Word Building...Using Big Words!

I'm very lucky to work with a plethora of phenomenal women and a man or two!  Earlier this year one of the women on my grade-level used our latest test results to split our students up into tiered groups for our tutoring time...formerly RTI...now MTSS, I think...they sure love switching up those acronyms on us every couple years and I can't figure out if I have a hard time keeping up or I just don't really care about all those shenanigans enough to keep up :).  Getting back to what does matter...students were grouped according to their needs as identified by the test and I got the opportunity to work with the word building group.  I checked Making Words out of our professional library and started putting together word building activities and then created a worksheet as a special activity for Groundhogs Day.  My tutoring students enjoyed it so much that I introduced it to my class.  It was a hit with them as well so I developed a little unit of word building worksheet for every holiday that I could think of that occurs during the school year.

Click here to check this book out on Amazon!

Using big words to build smaller ones is not only a fun activity but this book taught me to extend on that by listing the words we build and then separating them into groups like words that begin with 's' or have 'th'.  These skills are meaningful for children in grades K-3 and beyond!  I just posted the Word Building: School Holidays packet on TpT!  Please stop by and check it out!

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Sometimes I like to test things out before I invest so I wanted to provide you with a Back to School freebie to try out with your students!

Click here to download this freebie!

I hope you find this activity useful in your classrooms, I saw a big improvement in my word building group after doing many similar activities with them last year and I'll definitely be using this with my incoming kiddo's starting this August!

Summer bloggin'

I've logged in to blog three times since summer break started for me last Wednesday but got too carried away reading other peoples blogs to post anything on my own :)  It's nice to not feel rushed to skim through a few blogs before I start working on an impossibly long to do list or rush to or from one place or another.  This is my first real summer off since high school...12 years ago.  Last summer I had knee surgery and half of my summer was a percocet/loratab induced haze then I started physical therapy, which is a painful job in itself, to get up and running before I had 20 first graders up and running around me.  I've been so busy catching up with all the friends I neglected this year working 2 jobs (to pay off that knee surgery!) that I haven't worked on any new materials yet.  I'm hoping to start editing some things I created earlier this year to start posting.  In the mean time I thought I'd tell you about 2 exciting-ish things that have been going on!  My cat Wrigley went missing about 3.5 weeks ago.

This is Wrigley!

Which is definitely not the exciting part, I'm still devastated and miss her dearly.  It's amazing how attached you can become to a pet.  She was a real talker, especially every morning at 5:30 when she woke me up to feed her because she thought she was wasting away...can you believe I actually miss that?!

While I was trolling Craigslist hoping for a glimpse of her on the 'lost and found' page and the 'pets' section I came across ads for our local animal shelter.  Animal Care and Protective Services is an incredible place at the moment they are overrun with kittens and are offering an adoption special...2 kittens spayed/neutered and microchipped for $25.  I went by ACPS to see if they had happened to pick up Wrigley and couldn't walk out alone.  Meet my new buddy Meela!

Getting her 'pin' on :)

Such a lady...

Words can't describe how much I miss Wrigley but this little sweetie definitely brought some joy back into this house and is an awful lot of fun!

Exciting tid-bit #2 is from the parent of a former student!  We became friends on Facebook and I follow her blog http://katiehigg.wordpress.com/ .  A while back she posted about Overnight Oats and I like oatmeal...sometimes.  I've been trying to track my calories and get back in shape so I did a little research and found this site with TONS of recipes http://www.katheats.com/favorite-foods/overnightoats.  I decided to give it a try and of course I got a little ahead of myself and tried the pumpkin pie recipe first, it didn't turn out so well :/  I'm no quitter so last night I tried the basic recipe which looks a little like this...........

........and it is, well, amazing!  You don't have to cook it, just mix the ingredients together, put it in the fridge overnight, and eat it for breakfast the next morning.  I'm pretty excited about it, check it out if you want to try something new, easy, and delicious for breakfast!

I hope you're all having a great summer whether you're working or taking it "easy" (as easy as any teacher can really take it???)  Stay tuned for some word building activities later this week!

Camp Ehlinger

Camp Ehlinger is now in session!  Each year I LOVE to end the year with a couple days of Camping with Books, a thematic unit developed and shared with me by Cheryl Saoud!  It's great because I can tear down my classroom, throw up a tent and put out some camping themed centers and call it a day!  On day 1 we learn about bee's and their impact on our daily life including the pollination of some of our favorite crops.  Day 2 focuses on ladybugs, their life cycle and comparing it to other life cycles we learned about earlier this year.  While my students are working in centers I have a chance to clean my classroom for the summer.  Our centers this year include:

-Book Assembly (a camp journal on day 1 and a lady bug life cycle book on day 2)
-Crossword and coloring
-Reading tent
-Computers (http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/games/all/)
-Math fishing games *day 1-Domino Fishing http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Domino-Fishing
                    *day 2-Fact Family Fishing http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fact-Family-Fishing
-Craft (day 1-binoculars, using toilet paper rolls and day 2-popsicle stick framed pictures)

Reading in the tent!

Inspecting sticks, pine cones, and leaves with a hand lens!

Sporting some insect masks :)

What I Learned in First Grade!

Every year I ask my students to reflect on everything we've done this year and to recall everything we learned together.  This year I developed a little writing activity with a planning sheet and writing papers which I'd love to share with you below!  We started out discussing and listing all the things we did and then they started telling me things they learned to do this year.  I attended a math workshop this year and really beefed up my math instruction so I was really excited that a lot of the things my students called out were math related!  My workshop instructors would be so proud :).  I like to hang these up in the hall all summer and then read them at the beginning of the school year with my new students so they get a little peek at what's in store for them in first grade.

They put check marks over each fact as they use them in their story/report.

Work in progress, I love how she spells echolocation!

Responding to Literature

I'm always amazed at how deeply a first grader can dig into a text to search for meaning and make connections.  My favorite stories to use for responses to literature are Dr. Seuss books.  I'll be honest with you, my favorite books to use for anything......ever....are Dr. Seuss books.  This month our book of the month was The Curious Garden which followed a double month long study of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.  In each story the physical environment changes for the better in one and the worse in another to teach children the importance of taking care of the world around them. My students completed a response to literature, or RTL as I lovingly (lazily) like to refer to them, illustrating the change in the environment when Liam begins taking care of the plants, and they wrote about connections they made to the story or made comparisons to The Lorax.

Before and after RTL's are a fun and different way to get your students thinking about the story they read and comparing the beginning and end to see how characters and environment have changed.  Grab a free copy of my before and after RTL below!

Click on the image to download

If you are interested in checking out The Curious Garden one of my closest personal and work buddies Cheryl Saoud over at Primary Graffiti has created an amazing Literature Unit and Freebie to go along with it!

Click on the image to go to Primary Graffiti

Click on the image to go to Primary Graffiti's TpT store!

Finally, I just wanted to share a little silliness.  One of my students made me a paper watch during "me time" last week.  When I asked him why he made me a watch he said it was because I never know what time it is :)

Walk Like an Egyptian!

 This year our school theme was The Global Manatee Mission.  You'll never guess what our mascot is :)  Each grade level was assigned a continent and the teachers on that grade level got to choose a country to represent.  First grade got Africa and I chose Egypt.  All year we've been learning about life in Egypt, creating artwork, reading books, writing in hieroglyphics, decoding hieroglyphics, and making paper pyramids; ancient Egypt is particularly fascinating to 6 and 7 year olds.  If you have a brainpopjr subscription check this out! http://www.brainpopjr.com/socialstudies/ancienthistory/ancientegypt/.  Last week we had a Global Manatee Fair where classes presented to each other and then Thursday night we invited all the parents in.  Everyone had passports that were stamped in each classroom that they visited.  There were treats, games, and activities going on in each room.  It was a lot of work but it turned out to be very fun and we had hundreds of people show up!  Check out a few pictures below and grab a make your own paper pyramid for your class!

I got this idea for a King Tut Mosaic Collage from : The Art Fairy

 Students have been decoding and writing hieroglyphics all year using the yellow pictures next to each letter on my word wall.  It's been so much fun I might keep this one going.

Word Wall hieroglyphics

For our presentations all the students wanted "Egyptian Eyes", even the boys!  It was awesome :) 

Download your own paper pyramids below!

Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!

Hey everyone!  I will be hosting a teacher appreciation sale on my TpT store from Monday May 7th to Friday May 11th!  You'll receive 20% off all my products until the 11th and you can receive an additional 10% off with the promo code:  TAD12  if you snag something up before May 8th!

I hope you all have a fantastic Teacher Appreciation week, you deserve it!

Check me out at:  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Jessica-Ehlinger