Spring Break Freebie

Hello everyone! I'm Angie from Teacher's Big Helper and it's a pleasure to be part of this wonderful group of colleagues! This is my first time sharing some of my ideas with you and I look forward
to sharing much more with you in the future!

Spring Break is over for some of us and just starting for others. Hope everyone gets enough rest and comes back to school recharged and ready to end a great school year! I rested...a lot. I slept in, I shopped, I had lunch with family and friends, and I enjoyed every minute I had at home with my kids! Now, it's time to get ready to go back and listen to all the wonderful stories our little ones have to tell us. Although I know we love to hear all of their stories, we don't have have time to hear the long version from 22 kids. So, here's a little Spring Break Freebie to help your students tell you everything they have to say about their Spring Break.

Spring Break Freebie

Hoping everyone had or is having a wonderful, restful Spring Break!

Angie

Easy-Prep Writing Centers!

One of the things I love most about first grade is witnessing the HUGE growth in writing throughout the year. By the end of first grade, most of my students love writing and can write several pages on a topic.

We do writer’s workshop in our district,  but I also love to include lots of different creative writing activities during center time.  My favorites are the ones I can reuse over and over again, with minimal prep.

Here, I’ll give you my top 10 easy writing centers- easy to prep, easy to change from week to week, free or inexpensive, and best of all, kids love ‘em because they are FUN!

1. Stamp a story- I think I've bought just about every stamp set from Oriental Trading Co. to make this fun center. I just switch out the set each week to go with our theme. Kids stamp, draw around the stamps, then they can write a story or describe their picture. I have a TON of themed sets. Some favorite themes are birthday, outer space, and of course, dinosaurs are always a hit!

2. Sticker story center! Just change the stickers to vary the theme! I get stickers from the dollar store and let kids pick up to 4 stickers to use in their picture, then draw the remaining scene and write a story. Check out the great freebie (click pic to get it) by Sarah Paul I found on TpT . 

3. Magazine Center- A Picture is worth 1,000 words! If you have old magazines, simply look through and rip out pages that you think may spark a writing idea! Funny ones are great (can you imagine the story for the cat picture below??), but so are ones that kids can relate to and write about a past experience. If you don’t have old magazines, ask parents- I always get a ton sent in when I do. TIP: go through the magazines to ‘censor’ (rip out pages) before putting them out- kids love to giggle and make fun of underwear ads J.

Another idea for magazine pictures:  I taped small pictures to index cards, then wrote some reference words on the back of each. Kids can use them to write a story OR, you can number 6 pictures, place them in a folder, and have kids write a sentence about each of the pictures! Template included in my freebie.

4. Theme writing center- I like to get kids thinking about our current themes, so I have a theme writing center, which usually has a prompt for kids to write about. Check out this week’s center, Earth Day People, courtesy of Kelly Everoski from Happily Ever After Education. I just love how these came out and the kids LOVED making them!  Click on the picture to see her awesome pack.

5. Word wall story- OK, I must admit, I’m a word wall addict. I love providing theme word walls for writing inspiration, as well as spelling reference. I have word walls for just about every theme imaginable. Here is a FREE one by 2 Super Teachers on TpT that we used for our writing center this week (click pic to get it). Check the bottom of this post for one of my own word wall freebies!

6. Starfall journal- Did I mention I love word walls? Well, I just LOVE these little journals by starfall.com (If you don’t know this website, you must get to know it! Lots of emergent reading and writing activities.). The journals include writing prompts and mini word walls with nouns, verbs and adjectives students can use to help them. They’re not free, but so worth the small price. I also buy the blank journals to make scrapbooks.

7. A day in the life of . . .  This is your typical “If I were a . . ." writing prompt. Kids love to pretend, so this center is perfect for little minds with BIG imaginations! I like to include craftivities here- for example, after kids write “If I were the Easter Bunny. . .” I would have them create a bunny holding their paper, or “If I were a leprechaun. .  .” they would make a leprechaun holding their paper.

8. Letter-writing center- I don’t have pictures of this center, as I just got back from maternity leave and didn’t get a chance to set it up this year, but this is another popular center with kids. After discussing different purposes for letter-writing, I place letter stationary and envelopes at this center, and a mailbox (made from a shoebox) for kids to ‘mail’ their letters from. They can write to the principal to ask for longer recess time, to the cafeteria workers with lunch requests, or to their friends in other classrooms. Pick some ‘postal workers’ to deliver the letters and this center will be a HIT! I included a template for you also!

9. Greeting card – Who doesn’t love to brighten someone’s day with a nice card? This center is great because kids will enjoy making these cards for different people, so  they’ll keep writing (I have a small collection on my file cabinet already- make sure you make lots of copies!) YUP, you’ll be getting this template for free! =)

10. Riddle center- Riddles are a great way to assess student learning. I use riddles after many topics and have kids match the riddle to the answers. A great center (that can incorporate any other subject) is to have books that go with your theme in a basket, add some index cards and ask kids to write a “Who Am I?” riddle on one side, and the answer on the other side. Then, you can share them with the class as a culminating review of your theme!

OK, so I know this post was long, but hopefully you got some good center ideas for your last couple of months of the school year. And here's a freebie, made exclusively for you! It has some of the templates found in this blog post.

Here’s another freebie from my store. . . with a word wall :), and my newest writing centers pack (not free, but on sale right now :D)!

 Do you have any more ideas for 'easy-to-prep and reuse' writing centers? 

I'd love to hear them!

Get Writing in First Grade: Tried and Tested Ideas That Really Work!

Does it feel like a huge challenge turning an entire class of little people into independent writers?

It doesn't really need to be a headache.  You can do it and it can even be fun!  Here I'll share some of my favourite techniques for promoting independent writing.

Overview of Early Writers

Early writers are not yet capable of a wide range of writing.  Focus on topics that are personally significant to them  (e.g. "A Trip to the Park").  Teaching should emphasise:

• exploring the purpose of writing

• differences in oral and written language

• planning and editing 

• spelling strategies

• extending range of vocabulary 

• use of connectives to expand simple sentences 

Stage 1 - Talk for Writing

• Introduce and discuss an interesting stimuli (curious object, book, illustration, photograph, newspaper article, music, video clip or act as a character in a "hot seat" fielding questions from your class).

Story starter video clip - The Antique Shop

• Plan quality questions in advance, give students "thinking time" and implement a "no hands up" policy  to emphasise that you expect everyone to think and that anyone could potentially be picked.  A simple, yet effective, way to ask quality questions is to turn a question into a true or false statement (e.g. "The Big Bad Wolf deserved to get burned in the little pigs pot.  Agree/Disagree/Justify").  

• Explain learning objectives (e.g. to use past tense accurately).  Have students generate the success criteria.  

• Allow time for students to "pair/share" ideas.   Have a random selection of students share their ideas with the class. Encourage active listening by having students make the “WOW” sign (below) every time they hear language linked to the learning objectives. 

• Record ideas. The actual activity will vary according to your learning objectives. Examples include creating an illustration, taking a note of key words in student dictionaries (below) and voice or video recording. 

photo used with kind permission from Page Protector Printables and More

Stage 2 - Shared Writing

• Teacher models writing whilst focusing on handwriting, grammar, spelling and punctuation.  Think aloud and encourage input from students.  Great opportunity to work on up-leveling sentences (e.g. change "The dog barked." to "The scruffy dog barked and wagged his tail").

• A fun way to ensure sentences make sense and include punctuation is by having the class read them aloud whilst demonstrating "Kung Fu Punctuation" (video demo below).  I often deliberately make some mistakes to model self correction.  

Mr Martin demonstrating the art of kung fu punctuation!

• Highlight areas of the story that can be changed to your students individual preferences (e.g. "I went to the park and I played _________________").  Have them either write a story completing the blanks (possibly with a writing frame or word banks depending on level) or have them act out their stories in pairs/small groups.  Ask students to peer assess based on the success criteria.  I always use the 2 stars and wish system which involves highlighting 2 positive points (stars) followed by one suggestion for improvement (wish).

Stage 3 - Independent Writing

• In addition to the overall lesson learning objective remind students of their additional objective (the "wish" feedback from their previous piece of writing).  

• Depending on your students individual levels "independent writing" can involve: generating a story from scratch, personalizing writing frames, tracing text they dictated to an adult or simply orally recording their story.  

• Self editing.  As a matter of routine have students circle their use of punctuation and how they have met their learning intentions (e.g. circle their use of an interesting adjectives).  Ensure you have a supply of erasers on hand as this is where many students realise they have made some mistakes.  

Stage 4 - Review and Rewrite

• When marking students work I focus ONLY on their learning intentions (which are typically the focus of the lesson plus an individual target based on their previous piece of writing).  I use pink highlighter pen to emphasise areas that "tickled me pink" (i.e. made me happy as they demonstrated the success criteria) and green highlighter pen to signify "areas that can grow like grass" to emphasise areas that can be improved upon (e.g. missing capital letters).  

• Students rewrite focusing on green highlighted sections of their work (areas that require growth).

• Students whom have met all of the success criteria use this time to complete literacy fast finisher activities focusing on their weaker areas of literacy (see below). 

Extension Activities 

The key to successful extension activities is that they are fun and focus on your students individual needs.  One of my favourite examples is using levelled games to review reading and/or spelling sight words.  

One of a collection of sight word game boards featuring various levels of Dolch words.

Questions or Feedback?

If you liked this article please go ahead and pin it by simply clicking on any of the above images.  If you have comments or questions I'd love to hear from you below, it would go a long way in reassuring  me that I'm not simply, "talking to the wind" as the Japanese say.  

About the author:  OkinawanGirl is a Scottish primary school teacher addicted to books, technology, world travel and the Japanese language.  Rumours that she moved to Japan in a feeble attempt to meet Kenichi Matsuyama are quite simply not true (she didn't discover him until AFTER she relocated).  You can check out her Facebook page by clicking here.  

Spelling disclaimer:  please note that OkinawanGirl used British spelling when writing this article.