Last Day at Meigs North Elementary

Friday was my last day at Meigs North Elementary. All my little students made me cards and my teacher gave me a bucket full of teaching supplies for the future. This was a wonderful first placement and I will truly miss my first students!

My next placement will be in Budapest, Hungary at Greater Grace International School. I am getting ready to leave on Thursday of this week to travel there!

Class Pictures

A couple of weeks ago we had class pictures. My teacher insisted that I be in their picture. I was hesitant to do so since I was only there for 7 weeks, but I am glad I did now! They had a couple of extra pictures and my teacher gave me one of them. So here is my first class picture:

Hat Day

Last week we had a Hat Day at school to raise money for a charity. The kids loved wearing their hats to school for $1. Some of them had pretty cute hats!

Valentine's Day!

Today was Valentine's Day! We had our party this afternoon. The kids made valentine bags last week and they put each other's valentine's in them. Oh what fun they had! We had ice cream sundaes for snack. The kids put lots of goodies on them. Thankfully it was a beautiful warm day outside and we were able to let them run and play for an hour afterwards. :)

The Promethean Board

Each classroom at this school has a Promethean Board. We use ours quite frequently! The kids love to draw on it and to play games. Recently the teachers were given wands to help their kids reach the top of the boards. The students absolutely loved them and begged me for days to use them. We used them one day to practice recognizing our High Frequency Words for the week. 

Frog and Toad Together: The Garden

Our next story was "Frog and Toad Together: The Garden". The kids loved to yell the line "Now seeds start growing!" all together as we read the story. We made story books showing what happened during the beginning, middle, and end of the story. The top half of their books showed what happened in the story with Frog and Toad. On the bottom half of each page the students showed the stages of seed growth.

The 100th Day of School!!

Friday was the 100th Day of School and since we are in the first grade we get to have fun and celebrate! The kids wrote 100 words, wrote about what they would do with $100, shared their 100 collections, and made a 100 Trail Mix. My cooperating teacher had all her students bring in something for the trail mix. They had 10 different food items and they put 10 pieces of each into a bag which created their 100 piece trail mix. I thought this was a great idea! Here are a few pictures of the kids eating their yummy snacks and a group picture (minus two who were absent) in their 100 day crowns.

Using a Ruler in Math

This week we learned how to use a ruler to draw line segments. To help the students practice this I created a "dot to dot" on Microsoft Word. They had to use their rulers to draw straight lines and connect the dots. Since all my boys love dinosaurs I tried my hand at drawing a T-Rex. They absolutely loved it and thought it was more fun than an actual lesson. They even got to color the dinosaur when they completed.

Reading a Street Map with a Mouse

A lesson this past week was on reading a simple street map. I created a map out of construction paper to lay out on the classroom floor. I put it together complete with local landmarks the kids know and we all gathered on the floor to learn. I recently found the mouse from "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie..." so I used him to help us. We moved him around the map to different locations.

It was a fun activity and the kids especially enjoyed playing with our little mouse friend.

We Love to Read!

This is the first time at school these students have been able to check out books from the school library as they are finally old enough. They have loved finding books on topics that interest them! One day we had a little bit of open time so they all got out their books and read.

Jan's New Home: Plot Review and Theme Discovery

Our story for this past week was "Jan's New Home." To begin the lesson I had the students review what they had previously learned about plot. Instead of writing a lot like last time, we drew pictures to depict the plot.

I created a brochure booklet on Microsoft Publisher to aid in this process. The students were divided into groups again and worked together to draw pictures of Jan's feelings at the beginning, middle, and end of the story.

The next day we talked about a new topic: theme. After discussing as a class what the theme of "Jan's New Home" was I had the students work individually on writing what the theme was on a worksheet I created. This was the reinforce to them the theme of the story and see how they did individually.

As a final activity of the week, I had the students write letters to Jan pretending it was their school Jan was coming to. They did a great job with this activity and it helped move them into a higher level of thinking and interacting with the characters.

Favorite Quotes

I love some of the little things kids say so I thought it was appropriate to create a post of my favorite quotes and add onto it during the semester.

Quotes from Meigs County Elementary:
- "Ms. Elizabeth, today at recess Timothy and me were deer and Matthew and Austin were hunters!"
- Journal prompt: "I wish...." Response: "I wish to go squirrel hunting. I will kill one. I will eat it."
- "You're the best teacher I ever had. I had a good teacher but you're even gooder."
- Journal prompt: "Soon I will...."
   Responses: "Soon I will have a job. I will have a gotee. It will be cool."
                     "Soon I will be Darth Vader."

Fun at School

We have a recycle bin in our room where all the scrap paper goes. The students love to get a piece of paper out of the bin to color on after their seat work has been completed. One day the creativity blossomed and several of the boys made paper masks:

Another day while we were waiting for buses to be called one little boy decided to make a tower as tall as he was. It fell several times but he was determined to succeed. Right before his bus was called he did it! I snapped a picture right before the tower fell.

Adding "-es" and "-s" to Words

We learned when to add an "es" and when to add an "s" to a word to make it plural. To make the lesson a bit more interesting I had each student take an index card with a word on it. I then placed two paper bags across the room from each other. One of the bags had an "-es" on it and the other an "-s". The students had to look at their word and then put it into the correct bag. This was a fun little activity that got them out of their seats and moving. Once everyone had placed theirs into the bag we took them out one by one to check and see if the card was put into the correct bag. (This took the pressure off of getting the answer wrong and everyone knowing you did.)

Groundhog Day

This past Wednesday was Groundhog Day and of course, the first grade celebrated! I found a picture of the groundhog online and showed it to the kids. They loved seeing what a groundhog really looked like. We also find out that he did not see his shadow! Hopefully no more winter for us - it has been a very cold one.

Here are a few pictures of the students working on their groundhog puppets:

Verbs that add -s

Last week our focus in English was on differentiating between verbs that do and do not add "s" on the end. To help the kids learn this I created a little game. Each student had a piece of paper with a word or words written on it. Some of the words were nouns (on yellow paper) and some were verbs (on blue paper).

The students then had to "find their match". The nouns had to find a verb that fit with their noun and vice versa. They had to make sure that the verbs with an "s" on the end were matched with nouns that were singular and the verbs without an "s" were matched with plural nouns. The kids enjoyed this little game and it seemed to help reinforce what we learned.

Story Plot Discovery

During our week reading "Ruby in Her Own Time" I had the students do a group "graffiti" type exercise. They each got a piece of large construction paper with a line to write the title of the story and then three spaces with labels of "Beginning", "Middle", and "End". I divided the class into five groups of three. Each person in the group received a sticky not with a job: "writer", "illustrator", and "speaker". The writer wrote on the poster what the group decided to write, the illustrator drew the pictures on the poster, and the speaker presented it.

This activity went really well! It was the first time I ever did an activity like this with real children (several times I did it as a presentation in a college methods class) and it was the first time these students had ever done it too. They absolutely loved it though! And they picked it up very quickly. We had a bit of a struggle presenting the posters but that is understandable since they have never presented anything to the class before. Overall, this was a success! We hung up the finished products in the hall way.

Here are pictures of the groups hard at work. (We had a couple students in special ed pullouts at the time I took these pictures so that is why some of the groups only show two students working.)

Ruby in Her Own Time: Compound Words

One of the stories we read during Whole Group Reading time was  "Ruby in Her Own Time." Part of the English lesson for this story was learning about compound words. I found a cute idea to use Ruby to help show compound words and then ran with the idea. The end result was this poster:

I glued everything except the eggshells onto the poster before class. Then as a class activity the students found the eggshells of the small words that made up the compound word Ruby was holding. The kids enjoyed it and we hung up the poster in the classroom.

First Placement: Megis North Elementary

My first student-teaching placement is at Meigs North Elementary School about 30 minutes away from Bryan College in Tennessee. I am in a first grade classroom! This is the grade I would love to teach one day so I was thrilled to find out it was my first placement. There are 15 students in the class - 11 boys and 4 girls. They are a wonderful class and I love them dearly!

Reading was the first subject I picked up teaching. Here are some pictures of the small groups for reading.