Spelling Scramble

Ms. Karr helped me with a new activity this week to help students learn their spelling words, it's called Spelling Scramble. All the spelling words are written on a piece of paper and given to the students. Each word is outlined with a box. All our words this week have a long a, one of them is face. You have the children find the word face and color it red (or whatever color you'd like). You continue this with all the words until every word is colored a different color. After all the words are cut out, assign each student a partner. With their partner students are to cut the letters of the word called out by the teacher and scramble it up. They then trade placesm unscramble the word, spell it as a class, and glue it onto a sheet of paper. This process is continued until all the words are unscrambled. Unfortunatly this week, we did not get to unscramble all the words because it was our first time so it took a while to get into the groove, however, it was still really fun for the students. They really enjoyed playing spelling scramble and wanted to do it again next week. We have an uneven number of students so one student got to play with Ms. Karr. He had a blast trying to "trick" her. He was spelling the words backwards and watching to see if she could fingure it out. I really like this activity, and so did the children. This is one activity I plan to keep in my mind and use in my own classroom. I love how engaged the students were and how much fun they were having. This is a great lesson to show that the novice teach is a facilitator for all learners because students are up moving around (kinesthetic), the words are color coded(Visual), and they are spelling them out loud(Audio.) Thanks Ms. Karr for the great idea!

I'm On My Way...

I believe it was Paul Simon who wrote the lyrics "I'm on my way, I don't know where I'm going." As we finish up this week, I realize that starting next week I'll have taken over every subject except math. So, I am well on my way to full time teaching. However, I am unsure of what to expect in the weeks ahead. These are the same thoughts I had the very first week, and every week thereafter. I have made it this far, I've had my good days (like when Germaine finially started to understand that the vowel sound in CVC words is in the middle), and I have definitely had my bad days (like when Michael threw up all over the place while Mrs. Karr was taking a note to the office----By the way, I handled that suprisingly well!)
Action Research is well on its way too. When I interview Hayden tomorrow I will have completed my first round of student interviews and so far, I have not seen any sign of the students using quick images, or start with/get to to help them answer number sentences. But they are using the dot configirations to represent numbers!
Yesterday was a difficult day for me. Ms. Karr was working on the 5 year plan so I had a substitute. I have nothing against substitutes, however, the never act as good when a substitute is here as when Ms. Karr is here. The sub kept telling me not to worry about it because this is a tough group, but I frustrates me because I know this group of children can behave and act appropriatly when they want to be. That just never happens to be when there is a sub here.
One last thing before I sign out-- the incident of the skanky sock must be shared! Just before we were about to play tap and clap with our spelling words today, just after we came back in from the bathroom, there appeared a dirty smelly sock underneath Damarian's desk. I would have never noticed had Thomas not raised his hand to ask me, "Where did that sock come from under his desk?" Ask he points to Damarian. I asked Damarian if the sock was his and it didn't surprise me when he said no. I thought to myself, dumb question Ms. Burns, what kid in their right mind would claim this nasty thing. So I did what any 'good teacher' would do. I picked it up and threw it in the trash can. Problem solved! Not another word was spoken about it. Needless to say, there is a kid running around this school somewhere with a skanky, unmated sock!

First Graders Make Me Smile

This morning after we read this weeks story, we were using the sequence cards to retell the story before we took our story test. I said, "Boys and girls I want you to turn to the next page and look at the pictures at the bottom." There was about a 3 second pause before a little voice at the back of the room said, "Whelp, I looked at 'em Ms. Burns." She did what she was told, she looked at them and she was done. I laughed to myself and said, "Great Lilly! Then can you tell me what the picture says happened first? What did the fox and her kit do."


Another funny one! I have a little boy who has problems with pronouncing ch, instead he pronounces them sh. I borrowed his chair to have something to sit on during carpet time. Afterwards, all the students went back to their seats, except for Micheal. He stand there and says to me. "Ms. Burns (he also has trouble with his r's) I need my "shair"" Me, not having any idea what he is talking about replies, "you're share of what honey? I don't know what you are talking about." He points to his chair, which I am still sitting in, and says with more much more force..."No, my shair!" AHHHHHH-HAAAAA......You're chair! :-)

Action Research Begins...

With much help from Ms. Karr and Sarah Steel I finally did get my action research woes figured out. I begin implemting all three of my daily routines this week, as well as my first timed test. Another form of data I figured I could use for my action research is recording what the students say are way to make 30 (or whatever the date is) Today is the 30th so we talked about what we knew about 30, including but not limited to ways to make and write the number. Everyday this week, except Tuesday because it was a planning day, I wrote down what the students told me on a poster and copy it onto my data collection form. I was very surprised today during this part of our daily routine. It started when we were writing 30 tally marks since today is the 30th. We counted by fives up to thirty, I asked the students how many sets of 5 we have, and I wrote 5x6=30 and explained that 6 sets of 5 equals 30. I acted surprised that they just did 2nd grade math and moved on to even or odd. When we got to the "Ways to Make" part of the routine, Tre raised his hand first thing and kept it up until I called on him. When I finally called on him and asked "Tre, what do you know about 30?" He replied, it's five times six. I was very proud of him, because most of the students were saying number sentences like 28+2 and25+5. It goes back to the chapter of Sharon's book that I read about transfer of learning. I experienced it for the first time since my full time student teaching!
Another boy asked why we only have 28 days of school when today is the 30th. I just said, "I wonder" and let him figure it out himself. He finally raised his hand and said, "I know, it's because we only count the days of school when we are in school, but we still count the date even if we aren't." Despite the fact that I had a hard time keeping them from chatting to each other this morning, it was still a good morning message!

This weeks funny story brought to you by...

This weeks funny story brought to you by....

Ms. Karr's first grade students at Watson Elementary.

While introducing our oral vocabulary words for the week, which were tool, service, and career. Ms. Karr read and sang the song "Pet Service" Which is sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle and goes a little something like this: Pam's tool are a brush and comb and scissors and shampoo. Take your pets to Pam and she will clean them up for you.... You get the point. Afterward, Ms. Karr was asking the students if they knew what career Pam has. One little girl raised her hand and said, "Vegetarian?" to which Ms. Karr graciously replied smiling, "No, she's not a vegetarian." The next hand that went up, replied, "She means veterinarian." Ms. Karr says, "No, Pam is not a doctor she just helps people keep their pets clean. I like to take my dog there because she always smells good afterward." The last hand to go up says with confidence, "I know, she's a peterinarian!" It was all I could do, not to to crack up laughing! They sure do have some creative minds.

~Action Research Update~

I'm lost! I cannot find any literature, I cannot think of a way to word my question so that it makes sense, and I'm not 100% sure how I am going to collect data. Observational data is difficult to analyze! Our research briefs are due next week and I have to get it figured out before then. I did ask Ms. Karr if the math series Investigations has any research based information in any of their manuals since I am hopefully doing something about how daily routines in investigations affect students' computational skills!

A few lessons were learned after todays grammar lesson!

This week I taught spelling and grammar for the first time. In spelling we are working words with short i, like six, and in grammar we are learning about the naming parts of sentences. Yesterday we went "fishing" for sentences. The students actually got to go fishing, and each fish had picture of people doing different things. The students were supposed to say a sentence about that picture and share with the rest of the class what the naming part of their sentence is. They were having a blast with this and in no time they were spouting off the naming parts of sentences. So, I challenged them a little and had them say a sentence for me to write on the board and they had to underline the naming part of the sentence. This made them have to recognize what the word looked like instead of just saying it.--a little higher level thinking! I was happy with how this lesson went, but the grammar lesson I did today didn't go as smoothly. The lesson was an activity sheet where the students got to choose a naming part to complete the sentence. For example, ________ is my favorite color, ________ is my favorite day of the week, etc. They were to write their favorite color on the line because that is the naming part of the sentence. Most of the class got frustrated because they didn't know how to spell their favorite color or their favorite day of the week and they gave up. One little boy refused to sound out Sunday, when I wouldn't spell it for him and he almost started to cry. I don't think they got anything out of it, because they were too worried about writing the right word. They didn't finish the worksheet because it was lunchtime. I wish I would have planned something a little different because I feel like the fill in the blank grammar activity sheet was a waste of time.