Open House and Our Ocean Research Center

At my school Open House is a HUGE deal! Teachers and students go all out and completely transform their classrooms to celebrate the hard work and fun we have had all year long. In first grade we transformed our classroom into an Ocean Research Center. We have spent weeks learning all about the ocean and many ocean animals. We used our new knowledge and integrated art and writing in a variety of engaging projects. Check out our magical ocean wonderland below!

We called our room "Ocean Research Center" because we have spent weeks learning as much as we could about sea life. The children felt like research scientists and took our study very seriously!

This picture shows many of our "Have, Can, Are" charts. These charts are perfect for organizing information learned. The students can use the information to write informational pieces. The whale wonderings chart is another chart that helped us with our ocean research. At the beginning of our whale research, I asked each child to ask a question about whales that they would like answered during our study. We then read books, watched videos, and researched information on the internet. As we found answers to our questions, we recorded them on our whale chart. 

 This cute little crab project was inspired by this post. The students loved creating these little cuties out of actual shells.

We learned about sea turtles and created these adorable 3-dimensional sea turtles for our classroom. We also created divers, complete with student pictures attached.

After our study on whales the students created a diagram of a humpback whale. 

These cute little clownfish were a favorite project for my students. They were so interested in the little fish that are immune to sea anemone stings! We decided to hang the fish from the ceiling to complete the "Under the Sea" feel.

These pop-up aquariums were fun for the students to complete.

We couldn't leave all of the ocean fun to just informational stories. Our class read Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle and created these cute watercolor seahorses to celebrate the sweet story. We then compared the fictional elements with the events that occurred and compared them to the factual information we learned about seahorses.

Clownfish and Jellyfish

We have also completed a variety of writing pieces to go with our ocean study. Here is an example of a "How to Draw Ocean Animals" page my students completed. These activities have been great writing centers for my students. It not only teaches them how to draw the animal, but it provides them an opportunity to write about what they have learned. Each ocean animal comes with a fact page, word bank, and two versions of the draw and write page. Check them out here!

Check out the How to Draw  Humpback Whales Freebie here!

We had so much fun with our study and it made for a magical experience. It will be difficult to take down the ocean wonderland, but I know my students are excited to take their projects home to recreate the ocean in their own rooms! 

Happy Teaching!

Frog and Toad Opinion Writing and Art Project

Today I want to share a cute project that my class completed to celebrate Frog and Toad. My students LOVE the Frog and Toad stories and as you can see in this post, we learned so much about the central message by reading the adventures of these characters.

I wanted to showcase our knowledge of these characters in an exciting way, so I had my students write an opinion piece on their favorite character. I had them choose their favorite character and tell me the reasons they liked this character the best. I think there are definite "Frog people" and "Toad people". "Frog people" usually love his kindness and enjoy his great advice. "Toad people" think his stubborn ways are hilarious and enjoy his silly antics. It was interesting to see which students chose Frog and which students chose Toad. Some of my students really surprised me with their choices!

We then created scenes from the stories we read and I taught the students how to draw both Frog and Toad and a few scenes from the various books. The students outlined their characters and scenes with black marker. Then they used watercolor pencil to color in the scenes. The watercolor allows 6 and 7 year-old fingers to get the pigment right where it needs to be. Then I had them use a small brush and water to make the paint blend nicely. We then used a pop-up method to help our characters pop out of their scene.

My students LOVED this project and it is one I will use year after year. Frog and Toad are classic characters and they are perfect for a first grade study of characters and central message!

If you want to check out my Frog and Toad Together Unit click here or check out this post!

Happy Teaching!!

Frog and Toad and Teaching Central Message

As I was looking for a way to teach the concept of the central message of a story, I stumbled upon some of my favorite books… Frog and Toad! I realized I had just found the perfect fiction books to help my students understand the concept. The children LOVE the characters of Frog and Toad. The students practically roll around on the carpet with laughter as I read them. After the reading, I had students think about the central message of the chapter read. I was amazed at the deep thinking of the students. In many cases, they came up with more advanced central messages than I expected! Check out our chart below! We are also in the process of creating Frog and Toad art and writing and I can't wait to share them soon.

We also compared Frog and Toad and brainstormed words to describe them. Check out the chart below. The students had so much fun with this chart. We will use it for our opinion writing coming up soon!

We have been doing an informational study with frogs and toads as well. We will compare the characters to real frogs and toads when we have completed our study. Check out the information unit here!

If you want to check out my Frog and Toad Together Unit, click here or check out this post!

Happy teaching!

Frogs and Toads Informational Unit

I am so excited to share an engaging unit my class has been immersed with the past week. Frogs and toads are the perfect subject matter to engage first graders and incorporate important informational learning. We have used the informational coloring book to learn facts about frogs and toads. We have compared frogs and toads with a venn diagram and have used the cut and paste life cycles and diagrams to check comprehension from information learned from the book. Of course there must be an art portion of the unit and the students had a wonderful time creating their cut and paste frogs. Check out the unit below! You can get it here!

Check out the Frog Art Here. It is also found in the Frogs and Toads Unit.

We have enjoyed writing about frogs and toads while comparing and contrasting facts learned. This unit has been a perfect accompaniment for our fiction Frog and Toad study using the wonderful works from Arnold Lobel… more on that soon!

Happy Teaching!

Valentine's Day Fun!

Yesterday my class had a fun Valentine's Day celebration. I always love it when Valentine's Day (or party day) is right before a weekend! It always seems like the most high energy day of the year!

It is tradition at my school to have the students create Valentine's Day mailboxes for their valentines. The boxes are completed at home with family members. When my students brought in their boxes I was amazed with their creativity! Check some of the boxes out below!

Weren't they adorable?!

We also did some fun sight word Valentine's Day activities! Check them out here!

We had a great day, but I sure am happy to have the weekend!
Happy Valentine's Day!

Penguin Anchor Chart

Happy February! Wow! I can't believe that January is already over. This has been a whirlwind start to 2015. During the winter months I love to teach informational reading and writing through polar animals (as you can tell from my last few posts!). After studying polar bears for a few weeks, we have switched it up and started our Antarctic penguin unit. Today I wanted to share an informational penguin chart that my students and I created together. I used their  ideas from reading informational text to complete the chart as a class. The "Have, Can, Are" chart style is great for teaching informational writing. It is a great scaffold to assist the students with the informational style.

This chart has been an excellent resource for my students when writing about penguins. When we have completed the unit I will share some samples of the activities. If you are interested in the unit, check it out here.

Happy Teaching!

How to Draw Polar Animals- Writing Center

I am very excited to share a fun writing center that I have come up with. My students have been transitioning from narrative to explanatory/informative writing and I wanted to continue this during my centers time. Writing centers have traditionally been very open to student choice of topic in my classroom. For this new center, I wanted to provide my students with enough support to be able to write an explanatory piece independently.

To keep the students engaged and hook them into this style of writing, I decided to use the wintery theme of polar animals as a subject for the center. Each week I introduce a new polar animal and provide my students with a word bank and basic facts about the animal. The students then have some information to use when creating their own sentences. These resources are displayed for them at the writing center.

The students learn how to draw the animal using the steps on the page. They practice following the illustrated steps, and read the sentences to help them with their drawing.

Then the students write about the animal using the resources and knowledge they have gained. We talk a lot about not copying from the fact page, and instead using the word bank to help create sentences of their own. The writing center has been so engaging and my students have created quality informational writing using it. You can get it here!

Here are some examples from the writing center:

I have some fun art projects to implement once the students learn about the various polar animals. Check out our cute walrus project!

Check out the Arctic Fox and Antarctic Penguin  art projects!

Happy Teaching!!