Veterans Day Part Deux

Yesterday we did something pretty cool in my class that I wanted to share!

Over the weekend, when I was looking for Veterans Day activities, I came across the Teachers' Guide made by the VA. It seemed pretty typical and nothing crazy awesome until I came across the coloring page about the Women Air Service Pilots (WASP). This excited me a lot because over the summer, I read an amazing book - Flygirl by Sherri Smith.

Do you know about WASP? Women were trained to help test planes and get male soldiers ready for combat in WWII. I thought this was amazing, and also sad because I never even knew about this until the summer. This book was a fictional book, but it was based on the real experiences of women in WASP.

Of course, I'm not going to read this Young Adult book to my first and second graders, so I looked around for an age-appropriate book about WASP. Sadly, there aren't a lot of choices... BUT I found one!

This book, as you can see, is the true story of one of the two Asian American women who were in WASP. It was an inspiring and uplifting story and I think it sent a good message - that people should never give up on their dreams.

To honor Veterans Day, and to respond to our read-aloud, I wanted my students to write letters to Maggie Gee, because I found out that she was still alive! However, I couldn't find an address for Maggie. So, I went out on a limb, found Marissa Moss's email, and asked her if she'd be willing to give me the address to send our letters to Maggie.

And she wrote me back!!!!! Super quickly!! She said that Maggie would love to get our letters and that she still goes out and talks to schools about her awesome life.

So, we read the book, the students LOVED it, and we got set writing our letters! They worked so hard. I told them they had to use their very best handwriting since Maggie is almost 90 and if they have sloppy handwriting, she definitely will not read their letters!

Today I mailed them off!

I'm hoping that Maggie will write back to us, but I will understand if she is too busy or not into it. :)

So, in conclusion, the kids loved having a real veteran to write to who had a sweet life story. It was authentic writing for a real purpose! And Marissa Moss is the bomb dot com! I definitely recommend her book if it's not too late to add in a bit more to your Veterans Day unit.

PS: Happy 11-11-11!!

Getting Ready for Veterans Day

I was pumped to start my Communities unit in Social Studies this week, but then I noticed that Veterans Day was approaching! So I'll hold off for a bit.

Yesterday we watched our Scholastic News video a hundred times and read through the issue. Once again, it was a good one. I can't say enough how much I love Scholastic News! I just wish they could make some kind of 1/2 split issue just for me..... because the reading level is way above my first graders, but the questions they ask are way below my second graders. Sigh. Still love it.

Today we made the little soldiers from Deanna Jump's Veterans Day Math and Literacy Activities pack. I bought this pack just for the soldier directions because I thought they were SO CUTE. It was a directed art lesson. My kids are incredibly chatty and can be difficult to reign in to give directions, but they were amazing during this activity. I think they were shocked that a little stack of rectangles could be made into something real. Here was the one I made along with them, so, the sample! {We made sure to make some female soldiers... even though I doubt they wear their hair down...haha!}

And here is our little display outside our classroom.

I don't have any bulletin boards outside my classroom so I just masking-tape stuff up on the wall...... The yellow stars I sent home yesterday for my kids to write names of veterans in their families so we can connect what we're learning to home! And, of course, to honor our veterans.

I am super excited about our Veterans Day activity for tomorrow! So check back for that. :)

And a little something extra - today was one of my first grader's birthdays, and they are ALL obsessed with Angry Birds. Some don't even know what Angry Birds are but they still love them, haha! Anyway, my first grader brought Angry Birds cupcakes today and they were cute!

And one last thing! I did the primary spelling inventory for Words Their Way yesterday and the results were amazing to me!! I mean, most of them weren't a surprise but I was kind of surprised at how incredibly high some of my second graders are. I would not have put them into the groups that the assessment indicated, so I'm glad that I did it! I'll start spelling groups next week after I have a chance to figure out what I'm doing! Lots of exclamation points!!

November Currently

I haven't linked up with Farley at Oh' Boy 4th Grade for this Currently linky party since August!

 Here's what I'm doing currently...

We had a short week this week but it sure felt long since the kids were CRAZY! The day after Halloween was nuts, plus we had Mass since it was All Saints' Day. Wednesday and Thursday we had half days and then conferences, and the second the kids got to school, they were ready to go home. Plus, on Wednesday we normally have technology in the morning and music in the afternoon, but they rescheduled music to the morning, so I hardly got anything done on Wednesday between the two specials and morning recess!!

In other news, we have been getting lots of postcards from our awesome Postcard Exchange! I'll have to take pictures of the ones we've gotten. Our favorites so far are California and Hawaii - because when you live in flat land Illinois, those places are exotic. :)

This weekend I've been perusing Words Their Way.

Could this be the answer to my frustrations?? Do you use Words Their Way? I think I'm going to do the primary spelling inventory on Monday and use the data to make little groups. If you have any words of wisdom, I would LOVE anything you have to share!

Party Time!

As I said on Facebook earlier today - I've never had a wedding, but I imagine that this Halloween party was pretty close. By that I mean that I planned forever for it, I hardly ate anything, and it went by in a flash!!

Today was my first ever Halloween classroom party. The only time I've been in the classroom for Halloween was 3 years ago during a clinical in college, so it was a whole new world for me today! I wasn't sure how much room parent help I'd have, so I planned everything but the craft.

I ended up having two parent helpers and one grandparent helper (two of which I wasn't expecting) and so everything was incredibly under control.

We did four stations. The first one was my room parent's craft that she thought of and brought everything in for (yay!). The kids decorated oranges like pumpkins with frosting. They also put a green pipe cleaner in the top to be the stem. They loved it! And tomorrow when the frosting has dried, we will have a delicious treat!

The second station was pumpkin playdough! My kids LOVE playdough, as you may remember from the first day of school, so I thought they'd like this. I got the idea for the pumpkin version from this post at Frogs, Bees, and Under the Seas. The kids loved that it smelled like pumpkin. And they were SO EXCITED when I said that they could take home their playdough balls.

The third station was the Tricks and Treats game I got from Mrs. Bainbridge. This was another hit! One of my room parents ran this game so I did not see firsthand how well it worked but when I came around to tell everyone to switch stations, everyone leaving that station was beaming. I think it was the candy. :)

And last, we did the Jumping Like a Spider activity from The Wise and Witty Teacher. We weren't able to get through all of it (because the other stations went so fast thanks to my awesome helpers) but I think it was good for the kids to get up and jump around for a while! I found out that I have some future Olympic long jumpers in my room!!

And let me tell you about the food situation. My one room mom had been talking to me and she said that she was going to bring mostly healthy food and one treat. I said, "Great!" It was surprising to me when, this morning, I had THREE students bring in cupcakes. Three!!!!!! Way too many cupcakes, people!!! Luckily, my room mom brought tons of good food to make up for it (I hope). I just wanted to eat the whole table!!

And how about that steamy punch??? That was definitely a highlight. Yay room moms!!

One last picture - we have a set of three siblings at school, and one's in my room. They all brought super cute and creative cupcakes. Here is my student's cupcakes!

I wish I could show you all the cute costumes! I had a few Batwomen, police officers, and butterflies. I also had an AWESOME Cleopatra, complete with heavy makeup! Loved it.

So I survived my first party! And I'll definitely do party stations like that again in the future. :) How was your Halloween?

What I'm Loving Wednesday

I have been way too tired to blog lately! Hopefully I can come back with this edition of WILW.

I'm loving that my class does funny stuff that makes me laugh all day long. They are a handful, I can't lie about that, and I need to beef up my classroom management, but they make every day manageable with the funny things they say and do,

I'm loving something specific that happened yesterday. We have a milk break in the morning every day, and so I have my daily chocolate milk (which really gets me through the morning sometimes) at 9:30. Yesterday I didn't finish my carton and apparently I set it on the corner of my desk. At the end of the day, some of the kids told me that there was milk in our Rubbermaid milk carton holder. I was like, "Who didn't finish their milk??? Milk break was like 5 hours ago!!" Then they said it was mine. ....................... Oops. But one of my very sweet girls ran the carton holder to the bathroom, scrubbed it out, and dried it for me! That really made my day because I didn't even ask her!

I'm loving that I spent time after school with my next-door neighbor classroom friend!! We had a lot of fun!

I'm loving the mummy activity I borrowed from Jenn at Finally in First. We read Where's My Mummy?, which the kids LOVED. They were beside themselves that the baby mummy was afraid of a mouse and not all of the other scary things in the forest.

Afterwards, we did the same activity that Jenn posted about. I didn't have manila paper, but I went to a going-out-of-business sale yesterday and got some textured linen colored paper that worked great!

I'm loving the traceable letters that I borrowed from the upper grade teachers!! It wasn't really that fun to cut out the letters but they look so nice!

I'm loving that my family went down to Purdue this weekend to see my brother and to watch the homecoming football game against U of I! I love my broski and it was a fun weekend.

I'm loving the pumpkin life cycle activity that I read about at Fabulous in First. Instead of making the little pocket, we made life cycle necklaces. Even my boys LOVED them. The printable life cycle was really cute.

I'm loving my ESL class this semester. My teacher is awesome! Last week, we learned about TPR in an amazing way. My teacher speaks Japanese, so she taught us a Japanese lesson using TPR so we could see how it felt to be language learners and to see if the strategy really worked. Also, my teacher teaches a 1/2 split class right now, just like me!

What I'm not loving is that I have homework for my class...... and report cards are due this week..... and conferences are next week.... and I haven't decided 100% on a costume for Halloween for my class!!!!

Oh wells. I'll make it work. :)

We Love Text Spelling

I need to take a break from checking two weeks' worth of first and second grade math papers... so I will share something fun that we did this week to practice our spelling words!

First, if you haven't heard of Teacher Tipster, you seriously are missing out. I probably could watch his videos all day... here is a little sample for you!

This week, I tried out my first Teacher Tipster tip! I saw this on someone's blog (I can't remember whose!!) and followed it back to the Printables section of the Teacher Tipster website. I printed out his Blackberry-like templates for the kids to practice their spelling words. I have a very chatty and noisy class, but you would have been amazed at the focus they had during Text Spelling this week.

If I could get them to be that engaged all day, I would just hug myself. Oh also in this picture, you can see one friend who had his phone taken away because he was whining that he didn't get the color he wanted. We don't whine in first and second grade. :)

I'm going to add this to the Word Work station of Daily Five, if I ever get around to introducing it... I really fell off the Daily Five train. Maybe I can get myself back on again!

You Can't Say You Can't Play

We are having an issue in first and second grades.

Maybe not a major issue, but in my brain, and in the brains of my kiddos, it is pretty significant.

At least once a day, and I'm lucky if it's less than five times a day, one of my students comes up to me and says, "___________ says he's/she's not my friend." You can fill in the blank with pretty much any student, because none of them have been uninvolved in these situations. Mostly this happens after morning recess and lunch recess. And I am just at the end of my rope because I don't know what to do, other than pulling kids aside and saying, "Do you see how this person feels? Will you please play with this person outside next time?" It obviously is not working, as this continues and I continue to get more and more frustrated.

So, I decided to do a bit of reading, and over the weekend I read this little book, You Can't Say You Can't Play by Vivian Gussin Paley.

Have you read this, or heard about it? Vivian Gussin Paley was a Kindergarten teacher in the University of Chicago lab school when she wrote this book in the early 90s. She saw what I see - kids getting rejected by other kids during play time. After an incredibly long process, which she detailed heavily in the book, she and her students created the You Can't Say You Can't Play rule. It's pretty self-explanatory - if a kid asks you if he can play with you, you have to say yes.

I'm thinking this might be something that I should try out in my room because we are having some overactive tear ducts (and I feel like I'll be one of those criers soon). Do you have a policy like this in your school or classroom? What are your thoughts?