Happy Halloween eve Week!

I'm so excited! This is the week of Halloween! I love it! I have said it many a time but I really do! I am so glad to have my own class this week as I get to enjoy this time with them. We have our field trip to the Pumpkin Patch tomorrow and then the rest of the week is dedicated to the holiday I love! 

This week, our focus skill is retelling (RL 1.2 Retell stories including key details, and demonstrate understanding of the central message)!  Retelling is one of those hit or miss skills for first graders. Sometimes they can tell you the beginning or the end of the story and completely miss the middle; some could tell bits and pieces but not with sequential flow; and some will just stare at you as if you have 2 heads!! 

I usually start out with posting some anchor charts for this skill: Here are some I found! I tried to link you back to the original author but sometimes on Pinterest, it is hard to follow that trail. If I make a mistake and that anchor chart is yours, please let me know so I can give you proper credit for your hard work! 

From Jen Jones at Hello Literacy

These next two resources are from First Grade WOW! And that blog is a really WOW site! Please click on the bottom picture to take you to Nancy's post about re-telling ropes! 

(Click on pic to take you to post on how to make one!)

In our county, we do have a curriculum that does guide our instruction. We have a basal reader that I use but the majority of my lessons come from trade books and I intermingle the theme and focus skill into my lessons every week. I feel very fortunate to do that as I know some counties are more strict that others. 

This week, I will be using:

and 

Two of my all time favourite books! 

The re-telling writing that my kiddos will be doing this week is a re-telling flip book:

Just something cute I whipped up to help them retell and even sequence the events in the story. If you'd like to use this in your class, click on the picture of "The Little Old Lady Who was Not Afraid of Anything" book above to grab yours! It is a lot of cutting and the making the flip book can be cumbersome, but I think it's a great tool for them to remember how to retell. The only thing is that I doubled up on the "gloves and hat" on one page as those events happened together. You could choose to separate it and if you did, you'd have more pages. Also, I wouldn't normally use coloured paper but it was a visual to show the different steps in the book. It's your class, your book-- you decide!

As for Room on My Broom, I will be using Life in First Grade's Book Companion Pack! It is so cute!                      

                                                                             

                                      

There is a great re-telling craftivity in there that we will be using this week as well! Click on the link to take you to her store!

I am also excited to finally be doing my Pumpkin Investigations this week. The pumpkin patch we go to always gives our class a pumpkin so I wait until this week to do it. I can't wait to discover pumpkins with my class! I will be using the anchor charts and student book from my pack:

It is student friendly and the kids love it! It includes topics such as estimation, weight, height, circumference, and counting as well as sink and float! You can still pick it up! I will be putting it on sale this week along with my other Halloween units so grab it! Again, click on the pic! 

Wow! That's a lot so to leave you with some love, I have a new freebie that I posted just in time for this week:

A great little activity to remind our littles to be safe and to come back to us tired as all tired on Friday!!! LOL! Not so much!  You know what to do to grab it! Click the picture! 

And... I just finished up my turkey pack! I must say I am pretty proud of it!

 I will be starting my unit on turkeys after this week. I am giving away 2 copies. Just go onto my  FB page, leave me your e-mail, and tell me what your favourite part of Thanksgiving dinner is. I will pick 2 entries Monday night! Click my button to direct you to my FB page. 

Take care and have a great week! 

Batty for Halloween... And the Winners are.....

Congratulations! Please check your e-mails for your goodies! Thanks to all who played! We had so much getting to know your favourite candies and best Halloween costumes!! 

If you'd like to purchase our batty units, please click on the pictures to take you to our packs!

Click this pic for Leslie's pack

Click for Tamara's pack

Mid-Week Update!

It's Hump- Day!!! Just imagine the camel walking thru my classroom making such a ruckus!! LOL! We have been so very busy (as I am sure you all have been!). We just finished our 1st grading period and it was report card crunch time. I had to hurry and get last minute grades into our online grading system. Do you all have that? I have a love/hate relationship with it. It's nice because it calculates your grades for you BUT like all computer systems it gets glitchy! I'd love to know how you all keep track of your grades and how are you required to enter grades (formatives/summatives, how many of each, weights, do you do a total points system or do you have standards based grading?? I am sure I could open up a big can-o-worms with this one!) So, yeah... that kept my panties in a bunch last week. 

This week we worked on some fun and cute projects. I finally got my "The Biggest Pumpkin Ever" bulletin board up! Too cute!

We started by reading the story and then brainstormed ways to grow the biggest pumpkin ever.

My sweet friend and room mom, Shawna, did this for me! She had it perfectly set up for me and I was a dolt and didn't realize that she put the numbers ON THE BACK-- I had them write on the back! So she improvised my dumb mistake. I think it came out beautifully and I am eternally grateful for her!!!

And to keep my biggest pumpkin ever, my bloggy friend, Laura from Peace, Love, and First Grade had this adorable craft idea for a Jack-o-Lantern lantern! It is the cutest! Click on her name to get the directions on how to make this festive craft!

We also finished up our studies on nocturnal animals. We made our Owls in the moon and dissected our owl pellets. The looks on their faces were priceless when they saw and heard what they were but once they started digging in, they were totally engaged and in love! They couldn't wait to get home and share their bone findings with their families!

If you'd like to learn more about owl pellets, click on the pic above to see where I got them! 

Too cool! I love doing this project with them.

We are learning about Pumpkins this week to celebrate our field trip to the Pumpkin Patch next week. I plan on using my 

next week when we start my pumpkin math and science unit. It is always so much fun! If you downloaded it already, please go back and re-download it-- I added a circumference page to it! Just click on the picture to grab it at my store! 

We are also working on digraphs this week /sh/ and /th/ and I know that they will need extra practice with it, so I created a fun, pumpkin themed phonics game for this week to help them practice

If your kids like pick up sticks then they will LOVE this game. I just wrote /sh/ and /th/ words on Popsicle sticks and they had to drop them down and sort them for /sh/ or /th/ at the beginning or end of a word. 

Click on the graphic above to grab your FREEBIE today! 

And that's not all! I just couldn't let the creativity stop there! I guess I am just not a fan of phonics practice where you have to rainbow write words/write them 3 times each, bubble write your words-- sometimes those are great but it's fun to play a game and learn, too! I like to create phonics games for them and I was so tickled when my brain concocted this one:

The kids all flocked to this center! They were like ants all over my room looking and reading for clues:

I haven't quite polished it up yet-- I just had it classroom ready but as soon as its ready I will post it up! So as you can see, we have been pretty busy! We are working on Key Ideas as well in reading. I always theme my week and tie in the Common Core standard for the week. If you are working on Key Ideas, please check out my Key Ideas Pumpkins freebie as well (click on the pic)! It has helped my guided reading groups tremendously this week. 

Hope you all have a great rest of the week! Don't forget about the giveaway that ends Friday!! Click here to enter!

Love to you all!