Saturday, October 29, 2011

Halloween + Punctuation

Last week my language lessons were supposed to focus on using exclamation points. So I grabbed this favorite story and we searched for exclamations.
The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything
I love this book so much because the kids really get into the sounds and motions that are repeated throughout. After I read the story I put the book under my document camera and we looked for punctuation marks. Then we used this foldable to write three sentences from the story, one for each type of punctuation mark. And then we glued these in our writing notebooks to keep as a reference. Click the picture to get a copy of the foldable.

(the kids drew each type of punctuation mark in the ovals)

Monday, October 10, 2011

Dem Bones

We're studying the human body starting this week and as I was searching the internet for ideas I found this awesome site. She's posted the cutest Dem Bones video from youtube, I love it and it's stuck in my head now!
Spell Out Loud





Here's the youtube video.


Monday, October 3, 2011

Tracking Math Progress

In my district we're given numerous forms for tracking reading progress for each child throughout the year. Sometimes it feels like we have way too much paperwork, but I love to look at one sheet of paper and see "at a glance" how a student has progressed during the year. And it's easy to show parents the growth their child has made or the growth they need to make!
I'm not teaching reading this year and as the first quarter is drawing to a close (at the end of the week, eek!) I realized I needed an easy way to track my kid's progress in math. We don't give traditional grades, instead we grade based on the mastery of standards and we use a rubric to assign a "performance level" instgead of a grade. So I made this form that includes all the major math standards we assess in first grade. I think it will help me keep track of their progress and I plan on giving parents a copy of this at our conferences (which start tomorrow and I'm procrastinating getting conference forms typed out right now) and then as I fill it out each quarter I'll include a copy with their reports cards. There will be many blank spaces this quarter since I certainly haven't explicitly taught or assessed many of these skills yet!
Click the image for a download if you think you could use this form too.