Rockin Room 212

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

The Poetry Cafe 2013

The Poetry Cafe is my favorite day of the year! Since April is National Poetry month our class learns and explores poetry all month long! This year we had a blast! We learned that poetry can be about anything and that poets find inspiration anywhere!

I set up inspiration centers around our room! They included art, music, shapes, and nature! Here is Caleb finding inspiration in the Art Center!

Jade and Senali are using the Songza Ap on our IPAD to find inspiration for a poem!

Madeline found inspiration in the nature center through a blooming flower!

Evie found inspiration in the nature center through a starfish!

We also used book binders to make poetry! Thanks to my friend Mrs. Zwiegle for sending me on awesome website! Peyton used some of our Halloween books to make a spooky poem!

THE BIG DAY!

When we are getting ready for our Poetry Cafe the kids choose 3 of their favorite poems they have written to put in our class poetry book. I type it up and let them illustrate the pages before running copies to turn into a book! We assign commitees and brainstorm roles for the committees. This year we had a welcoming committee that welcomed parents, ushered them to their seats and assisted them in fixing the plate and coffee order. We also had a Get Started committee that once everyone was happily settled let the parents know we would be starting soon! Our Education Committee shared what we have learned about poetry in our classroom.We had two announcers that introduced each poet and then thanked them and made they got some snaps for their poems. They all wrote their own scripts for each role and did an amazing job!

The Day of the Poetry Cafe I set the mood with the lights off, string lights hung across the ceiling, Miles Davis playing quielty in the background, a stage with microphone and spot light, table clothes and flower bouqet center pieces, stars hanging from the ceiling, coffee brewed and a table of snacks for the parents and the kids to enjoy! It is a fabulous day! The girls were ordained with boas and feather hair clips and the boys all came in the best dressed! We snap after each poetry reading and the children run the show! They glow with pride as they show off their amazing poems with style!

Our Welcome Committee

Our Get Started Committee

Our Educational Committee

Our Announcers

Our GoodBye Committee

MADELINE

PEYTON

EMMA

WYATT

DANTE

LOGAN M.

LOGAN W.

SENALI

TREY

JADE

CONNOR

EVIE

CALEB

GRACE

GENEVIEVE

Thank you so much for everyone that was a part of such a great day!

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Space research

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Plants and poetry

April is national poetry month! Our class is learning all about how to see the world like a poet. We read some poems from the book Color me a poem and R is for rhyme an alphabet poetry collection. Color me a poem is all about nature! The author beautifully describes photographs that are taken of different colors found in nature.

Since we are learning about plants in science we decided to write poems about flowers! First we painting our flowers to resemble Eric Carle's illustrations in his book The Tiny Seed. Then we cut out stems and leaves. We wrote our plant poems on the leaves. While kids were working on their poems I was calling them to the back to plant a seed of their own.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Habitat Rotations

Our first grade team at CCE did a science rotation where each teacher chose a habitat to teach! We allowed our students to choose the habitat they wanted to learn more about!

Mrs. Hamilton turned her entire classroom into the rainforest! It was awesome and the picture just doesn't do it justice! Ms. Dietz made a jeep to take exploring through the jungle! Mrs. Kelly turned her classroom into cave city and the kids had a blast in the dark! Mrs. Z and Mrs. Picket took the kids on an African Safari! My class was the desert. Mrs. Smith and. Ms. Allen were diving in deep to the ocean!
Our kids had a blast visiting the habitats!

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Number chat

Friday, March 1, 2013

Book clubs

It's book club time!! This year we had some very special guests model a book club meeting for us to observe! Our guests were our principal Mr. Anderson, our vice principal Mrs. Richardson, our literacy coach Mrs. Rudi and our guidance counselor Ms. Gabriel.

They did a fabulous job discussing the books Oliver Button is a Sissy and Amazing Grace.They discussed text to self connections , text to text connections, character feelings and the message they felt the authors were trying to portray beautifully!

After they left our class made a list of what we observed. The kids picked four books they wanted to start book clubs with this week and everyone chose the club they wanted to participate in. We chose The Recess Queen, The Brand New Kid, A Bad Case of Stripes, and The Royal Bee!

Stay tuned to see our first book club meeting next week!!

Thursday, February 28, 2013

2 digit subtraction

Here is today's math lesson! Kudos to Connor for figuring out how to use sticks and dots for subtraction the same way we use them for addition!

Monday, February 25, 2013

Today's Number Chat

The living museum

Every year all of the First Grade classes put on a Living Museum! Each student chooses an important American Historical figure or symbol to research. We expect them to learn 5 interesting facts and explain how their symbol/character has impacted the world we live in today! Everyone did an AMAZING job!

We invite other grade levels, parents, and administration to come view the museum and let the kids show off all their hard work!

Friday, February 22, 2013

Number Chat

Check out my awesome kiddos solving their number chat! They amaze me everyday!

Monday, February 4, 2013

Life Size

During our recent penguin research we discovered that there are 17 different types of penguins existing today! Which is perfect since we have 18 students in our class right now each student (and one pair) got to have their own penguin to measure and draw a life size chalk portrait of their penguin! This way students were able to visualize the actual size of the different types of penguins and gain perspective of just how different they are in size!

Here they are hard at learning :)

We used string to measure the penguin height in inches and then we marked the ends of the string so we could see just how big to draw each penguin.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

My Awesome Media Specialist friend and her bubble gum day!!!!

The Library by the Sea: Bubble Gum Day at OPE: We had a BLAST! Our first author Skype with Ruth Spiro was a huge success, she read a 3rd grade class her book, Lester Fizz, the Bubble Gu...

Monday, January 28, 2013

Science Experiments with Penguins

We have been researching penguins for about a month now and the kids are truly AMAZING me with how interested they are in their new learnings!

Here they are buddied up recording their new learnings on sticky notes!

Jade with her awesome new learning...

We learned that penguins have two layers of feathers to keep them warm. The outside layer of feathers is coated in oil to help keep out the icy cold water! I asked the kiddos to infer what would happen if we mixed the two liquids. They were not expecting the oil to sit on top of the water! We mixed oil and water in a ziploc bag, drew our observations and then shook the bag up to see if that would help the liquids mix!

Logan AMAZED that the oil stayed on top of the water!

Trey and Kyla checking out their bag of coolness!

In their science journals they recorded what they learned about oil and water, and how what they learned today affects penguin survival in Antarctica!

Blubber Gloves

We also learned that penguins have a layer of blubber under their feathers that helps keep them warm while sliding around on the ice!

I filled buckets with ice and a smidge of water for each table. They had one hand in the blubber glove and one hand naked in the ice water! They learned quickly the vitality of blubber in the Antarctic!

The girls wanted to see what would happen to the ice if they burried it in the sand...it melted :)

Next week we will be learning about the Arctic! Stay tuned to see how different The Polar regions are!

Penguins

Our class has been studying Penguins this month! We have had an absolute blast! I started out by introducing the Schema File Folder originally inspired by the fabulous Debbie Miller in her book Teaching with Intentions (This is actually who I have named my blog after). We charted all of our schema about penguins. The kids actually know a lot of facts already! Then we read Penguins by Anne Schrieber together and I modeled how to record a "new learning" on a sticky note. We added these to our mental file folder and our chart! All week long I let the kids buddy up and research penguins on their own! They have blown me away with how well they are staying on task and digging deep without me!

We also read Pierre the Penguin and have been watching the live penguin feedings at African Hall everyday at 1:30 our time! The kids have loved this! It is an excellent resource too because the biologist talks about the penguins as she is feeding them! Click here for the link-> http://www.calacademy.org/webcams/penguins/

In our classroom we have 6 different life size penguins on our wall of Antarctica. Mrs. Davidson came in last week to measure the kids and see how tall they are compared to the largest of the penguins...the Emperor penguin! Most of the kiddos are about the same size!

We learned that the Emperor penguin is about the same size as a 7 year old child...yup!

Here is our class in Antarctica!

Stay tuned for more penguin activities!!