I'm Back!!!!!

Wow! I was a terrible blogger last year. Actually it was one of those years. If you are a teacher, you know what I mean. I am going to give this blogging things another go so stay tuned!

The "Beginning of School" Crud

If you have ever taught, then you know about the "beginning of school" crud. It creeps up on you slowly. You start to lose your voice a little. Your nose gets stuffy. Your ears feel stopped up. You think, "this happens every year and it will go away." So, you continue on your non-stop quest to fill your students with knowledge. Then, BAM, it hits you. You can't breath through your nose. Your ears are clogged. Your head hurts. Your eyes hurt. So you take your Saturday to visit urgent care and two shots and three prescriptions later you are at Walmart doing your Saturday thing. When you get home, you crash. You don't leave the house Sunday and by Monday you realize just how bad you did feel because you are feeling so much better.

Yep, that was me last week and this weekend. Hence, no blogging. I would like to think that my many followers have been disappointed. But, I would need some followers for that to even begin to be true. Right now my "following" meter shows a big, fat zero. Patience grasshopper…….

I did spend my time at home working on some new items for my Teachers Pay Teachers store and hope to get those posted in a couple of days. Click the link to the right to check out my store.

Roll, Say, Keep

I love Roll, Say, Keep for sight word practice. 

I found this game several years ago on Kathy Gursky's The School Bell: http://www.theschoolbell.com/Links/Dolch/Directions/rollkeep.html.

She uses the Dolch word list, but I made a list using the sight words in our district's adopted curriculum, McGraw-Hill Wonders for First Grade. 

Friday I gave each of my students a game board, the kindergarten review words and the unit one words to take home for practice. I let them cut the words out at school and play a round or two when they finished. They loved it! My plan is for them to use these at home to practice sight word fluency. As we finish other units, I will send those words home for practice.

A Little Begging

Before I close this post, I need to do a little begging. Back in the summer I posted a project on DonorsChoose.org for individual listening stations. My project expires on October 11th and it hasn't been funded yet. If you, or someone you know, would like to support education, please check out my page. Every little bit helps. 

http://www.donorschoose.org/oakley

Until next time,

Robin

Friday….Ahhhhh

This will be a quick Friday post. 

We watched James and the Giant Peach. As expected, there were some differences in the movie. I would have loved to have seen the Cloud Men, but they added some skeletons instead. Hmmmm….I wonder if that has anything to do with the director.?.? (Tim Burton, lol) My firsties did observe some things that were the same, so I look forward to our discussion next week. When Aunt Sponge came on the screen, one friend commented, "She is fatter than I visualized." Bless him, because she wasn't as fat as I visualized. #perspective

Writing

We do a good bit of writing in my class. I always tell my students: If you can say it, you can write it. If you can write it, you can read it. I believe that learning to read and write are connected and am always amazed at the progress that is made through the year.

Below are a few beginning of the year writing samples.

This is a morning work activity that I made to
go along with our McGraw-Hill reading series.
 If you LOVE it, visit my TPT store.
 I will be adding some more soon that will not have the sentence at the top. 

Writing about friends.
"What Friends Do Together" was our Big Idea this week.

This journal entry was directly related to James and the Giant Peach scene
about the Cloud-Men and the rainbow. Cool!

All levels of writing are accepted. In the few weeks of school,
this friend has advanced from letter strings to a
transitional stage of beginning sounds, some middle and
ending sounds, some sight words and spaces between "words".

You will be amazed with what you see at the end of the year, so stay tuned! And don't forget to comment, even just to say HI!

Robin

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Robin-Oakley

A Peach of a Comprehension Skill

Our first comprehension skill this year has been visualization. Good readers use the text and illustrations in a story to make pictures in their mind. This can help them understand what is happening in a story.

I chose James and the Giant Peach by Ronald Dahl for our first read-aloud. Oh, my! If you have never read this book, I recommend it. It is full of imagery. Read it, even if you aren't in first grade. No one will know…….  This is a fabulous book to use to practice visualization. As I read the story, I would occasionally stop and think aloud, "Can't you just see that?" and then I would describe what I saw. I was modeling the skill for them.

My class LOVED it! With 15 boys and 7 girls, there aren't many times during the day when everyone is still and engaged. But this story had them enthralled. I read two chapters a day and every time they would ask, "Mrs. Oakley, why do you always stop at the good part?" Bless them.

From the beginning I told them that we would read the book and when we were done, we would watch the movie. I told them we would compare and contrast the two. Hooray!!!! Today was the day we finished the book and tomorrow we will watch the movie! We, umm, they are soooo excited.

Before we watched the movie, however, I wanted to see what they had visualized. So, today they drew pictures of scenes from the book. Below you will see a few of the masterpieces. (All of them were masterpieces, but I can't post 22 pictures on here.)

In this picture you can see the the part where the peach
 is growing bigger and hanging down from the tree.
Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker are selling tickets
to people who want to see the peach.

You can see the peach on the Empire State Building here.
Notice the smaller buildings to show the size of the
Empire State Building.

This one shows the peach over the ocean. The brown dots with
lines down to the peach are the seagulls caught with the
silk threads as they lift the peach up and fly away with it.
This sweetie told me he made the seagulls brown dots
to show them far off. Genius!

This friend divided his paper and drew four scenes.
The left top is the peach growing bigger. See the green sparkle
 things in the soil? The right top is the peach landing
on the Empire State Building. Lower left is the part where the
Cloud Men attack the peach. Lower right is the peach in
the ocean being attacked by sharks. Wow!

Look at the details on the characters in this one. Love it!

I love the fins in this one showing the peach in the 
ocean being attacked by sharks.

They definitely  "saw" this book. And I did not show them one picture!

Well, that was a short, but sweet, post. If you find yourself reading this, please post a comment and let me know you are out there!

Robin

One of those days!

Today was picture day. Anyone who has worked in a school knows that picture day is crazy! Add to that Activity Day and Ice Cream Day and you have one wild and crazy day! 

What is Activity Day, you ask? I am glad you did. Activity day is the day every week that we have our specials. We have library, music, counseling, and computer lab. What day is it?  What day is it?  Hump Day! 

My grade level decided that since Activity Day is already wild, we would let that be the day students could purchase ice cream at lunch. So, add Picture Day to the mix and you have one wacky day!

We did get in some great practice on finding key details in a story. As a matter fact, during small group reading, one of my friends was reading alone and I heard him whispering "key details", "key details". So great! I would say that lesson was a success!

Current Classroom Pictures

If you caught yesterday's post, you know I promised pictures of my classroom this year. The first two pictures show my "Class Around the Corner." 

A bulb is out in our little entry, but it isn't as dark as it seems in this picture.

View coming down the hall from the front entrance. Take a right before you hit the wall. lol

Word Wall and Book Bins

Writing Area 

Jobs

Jobs and Behavior Clip Chart

Reading Area

Computers

Listening Area

Math Materials

Math Tubs

Rocky, our Class Pet Rock
Great idea from Carolinateach.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Carolinateach

Our Apple Quilt from Kaye Espinosa's THE QUILT BOOK .

http://www.tlclessons.com/ 

Enough of the classroom pictures! Check back tomorrow for a new post.

Robin

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Robin-Oakley

The Beginning of a Journey

This is the beginning of a new journey. I love to travel, and I will spend this year traveling, via a blog, through first grade. Just as my firsties are learning many new things, I too, will be learning -- I will be learning the art of blogging. 


Every journey has a starting point. Today is the starting point for Class Around the Corner. Where this journey will lead, I do not know. Only time will tell.

Let me begin by explaining how my blog got its name…Class Around the Corner. 

First, when I moved to first grade a year ago after teaching kindergarten for nine years, I moved to a room that is literally "around the corner." Note to self: remember to take a picture and post it. 

Second, and this may seem strange, but my husband LOVES the movie You've Got Mail. Why, you ask, would a deer hunting, turkey shooting, eighth son out of nine sons, father of three boys, work-out/exercise fanatic, Men's Ministry Minister love a chick flick? The answer to that is unknown even to him. Every time he is caught watching it he will ask, "Why do I like that movie so much?" Folks, mine is not to question but just to enjoy. So, in honor of my man, I tipped my hat to The Shop Around the Corner. 

I like it. And when I told him the name, he grinned. I think he likes it, too.

CLASSROOM PICTURES

I love to look at pictures of other teacher's classrooms. I am the queen of "borrowing" a good idea. Below you will see some pictures from my classroom last year. This is my second year in the room, and I have moved things around a bit. Be watching for those pictures to come soon.

From the door looking into the room.

From the back of the room looking toward the door.

My table area and bookshelves.

Another view of my area including my small group table.

Daily Data borad and calendar.

Promethean Board

Word Wall

Click on the link below to see my Teacher's Pay Teachers Store. Tomorrow, September 25th, my entire store is 15% off. If you use McGraw-Hill Wonders, you will want to check it out!

My TPT Store

Until next time,

Robin