Spreading the Love

Spreading the Love

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner we have been focusing on put ups instead of put downs in 1^st grade!  I love having a Valentine’s Day party with the kids.  We focus on writing letters to each other, completing a project with our family, and finding the good in each of us.  A few weeks ago I sent home a letter telling about our party and a project to complete at home.  Each child was asked to work with their parents to make a Valentine’s mailbox.  Here is a peek at a few of the mailboxes.  I love to add a home component to school units. 

Next we have been working on writing each child a Valentine at our writing center!  Students are able to use the paper they want and supplies!  They have really had a great time thinking of special things to say about each person.  I love how this week is a great reminder of how to fill each other’s buckets!

Here is a writing template freebie!

Lexile, Guided Reading, & Topics Oh My!

Lexile, Guided Reading, and Topics Oh My!

Over the last year I have been so overwhelmed with organizing my classroom library.  It seems every month teachers were changing how they organized.  Going from guided reading levels, topics, and genres.   Last year I kept mine organized by topics: friendship, animals, winter, and holiday books.  It worked great for me, but my students had a hard time picking books for buddy reading during our daily 5 centers.  I taught them how to find the perfect book and we made anchor charts, but still the Charlie the Ranch Dog books were too good to pass up!  I can’t blame them, the amount of freedom was too much and temptation gave in.  I decided to dedicate a week to leveling all my books and placing them in guided reading level baskets. 

Here are some easy steps!

1.  Take all your books out and make a huge pile.  This will for sure bring your anxiety level up a notch!

2.   Download the app Literacy Leveler!  For the most part it had the majority of the books available for leveling.  The ones I was unable to find I used Scholastic Book Wizard!

3.  Start scanning!

4.  Mark with level!  I used garage sale dots on the back of each book and wrote the level.

5.  Place in baskets J  I went to the Dollar Tree and bought 25 of their large blue bins.  It took me three trips to three different stores to accumulate the 25, but well worth the savings!  I have heard you can order online however I do not think you can specify the color. 

6.  Enjoy your hard work before 30 little friends start book shopping!

Here are some pictures of the process.

Click here for basket labels, word wall labels, and daily 5 labels……. FREE!



Happy Teaching!
Abbie Jinnings

Zoo Time!

Zoo Time

Lions, Tigers, and Bears… Oh My!

This month we are learning about the ZOO!  We are in the midst of writing our zoo animal research books.  I started the unit out by reading lots of zoo books!

We then made a list of zoo animals we love.  I guided them in picking six animals I have ready to research.  Lions, kangaroos, sea lions, pythons, orangutans, and giraffes, are the animals we are focusing on.  From there we used our QR code posters to research different aspects of the animals.  It’s a blast!  Take a look at our research! 

To carry over our theme into math and reading we have been using centers and QR code animal riddles.   All around the classroom are animal riddle QR codes.  Early finishers can walk around and infer what animal is being described.  To reinforce our math concepts of fractions, tens and ones, and addition to 20 we have been using zoo themed centers. 

We are so excited to be learning about zoo animals and can’t wait to visit the zoo at the end of the month to see our animals in their habitats.