December Fun!

We had a blast this December with fun activities like the Polar Express Pajama day, making Gingerbread houses and a winter break party! Enjoy these pictures and visit the album on the right margin for more...

Great News!

I woke this morning to find out that our project through DonorsChoose.org was fully funded! Thanks to the generous donations of many people both in our community and throughout the country supported this project. We will soon have a puppet theater and puppet tree full of puppets for the student to use to act out plays they have written themselves!
I am beyond excited!
Keep visiting for new pictures and updates - I will put a video up of one of the shows...

November Fun

I hope you enjoy some pictures of our class... We had a Readers Theater performance, a classroom that suddenly was filled with turkeys in disguise and a celebration of alphabet soup and letter crackers for filling our "I Can" can with all the words our class can read!

We had a great fall and are looking forward to an exciting winter season!
Visit the full slideshow along the right side margin of the blog...

Some Great Sites to Help You Help Your Students

I wanted to share some great sites with you  - I will be sharing how you might use them with your children during our conferences later in the week. 

This first site is great for you to find books that are just right for your child. Put the title of a book in the Wizard to find that book and more by that author. Put the title of a text you know your child enjoys into the Book Alike box and slide the reading level slide to harder or easier or leave in the middle for text that is just right...

Scholastic Book Wizard & Book Alike Site

This next site is great if your child needs handwriting practice, reversal correction practice, & number writing practice. This is also great to help your child practice writing their first and last names independently.

Handwriting and Number Practice

"The Peacemakers" - PTO Sponsored Assembly

Thanks to the PTO for sponsoring another wonderful assembly for our school. This was a real winner! Our students felt they were a part of the performance and it made us all think about how important it is to open our minds and hearts to everyone!

Daily 5 In Action

Word Work



Listening to stories on personal mp3 players

Reading partners

Word Work - One student is giving his friends a spelling test from the Word Wall

Small group listening center







Earth Balloon Assembly

Today the PTO provided an assembly for our school and we loved it! We actually went inside an enormous Earth Balloon as we learned about the lands and seas of our Earth. Thanks PTO!

Hope you enjoy the photos...

Everyday Math Explorations

Part of our math program provides the students the opportunity to freely explore the materials they will soon be using... Today our students had an exploration experience and we hope you enjoy the pictures!

We Can!

It's Friday afternoon, backpacks are ready,  we are waiting for buses to be called and what are my students doing? Lining up for one more chance to read their sight word rings! Really!! They are so motivated to read their words that some got back at the end of the line to sneak in another read!!

I started the students on an individualized reading/spelling program and boy are they loving it! Each student reads to me from a list of first grade words, when they make 5 mistakes they go on their word ring. The first grade list is followed by a second and third grade list and when that is mastered their challenge changes to spelling words from a list of leveled words created from the most frequently used words used in writing. As they gather 3 tallies on the back of each word for a successful read/spelling they pull the word off the ring and it goes in the class "I Can" can. When that gets filled it's party time in 1A!

I'll keep you posted!



You can see their word rings hanging from the velcro strip in the background.



Team Building Day 2010

We had a beautiful day together having fun, laughing, and playing and getting to know each other better. It's going to be a great year! Visit the slideshow along the right side of the Blog to see more of our good times...