I’m sorry y’all for not having my visual plans done tonight. This weekend came and went in a blink. I have my regular old plans completed of course, but not the pretty clickable kind. This week we’ll be working on farm again. And I promise to get lots accomplished this week. Even if it means no sleep.
If you want to blame someone for me not having visual plans this week, you can blame this beautiful girl. It was her bachelorette party this weekend.
When we talk about how teaching has brought so many blessing, she’s one of them. She was my student teacher and now my colleague. She’s so beautiful inside and out and I always say, no student teacher will ever compare. I just love this girl and wish her all the love and happiness in the world.
Now, onto some of last week’s activities.
Last week we read Mrs. Wishy Washy’s Farm. If you haven’t read this Mrs. Wishy book, you must. It’s one of my favorites. On Monday we discussed how characters sometimes change in a story. We discussed how an event in the story creates this change. The kids helped me fill out the following chart, and they completed their own as well.
The next day we talked about their favorite character. We discussed how I expected them to provide a reason from the story. Not just the typical, “I like them because they are funny.” I was so proud of their responses. Here are a few:
On Wednesday, we worked on retelling a story. Besides, we discussed how to retell, retelling words and the students used picture cards from the story to retell. They had a blast with this.
Then Thursday, we finished the book up with those great “W” questions.
As we discuss a reading concept or strategy I’ve been creating anchor charts. I created 8 1/2 by 11 versions, so I have plenty of space in the room to keep them all up. I’ll be creating a few more and making them available on TpT.
My dear friend Kim Adsit, gave me the greatest idea through her fabulous Reader’s Workshop Units.
Kim shares, that she takes photos of her large anchor charts and then has the kids put a small photo of the chart in their notebook, so they have their own copy to refer to. When I printed these, I also printed multiple on a page and gave my students copies.
Mrs. Wishy Washy’s Farm is also a rhyming book, so I created a little phonemic awareness activity for rhyming. Students listened to words and had to place a cheerio under the picture that rhymed with the word I said. They loved it, because it included a little snack.
If you’d like my Mrs. Wishy Washy Documents you can click here.
We also celebrated our very first writer’s celebration this week and had time to practice first grade skills with this fabulous app.
And last but not least, I wanted to share a lifesaver for me this week. I have some little friends that don’t know all of their letter sounds, numbers, and sight words. So when my sweet friend Deedee created this game, I was ecstatic. It’s a must have!! Deedee a genius and my students loved practicing this way.
I hope you all have a great week!
