Writing and Booklets

This is a quick post...life has been super busy (Red Ribbon Week, Halloween, etc) and it seems my husband and I are in a constant battle over the laptop since he is doing online school. I wanted to update everyone with the few new writing and books that I have created. The first ones are for fall.

 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fall-Nonfiction-Close-Reading-Book-1523921

 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fiction-CLOSE-Reading-Book-Fall-1510594

 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fall-Writing-Informative-Opinion-Narrative-CCSS-1510634

This is actually are plans for next week. It feels like the right time now since the weather is finally cooling off. When fall actually begins it is usually in the mid 90s here so it is hard to relate to falling leaves and cool temperatures when we are still sweating and wearing shorts.
I wanted to get a little ahead of the schedule and get started on our owl unit. I did create a nonfiction reader but am unable to sell it for "copyright" issues. I don't understand them so I'm not messing with it. BUT, I am able to hook you up with the writing unit on owls.

 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Owls-Writing-Informative-Opinion-Narrative-CCSS-1524081
 Check them out and let me know what you think!

New Fiction Readers

I got brave tonight and uploaded two of my fiction readers with CLOSE activities to my TeachersPayTeachers account! I'm kinda freaked out! I really hate doing new things. It makes me super nervous until my "I don't care what others think" instinct kicks in. I like that attitude much better. I'm less jumpy.

 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pumpkin-Patch-CLOSE-Fiction-Reader-1510605
The first one is a story about a little girl looking for the perfect pumpkin at the pumpkin patch. I tried to use many of the sounds we've learned in our phonics program but many things are thematic based.

 http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fiction-CLOSE-Reading-Book-Fall-1510594
The other story is about two little boys playing during the fall. It's my first few attempts at fiction. If you remember from yesterday (I think it was yesterday...day before...oh I don't remember) I want to extend my books to include fiction so that I can ask that simple question. What is the author's purpose?? That is a really easy question to ask with nonfiction books that are filled with facts, but not as easy with fiction. So wish us luck as we begin this adventure in first grade!

Pumpkins

We have been working on pumpkins for a many, many days. It is such an easy theme to do so many activities on! Of course I am going to talk about our nonfiction reader and our writing. My kiddos are getting really good at the writing. I am so proud of them! Here is some of the writing examples.

 The end of our trimester is in a few weeks and I will have to add to our rubric to help my kiddos grow in their abilities. For opinions I will add another sentence supporting their opinion. Informative is just adding another fact and narrative...I think I will leave alone just because we are still doing a lot of that writing as a group. Maybe third trimester I will add another sentence to the story but for now we will just work on our imagination.

 Our reading is going along well. When doing the CLOSE activities at the end is becoming relatively easy for most of my kiddos. I realized with this book that when I ask the question about author purpose they all repeat what we wrote the week before. So I realized I am asking that question a lot in informative readings but not in narrative or fictional reading. So my goal the next couple of weeks is to begin creating fiction books that go along with my themes....stay tuned for them!

Bats are a little freaky!

This first grade class has been SUPER busy! We've been learning how to sign onto the computer by ourselves, we have been allowed to go to the computer lab another 45 minutes, and we are learning how to use Lexia all while doing our everyday needs of reading, writing, phonics, comprehension, math, ELD, social studies and science! The kiddos are doing great with all these challenges. Their teacher...is exhausted!

Our Prewrite for Opinion

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Bats-Writing-Informative-Opinion-Narrative-CCSS-1473313 

This week our theme has been bats. There is a definite divide in our class about whether or not we like bats. We wrote our opinion writing about whether we think bats are scary or not. So many of them are truly scared of bats. So I looked up some Youtube videos on bats just for kids. I've never had absolutely zero noise while watching a video. These kiddos were amazed at what they saw.I love using Youtube to show them real life videos of the science info we are learning. I even found a video about vampire bats and thought that if they saw how they just licked the blood of animals, they would be less fearful of bats. Nope...it even freaked me out a little. Those bats are not as little as I thought!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLp-ls8AoaU
Check out the video and see what you think!!
We also managed to write our informative writing and do our CLOSE reader about bats this week.

 

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Bats-Nonfiction-CLOSE-Reading-Book-1473230

Bats will leak into next week. There is so much to learn about! The kids are loving it though so it's ok to get a little behind schedule.