Cats vs. Dogs - A Reading and Writing Project

I love integrating reading and writing and last Spring I was receiving my last Scholastic Book Order and snagged these two books:

Dog vs. Cat by Chris Gall

Cats vs. Dogs - National Geographic for Kids

*Both books are still available on Scholastic Book Club for $3 each. They are also available in the Teacher Store as well as Amazon for a bit more.* 

I ended up getting them right before school ended, reading them to the kids and they just LOVED them! We compared and contrasted the books and had a whole love of lively debate about which animal we believed to be the BEST pet! My mind was left reeling with all he activities I wish I had time to plan! So...I decided to make a little unit for them!

It is a reading and writing unit, which has plenty of activities for the nonfiction book, the fiction book, and comparing/contrasting both! Again, it is a whole lot of fun to listen to students share their opinions about these 2 animals that they think they know so well! It's also fun to see what they learn about some of their favorite pets!

For nonfiction activities I included:

Book responses including:
- True or False Comprehension Check
- Multiple Choice Comprehension Check
- Vocabulary
- Cat Facts
- Dog Facts
Question Cards for whole group, small group, and partner discussion.
All about Dogs/Cats mini books
Cat and Dog fact match up

 Mini fact books for each animal!

 Students record their learning!

 Cat and dog fact match up.

Comprehension Checks!

Fiction activities include:

Book responses including:
- Dog vs. Cat comparisons
- Dog and Cat character traits
- Retelling (B,M,E)
- Vocabulary
- Story Map
Question Cards for whole group, small group, and partner discussion.
Problem/Solution flipbook
Life After Baby… fill in speech bubbles
Order cards for retelling

Get into the character's head and guess what they would say to their owners if they could talk!

Also, a problem and solution flip book! 

 12 different questions for each book - great for whole group, small group, and partner discussion!

Writing and craft activities include

- Comparing books
- Choosing the winner (cat vs. dog)
- Cats Rule/Dogs Rule – providing reasons for opinions
Six writing prompt cards
Craft and bulletin board ideas
- Cut and paste craft option
- Directed drawing option
- Writing paper for both cat & dog

Easy dog and cat crafts for students to complete and add to their opinion writing.

There are both cat and dog directed drawings included if students would rather draw their own animal and write their opinions!

You can snag all the activities for a couple week's worth of fun by clicking the cover below!

 I hope you and your students enjoy it!

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Expanding Writer's Workshop in First and Second Grade!

After teaching writing to my first graders for 5 years, I have a sad secret to share with you:

I totally underestimated my young students.

Bleck. That pains me to say, but it is true. My first year in a classroom I thought writer's workshop was going to be an absolute trainwreck in 1st grade. I would look at exemplar writing pieces from 1st grade students and thought to myself, "who are these genius little children?!" Clearly I didn't think they really existed... and if they did I thought for sure they wouldn't be found in my room.

I knew writing was an area I needed to work on and build confidence in, so I began to tackle it. Slowly, but surely I took each Common Core writing standard and broke it down in a way that I thought I could handle. I still had my doubts, but my students had NO problem proving me wrong.

I started with personal narratives. We picked our small moments, learned the difference between a watermelon and a seed moment, and used Froggy books to add capital letters, sound effects and more. It was fun and it was eye-opening! My students could do a lot more than I gave them credit for.

Then, in the winter, we researched and published our own all about books. Talk about FUN! My students were gaining more and more independence as they became better writers (and readers).

Come springtime, we would learn how to express our opinions. We had fun respectfully arguing with one another and providing reasons for our opinions. By the end of the year we all felt successful and I could see tremendous growth in their writing!

Now, each of these units took about a month, give or take, so what we were doing the rest of the year?! Prompts! Lots of prompts. Now... there is NOTHING wrong with writing prompts... in fact, we love them in room 102 and still use them from time to time (especially at the beginning of the year to build confidence - see post HERE). However, with all that extra time in the year, I felt like I might be able to push my students a little further through more writer's workshop. So the past two years I have made it a personal goal to expand my writer's workshop!

I took a look at my yearly writing scope and sequence that my team had come up with and decided that room 102 was going to dive in head first and see what happens. Well, the last two years I have been THRILLED with my students' ability to take what they have learned in each writing genre and push it one step further.

My year overall looked like this:
August- September: Gaining confidence and building stamina in Writer's Workshop
October-November: Personal Narratives
December: Seasonal prompts
January-February: All About Books
Early March: How to Unit
March - May: Opinion & Reviews
May- June: Realistic Fiction

We took what we learned from writing personal narratives at the beginning of the year and shifted our focus writing realistic fiction at the end of the year. We took our informative writing and expanded upon it through a writing how-to mini unit. We also took what we knew about writing our opinions and wrote reviews of local restaurants and movies. We dug deeper and I raised the bar in each of the Common Core writing genres and I am so happy I did!

Immediately after we finish our informative, All About Books, we took just a week or two to publish our own "How-to" booklet. Since non-fiction was still fresh in my students' minds, they were able to quickly identify things they knew how to do and teach others:

Since they could do most of this unit independently, I was really able to pull smaller groups to focus on specific skills (punctuation, sentence variation, leads, details, closings, etc). You can read more about what is in my how to unit {here}.

Right after we learn how to express our opinions in the spring, we take it one step further and write reviews! My kids seriously love this and I totally play up the whole "critic" concept.

There must be something to giving your students the ownership and pride to be an expert, or  teacher, or a critic. Let them take that leadership and empower them they will soar, I tell you! To read more about my reviews unit, head {here}.

Lastly, at the end of the year is our "toughest" unit, When we write realistic fiction it is when we bring everything full circle. We take all we have learned the whole year and create our very own story books!

My higher students really push the envelope here and write their own chapter books or series and create their own "boxed set" by decorating a cereal box. I can tell you that before these last 2 years in my classroom, my students NEVER would've written chapter books! And that's on ME, not them.

All of these extended units are available in my writer's workshop bundle {HERE}!

So if you are working towards polishing up your writer's workshop blocks this year, maybe these ideas will work for your kids! Expand their thinking and their writing and I think you will all be impressed with what your students turn out!

Happy writing :)

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An Example of Our Day in 1st Grade!

Our day in first grade is long! We have extended hours from 730-330 so we have plenty of time to teach what we need to get our first graders on grade level. I thought I would share a little about a day in our life:

Before school:
My alarm is set for 4:38 am. I wake up and get to the gym by 5am. I workout and watch the news then shower and get dressed at the gym. I am outta there by 6:15! I stop at Starbucks and show up at school around 7am to write our morning message and get everything in order before the bell at 7:28!

7:30-7:50: Morning meeting

Every morning when we come in, we meet on the mat in a circle and follow a morning meeting routine. We first greet one another using eye contact and a handshake of some sort (sometimes a "pound it" and sometimes a secret handshake). Then we complete the interactive morning message which reviews what we have been learning in class!

7:50-8:20: Phonics

My class has been reviewing our digraphs before we go back and review consonant blends. We have been adding plenty of poems to our poetry journals to help us read with fluency! We will always start on the mat blending words with that digraph, then students go back and receive their poem to read, whisper read, and buddy read. The next day, my kids get their real or nonsense page to decode more words with that sound!

All these poems are from my Phonics Poetry unit.

8:20-9:25: Reader's Workshop

We have been inferring all sorts of things about our characters lately and using that sentence stem to help us talk about our text. We spend about 20 minutes reviewing and doing my guided lesson. Then, my students practice the skill through some turn and talk before going back to their reading spots to read independently for 20-30 minutes. Lastly, my students do some buddy reading and we close the lesson!

During independent reading, I pull my small guided reading groups. We have been focusing on close reading as we get ready for 2nd grade. We have been reading, re-reading, and answering questions using evidence from the text.

9:25-9:40: Morning recess

(self explanatory)

9:45-10:20: Writer's Workshop:

Our writer's workshop is set up the same basic way as reader's workshop. I will do a guided lesson and add my focus skill to my teacher writing. Then, my students will share how they will incorporate that skill into their writing with a partner before they go back and write independently.

We have been publishing our reviews and my goodness they are SO cute! I love reading all their reasons for why they love something.

(We followed my Writing Reviews unit to produce these!)

10:25-10:50: Science/Social Studies

We receive FOSS science kits at our school, so whenever we don't have a science kit, we teach a Social Studies unit. Currently we have received our insect unit and we are learning all sorts of insect facts before our meal worms arrive!

(They are completing a little sentence scramble from my insect freebie: HERE)

10:55-11:35: LUNCH/RECESS

(self explanatory)

11:40-12:20: Handwriting/Interactive Read Aloud

I don't have pictures of this, but we use Handwriting without Tears for the first 20 minutes and then the second 20 minutes, we do an interactive read aloud. An interactive read aloud is a planned, purposeful read aloud in which we use a mentor text to practice a certain skill and have stopping points to discuss! This is when we capitalize on our accountable talk:

12:20-1:20: Calendar/Math Workshop

We start with calendar, move to a "math warm up" which I usually have us quickly practice our math facts through Quiz-Quiz Trade with flashcards or a game of I have, Who Has? Then move to our guided lesson. We have currently been learning about 2D shapes, their sides, corners, how to sort shapes, where we see shapes, etc. After I teach  my lesson, my students do math tubs to reinforce the skills we have learned.

 One tub is our pattern block shape fill-ins from Investigations!

 Another tub includes my free composing 2D shapes cards.

We also use these geoboard task cards from First Grade, Blue Skies.

I also have some of my higher students work on our new Higher Order Thinking Tasks!

These last two tubs come from my friend Laura's, new pack: Shape Soup.

My kids thought it was SO fun to pick out the shape vegetables and sort them into the right soup can!

1:25-2:30: Specials/Prep time

Students go to one of the following specials:

Library, Gym, Art, Music, Dance, or Safe & Caring

2:35-2:45: Snack

School provided snack.

2:45-3:25: Intervention/Acceleration Block

During this time, all the students in 1st grade are split into ability based groups among the teachers and all our interventionists. This times is dedicated to teaching homogenous, smaller groups the skills they need to work on to either catch up to grade level or continue accelerating their learning.

My small group has been loving DeeDee and Deanna's Guiding Readers units. We have been using the phonics portions every day to help practice and review long vowels!

3:30- Dismissal!

And there you have it... that is what our day looks like!

Happy weekend :)

Link up with Reagan over at Tunstall's Teaching Times so I can see what yours looks like!

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Writing Reviews, Accountable Talk, Subtraction and More!

Well, this momma is full swing back into teaching mode! My first graders and I are getting used to one another again and trying to continue our learning without skipping a beat. It is an interesting transition to come back after maternity leave. My classroom was in someone else's hands for longer than I had them, so in many ways this is her classroom that I am sort of "stealing" back. I am so grateful my sub kept my students safe, made a fun learning environment for them, and helped my students build their knowledge so I can come in and pick up where she left off! Now, it's my turn to grab the reigns and get my kids to where they need to be by the end of the year!

I wanted to share a little of what we have been up to in our cozy classroom.

In math, we have been finishing up subtraction and number bonds before we head into some geometry:

I will admit, I did miss making anchor charts!

A little number bond review thanks to Kelley Dolling's freebie: HERE

After we reviewed number bonds, we worked on missing addends in a number bond and completed my solve the room activity from Leprechaun Math.

In reader's workshop we spent the week reading Dr. Seuss books and practicing our fluency through partner reading and reader's theater! We have also been focusing A LOT on our accountable talk:

my little first graders need lots of help learning to be respectful listeners and we have been having great discussions through these sentence stems. Plus, it's pretty adorable to hear my littles speaking like such kind, mature adults.

In phonics, we are focusing on vowel teams! 

"igh" was on the agenda this week and it is a tricky one! We used my phonics poetms and real or nonsense sheets to help us decode and become more fluent with igh words. We are slowly building up our poetry journals that my students love to read during reader's workshop!

Writing has been all about reviews! We are learning to express out opinions through writing reviews and I have to say, I am impressed. These are the four parts of a review from my Writing Reviews Unit:

 We focus on one part each day, add it to our shared writing, and then I challenge my kids to add it to their individual reviews.

 Teacher modeling/shared writing

"Are you looking for something to eat? Well, not anymore! You could try Fridays!"

A catchy lead?! I think he nailed it! I love writer's workshop!

Well, that's just a little peek into my room as of late. I will go more into depth with some lessons and units we are working on soon :)

Happy weekend!

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