Students as Teachers

I am super pumped in today's post where I get to share a little bit of what my awesome students do during Math.

These last 2 weeks have been completely crazy between Valentine's, Mardi Gras celebration, and Snow Days.

Here are my sweeties at our Valentine's special snack. They made precious
kitty Valentine bags for friends to give them Valentines.

I had my students write 3+ things that they love
about First Grade and school. They all went
"EWWW!!"when they finally saw what I put
about the heart of hearts. :)

One of my amazing parents helped make this door. The kids
held one of their favorite books as I took their pictures. All
of the teachers loved the Mardi Gras pun. ;)

I bought masks, feathers, and glitter glue at the Dollar Tree and let the students
make their own Mardi Gras masks. I think they turned out pretty cute!

No, we can't do a class photo without doing a silly pose. It's just not possible.

So as you can see, our last 2 weeks have been *eventful* to say the least! We tried our best to squeeze in any ounce of learning whenever we could. The past week, we had a wonderful Math lesson. Let me start out by saying I LOVE mini white boards. I use them in centers and in small group. I am trying harder to work them in my Reading and Math lessons, but sometimes I forget (getting old!). Thank goodness I remembered them for our Math lesson this week because it was a toughy and their worksheets didn't give them any room to work. Students had to add 2-digit numbers to multiples of ten (i.e. 47 + 20, 50 + 21, 36 + 60, etc.) Students used the white boards to draw out their work to help them find the answers. Below are some examples of their work.

As you can see, each student had a different style of working them out. Some worked one at a time while others split up the board to make room for everything. My favorite thing (and I think the kids love it also) about Math is I will go over an example or 2 and we work through 2-3 together. I give the students 1-2 problems to do on their own. I walk around, and if they get them right, they get a sticker. (Stickers are huge motivations in my class. If you don't believe me, I will have to show you their name tags where they put all their stickers to "show them off".) Those who get the problems wrong usually meet me at my small group table to work together until they can complete a problem independently. Sometimes, however, I let students who earn stickers go help another student who is struggling. I don't do this too much because many times they will just give each other answers, but I had 2 students who did an awesome job working together. Here is just a small clip of what I was able to catch on my phone.

Students Helping Students on TeacherTube

This really makes me a happy teacher!! I can't wait to show it to my other students on Monday so they can see what it looks like to help other students without giving them the answers. By the way, the student that was helping said that he understands why I sometimes get stressed when they don't listen now (LOL!!).

Dirty Things in First

I have always wanted to be a teacher blogger. I have just never had time nor felt creative enough. I am in the middle of planning for a wedding and working on my first year in 1st grade after moving down from 5th grade. So, I have decided to do a blog showing how I use other teachers' awesome creations to help promote them and to show how a different class uses them.

Last Friday, things got a little dirty in 1st grade.

Students were able to play with dirt and explore
it in so many ways.

They loved breaking up the clumps of dirt and using magnifying
glasses to get a better look. I bought the magnifying glasses for $1 at
the Dollar General.

This is probably one of the most engaging activities we have done in
Science as you can tell from all of the pictures.

Don't they look like cute little Scientists looking at the dirt with
magnifying glasses, observing what they see, using their senses to
describe it, and having collaborative conversations with each other?

Honestly, I think my girls were more into it than my boys!

This picture captured the activity wonderfully! Each child is engaged in some way. Most are feeling of the dirt to feel its coolness and consistency.

We concluded our Science Experiment by eating dirt pudding.

Their personalities really shine when it comes to getting gross!

Some were a little weary of it really being dirt, but it was just a chocolate pudding cup with crushed oreos on top completed with a sour gummy worm. I really wanted plain gummy worms, but the Dollar Tree was out of them.

This is definitely something I will do again next year as long ad I am teaching a K-2 grade.

We have Science books that we "use" at school, but I mainly use it as a guideline. Sometimes we pull it out when we talk about Nonfiction books or to introduce topics, but I use it only as a resource. We are moving into Landforms & Soil, so I went on Pinterest to do a little research for something fun to do. My kids LOVE Science! Unfortunately, we only get to do it 1-2 days a week for about 30 minutes. I try to splurge on my time a little bit on Fridays or if we finish Math early. :)

I started finding bits and pieces of things that I wanted to do until I stumbled upon Nancy Vandenberge and her awesome first grade resources! We used her We Dig Dirt Unit to help us in our 1-day mini activity. I was going to have the student collect their own dirt, but it was a cold January day and it was a little mucky as it rained the day before. I went ahead and got the dirt in  ziplock bags for each group. I put a paper plate in the middle of each group and dumped the dirt out. The kids were fabulous about not touching the dirt until all materials were on their desk, and we had a minimal amount of mess to clean up afterwards. I gave each student an observation worksheet where they colored what they saw on one side and wrote about it on the other. I also gave each group a magnifying glass to look at the dirt.

Without prompting them, the kids started saying things like "This dirt is cold!" and "This clump has a lot of rocks in it!" After we had our fill of touching the dirt and looking at it closely (and even smelling it for some of my lovelies), we washed our dirty hands and began to color what we saw. I told them to use those awesome descriptions they were saying when they touched it to use on their writing.

After we cleaned off our desks, we enjoyed the rest of the afternoon eating a special dirt pudding snack. All of the special snacks for 15 students cost me less than $10, and I got everything from the Dollar Tree (aka Teacher's Paradise). :)