This week our theme was "All About Me". Every year I do the cute flags about birthdays, favorite colors, books, movies, songs etc etc. I find it boring with a capital B. In the first grade (remember we are 98% English Language Learners) I find that most of the kids don't know what their favorite book or song. They usually just pick something that I give as an example. It never is a good representation of the real kid. So I revved things up a bit. I added the "What I Want to be When I Grow Up" to the how many letters are in our names and how many boys or girls. We started with my nonfiction reader that introduced a the different jobs that are available.
The kids really loved the books. Not any of them realized they could be a janitor! So we finished the book over 2 days doing the difference close reading in the back.
Then we did 5 days worth of writing. Monday and Tuesday we wrote about our opinion. We picked to write about whether or not a chef is the best job. It was hilarious when one of the kids said they didn't want to be a chef because they didn't want to touch meat! Most were thinking about the cute cakes and cupcakes they would make, but that one just didn't want to touch meat.
I told the kids how chef some times have to wake up really early to either start baking and cooking or to go buy fresh groceries and one of my little boys threw his hands up and said nope! He wasn't having any part of that!
Wednesday and Thursday were easier writing days. We did informational writing and we picked to write facts about teachers.
Now today's writing was GRUESOME! My relatively high kids did well..but the others were very frustrated. What was the writing....it was narrative. The kiddos had to write about what they wanted to be when they grow up. I didn't think it would be so hard because the day before we made little cut out people and cut out clothes like paper dolls to create us as our jobs. The introduction sentence was easy but once they had to come up with ideas of what they would do as that job blank faces appeared all over the classroom. (A little background on the area I teach in. Like I said we are 98% ELL and 98% living in poverty.) The more I'm running around from one kiddo to the other to help them get ideas I realized the dreaming and pretending is not things that come naturally for them. I was so busy I didn't get a chance to take pictures of their work. I'm actually so exhausted from this adventure I'm having a hard time keeping my peepers open. Next week when we do narrative writing we are making up a story whole class! Together we are going to learn to dream and pretend!
Now to take a well needed 3 day weekend to sleep in and relax....Who am I kidding I want to revamp my 5 senses writing for next week! I'll relax next weekend...wink wink!
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