! This one is from my Leprechaun Math unit.

And I let them work together and look at them go! I LOVED listening to them work together and reason with eachother as they got their answers. It was pretty awesome.

 Each month in my seasonal math units I have a different book of story problems with all types of problems to solve. Addition, subtraction, place value, elapsed time, etc. I am really working on persistence with my first graders and getting them to use all they have learned so far to solve the problems. I find when they work together, they are able to bounce ideas off one another (aka argue a little bit) until they get to the answer!

Tuesday we will eat and graph some Lucky Charms and have more St. Paddy's fun!

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February Math Centers - Valentine Math

Math centers/Math tubs are my favorite part of our math block. This is when I meet with small groups, re-assess students, and watch my kids practice their INDEPENDENCE!

Once August and September fly by, my kids are on their own during our 25 minute "math tub" time. Now, don't get me wrong... my feelers are still out and my eyes are wandering around the classroom to give reminders to students who need them... but for the most part, my kids take the tubs and go!

I just finished and uploaded my February math centers based on what my students are learning at this time. I also asked my Facebook Followers to see what their kids are learning now!

Here is a little sneak peek:

Heartbreakers: place value & expanded form practice

ValenTIME's Day: addition with 3 addends and telling time to the hour and half hour.

The other 4 centers are:

Sweethearts: mentally adding/subtracting 10 from 2-digit numbers

My little book of story problems

True to your heart: comparing 2 digit numbers

Valentine Surveys

You can grab them below:

If you want to catch a deal, you can grab all my math centers for the whole year for a discounted price below:

BOTH will be on sale from now through Sunday (1/25)!

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January Math Centers - Snowman Math!

While I have spent most of the past week drinking and eating and loving the holiday season, I found some time to post my January math centers and wanted to share them with you all!

This month's theme is all about SNOW!

As always with my math centers, they are set up the same as the previous months, review a bit from before, and cover some new concepts. Some of the new activities include:

Snowy is Missing!

In this center, students have to figure out the number pattern (2s, 5s, or 10s) of each card and find the snowman that fits in the middle.

A new skill included in this unit is non-standard measurement.

Snowy Footprints is a fun center that the students love! It requires a little bit of prep, but it is definitely worth it. While the kids are out of the room, you tape the 8 different footprint paths on the floor of the classroom. Students receive their own snowman measurement tools and walk around to see how far each snowman walked. This center allows the students to practice non-standard measurement. It can also be used over and over again since the teacher determines how many footprints go behind each letter.

There are 4 more centers included in Snowman math that you can check out by clicking the image below:

If you'd like all my seasonal math centers for a discounted price - check out the bundle!

Both will be on sale through Saturday!

Oh, and I hope everyone had a VERY, merry Christmas!! Our little family sure did :)

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Apple Math! Math Games for the beginning of the year!

Last fall I was inspired by a field trip to the pumpkin patch to make some math games that I "creatively" called Pumpkin Math.

They were a fun way to tie in pumpkins to our math block and they were a big hit in my classroom.

Thinking along those same lines, I wanted to make something for the month of September that was similar. We learn all about apples and Johnny Appleseed at the beginning of the year, so I thought I would make 6 more math games and title it, Apple Math! Again... the creative juices must have been flowing when I thought of these titles ;)

Since I will be using these centers and games at the beginning of the year, I made them to align with what we will be teaching at that time.

Here is an example of the activity, Adding Apples!

There are 18 different task cards in which students add red and green apples to find sums within 10. There is also a recording sheet for them to record their answers. I included the little apples for students to use as manipulatives, but I also know I have some cute apple buttons and pom-poms at school that my kids will love to use!

Another activity is our book of story problems:

We work on story problems all year long so my students can get used to the real world application of math. It also gets them used to solving the problem, showing their work, and writing the equation. These are addition and subtraction within 10 and are a great starting point for story problems at the beginning of the year.

These are just 2 of 6 different activities for students to complete. To read about the others, just click HERE!

This unit as well as ALL my other math units are on sale for the rest of the day!

Happy Christmas in July!

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Close Reading in 1st Grade - Summer Edition

This teacher has a BIG smile on her face for lots of reasons.

First and foremost, THIS:

Parker and I found out last Tuesday that we were having a BOY!! Our sweet little Theo will be arriving in early October and I literally have not stopped smiling since we found out.

:) :) :)

The second reason I just plain giddy these days is because my students took their end of the year diagnostic tests online and the vast majority of them did AH-MAZING! I am so proud of them. This year I teach in a high poverty, title one school and it was quite the learning curve for me coming from a very affluent, high-performing school in Las Vegas. Many of the skills and standards I taught at the beginning of the year were geared towards early Kindergarten, but these kids have just blown me away with what they were able to accomplish in just 8 short months.

Okay, short bragging session over, but I am sure you other 1st grade teachers can relate to that proud, proud feeling that you get as you see your kiddos get ready for 2nd grade. It is truly remarkable!

Onto what this post was supposed to be about... CLOSE READING! I had been hoping to get my Summer pack out earlier, but just couldn't get around to finishing it/uploading it until last night, so I apologize for the delay. My kids have been working on a few different passages the past two weeks.

For non-fiction we went with parrots:

and for fiction I chose a story that had a "cliff-hanger" ending:

My highest two groups are just pros at this skill by now and I just sat back and snapped a few photos as they read and re-read their passages with their pencils and highlighters in hand:

As always, we went over some vocabulary and used evidence from the text to answer questions about our non-fiction parrots text:

Our fiction story was a little trickier this week as we had to make a big prediction and put our inferencing skills to the test:

While we probably won't complete ALL of the stories in this summer-themed pack, I will be sending home quite a few of them for the summer! The kids are well-trained in how to respond to the questions, so I am hoping a little practice with these skills over the summer will keep them sharp!

I put the summer pack on sale through Tuesday (5/13) in case you would like to grab it!

Nonfiction texts included:

- Parrots

- Dolphins

- The Sun

- Ice Cream

- Independence Day

Fiction texts included:

The Sandcastle Contest - a story about a boy who enters a sandcastle contest and eagerly awaits the announcement of who wins

Look What I Caught! - a story about a boy who finds a big, red crab at the beach and doesn't understand why his mom and sisters aren't as excited as he is

Learning to Swim - a story about a boy who gets scared in the middle of his swim lessons and makes him mom very proud

My Summer Vacation - a story about a girl who overcomes her fear of flying to vacation in Hawaii

Pool Party - a story about a girl who is about to throw a big pool party when all of a sudden a storm threatens to ruin it

For those of you who have tried my close reading passages, I hope you and your students have enjoyed them! My students have shown so much growth and I hope yours have too!

If you want to try the winter or spring ones you can see them here:

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The End is Near!!

It is that time of year people...

the sun is shining, schools in the south and west have only a few short weeks left and we have a couple more weeks after that!

It is THE END OF THE YEAR!

I get giddy around this time.

I can feel the summer right around the corner, I become nostalgic about this year, I look at the growth of my students and get excited for them to be second graders, and I get stressed about my littles who haven't made as much growth as I would've preferred.  Overall, it is a joyous time of year!

One of my good friends, Michelle,  from Vegas shared this picture with me last week that brightened up my day:

One of the first grade teachers did these little "end of the year experts" with her kids and they came out SO CUTE!!! I was so excited. My class will be completing this in a couple more weeks and I can't wait to see what they are proud of!

These cute little guys n gals come from my Writing Through the Seasons (Summer) pack. It has the perfect amount of writing prompts and activities to get your students writing through the end of the year and into the summer!

I also want to remind those who don't know that there is a biiiiiiiiig sale on TPT starting tomorrow! It is the Teacher Appreciation Sale and it lasts all Tuesday and Wednesday! Everything in my store will be 20% off and if you use the TPT discount code, you will get another 10% off!

Just click the adorable link below to visit my store:

^Thank you, Amy, for the button!^

Last, but not least, I am working my hardest to finish this by Wednesday, but it might not happen until the weekend, so be on the lookout:

Enjoy the week!

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