This weeks has been such a fun and  busy week!  I am joining Kasey at Doodle Bugs Teaching with Five For Friday!


Ten Apples Up on Top by Dr. Seuss is the book I selected to decorate my door.  I started with Cat in the Hat, but wanted to tie in my apple theme:)


Barb Drake is another teacher on my team who has a fish theme to she chose One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish for her door this week.  So cute!


And last but not least, my teaching buddy Stephanie Burnett is a Dr. Seuss fanatic.  She ran with it and has this adorable Lorax door and entryway!



Our school had guest readers in every classroom today and our  classroom reader ended up being a grandmother of one of my students.  What a sweet memory to have gramdma read to your class!  The kids loved listening to The Lorax  as many had seen the movie.  I was surprised at how many kids have NOT heard the book!  I can't wait to jump into some Dr. Seuss projects next week.

Monday Morning Blues?  Well, have I got a surprise for you! Teachers Pay Teachers has announced that they are 3,000,000 teachers strong!  Isn't that AMAZING? 

To CELEBRATE, some of my blogging friends and I have put together a little Facebook Hop as our way of giving back to you and sharing what you can find over at TpT!

Starting at 6:00am central, this HOP goes LIVE!  So click on the button below and hop on over to my Facebook page to see what's cooking!

I hope you are all enjoying your Presidents Day.  I have family in town this week so we are heading down to Disney to spend the day at the pool with our Rhode Island cousins!  They are so excited to be out of the snow and cold...

I have to say I have been a wee bit envious of all the snow days everywhere, but I don't miss the snow and cold.  This winter here in Florida has been too cold for this girl whose blood has THINNED!  So we are excited we are finally climbing back in the 80's this week!  Now I remember why I moved to Florida 20 years ago! (OK- that and I met dear hubby:)

Happy Presidents Day!

Wow!  We made it through a Friday with a full moon AND Valentine's Day!  Let's just say it was tiring.  The best was when a firstie asked if my present to them could be no spelling test!  Good try:)





A tried and true Valentine favorite is candy heart graphs.  The kids {heart} this activity and a little graphing review is always a welcomed treat (especially when it involves food)!

Opinion writing 101 is a recap of our opinion writing journey through the past month.  I decided to nix our reading series writing lessons for the month and really focus on opinion writing for the ENTIRE month! 

This is not to say that I, or even my class, has mastered opinion writing.  We are FAR from that!  However, by building daily on our craft, I  have seen more growth than I saw the entire first semester!

This intentional deviation from our reading series started while we were working on the Common Core Standard:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.1.1 Write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure.

At that point in time, we were engaged in a Jan Brett author study.  Ahhh, this was the perfect time to jump into opinion writing and have the students give their opinion on a Jan Brett book!  WRONG!!!! After a few lessons and lots of modeling, I sent them on their way.  What I saw was LOTS of story RETELLING.

Wait! Stop! Backup! My first graders couldn't tell me a reason for their opinion.  We had worked so hard on narrative stories and retellings, they couldn't quite transition to UNDERSTANDING how to backup their opinion.

So out of necessity, we backed up and worked on giving our opinions about a particular topic.  This seemed a little easier and with lots of modeling and this very ugly not so pretty chart, we were on our way!


I promise a new chart is in the making, but my kids just needed to have a visual with a suggested way to get started! 

My go to unit was Common Core Aligned:  Winter Writing Prompts and Pages.  You can check out Lindsay's blog post about it over at A Year of Many Firsts.  Our favorite prompt at the writing center included "Do you think children should be able to wear pajamas to school?".  Her journal prompt cards are ADORABLE and my kids ate them up!

Another favorite go to is Writing Rubrics Megapack for the primary grades. You can check out more over at Sarah's First grade Snippets.

We celebrated 100 Days of School on Monday and the kids had a ball.  More importantly was the enthusiasm that spread through the room through reading, mash and even writing!




The kids were given a letter and a Zip-lock attached last Thursday asking them to find a collection of 100 things that would fit in a sandwich bag over the weekend.  We had pennies, Legos, hair bands, toys, garden rocks, baseball cards, and colored rubber bands. We sorted in piles of 10.  A few cuties came up short and were reminded to go back to recount!  All was fine as each collection had 100.

We then used the collections today to introduce non-standard measurement and talked about how all the objects had to be the same size and shape.


The highlight of the day was the AMAZING "When I am 100" projects.  The students wrote funny stories and created my favorite Deanna Jump 100 day art portraits.  I know it is hard to read, but this little sweetie wrote that she will be wearing dentures and living at an old folks home!  Too funny:)


As the 100th day came to a close, I have to say that it makes me a little sad that this year is more than half way over.  I LOVE my class this year and am so proud of their growth.