"We Love First Grade!"

Ok, so this was (I thought) a pretty simple beginning of the year iPad activity using the app "Paint Sparkle".  Each student created one letter (or heart and exclamation point) for the statement "WE LOVE FIRST GRADE!"  (with 2 hearts in front of and behind the word LOVE).  The students were excellent with their creativity!  But little did I know how hard it would be to take one picture of the final product!   To have them all sit still, holding their iPad creations (without one of them blacking out & going to rest...) and no glare from overhead lights, or someone sneezing, or a bug crawling across the floor, etc. etc. !!  This is the best I could do after the students did so well!  The bloopers are saved for another time!  We really do LOVE FIRST GRADE!



This week was full of practicing learning rotations of our "Daily 5" time. Daily 5 is a system when students will be working on literacy skills independently when I begin to work with small reading groups (after DRA2 Reading Assessments).  It takes quite a bit of modeling, training and practicing  to become a successful independent worker - but these kids can do it!  Here are a few pictures of the hard workers:

Learning how to help each other as we play a punctuation game. (The white spot on bottom left is a corner of a student desk.)

"Reading to Self" is a way we build "stamina" and become better readers!

Listening to stories on our new MacBook Airs! 
 

Back-to-the-Future:  Teaching kids how to use an old-timey (gasp!) cassette player!!  Books on tape never get old!

Playing a rhyming game with classmates.

 



It was a very good week!