Stack the States

A big thank you to Floberg Real Estate, MSU Billings, Wells Fargo, Billings Gazette, and AlphaGraphics for this year's Maps for Kids.  Maps for Kids is a program spear headed by Floberg Real Estate.  Every year, they make sure every first grader in Billings is given a United States map and every fourth grader receives a Montana map.  These first graders were so thrilled to get and use their new maps!  In class, we used the maps to help us play a game (app) called Stack the States.  We projected one ipad up on the whiteboard.  The app asks different questions about the United States.

The students used their maps to help them answer the questions.  When the children get the answer correct, they earn that state to "stack."  The object is to stack your states up to the finish line.  You can turn the states to be on the tallest, flattest side.  When you stack your states above the line, you get to move to the next level.  The first graders LOVED the game.  They did a great job reading their maps and working as a team.  Thanks again, "Maps for Kids!"

Reading Rainbow

When class starts with 20 first graders launching an app and singing, "I can go anywhere..." you know you have found a gem!

Growing up, Reading Rainbow was my favorite television show and the app does not disappoint this loyal fan. The Reading Rainbow app is AMAZING! Last year, the primary students at Eagle Cliffs did a "Read-A-Thon." Part of the funds raised were used to purchase a subscription to Reading Rainbow for every kindergarten through second grade classroom. The subscription allows for each student to have access to hundreds of books and videos collected by Reading Rainbow. But you don't have to take my word for it.... watch the trailer below to see what this app has to offer.


I have been using the Reading Rainbow app in my classroom for 3 years now. It was one of the first apps I introduced this year and Reading Rainbow continues to be part of our everyday reading routine. The app is filled with incredible fiction and nonfiction books that are read aloud to the children by terrific, fluent readers. There is also an amazing library of videos that build background knowledge and take the children on interesting virtual field trips. The kids are so engaged in reading anytime they are logged in. Their eyes light up as they "turn" through the pages of the digital books. You can hear giggles as students listen to funny stories and "WOW"s when the students see and hear something interesting. They are recommending books to each other and are proud of the stickers they have collected for reading books in the app. Just yesterday, we used Reading Rainbow for our opening activity. At the end of the 20 minutes of reading, I asked each of the first graders to take a photo of something they read that morning. The children uploaded their screenshots to a Padlet and wrote a quick sentence about their reading.

Created with Padlet

We shared the Padlet in class. Can you guess what the students wanted next? They were begging for more reading time because now they wanted to try the books and videos that their friends recommended! You can get a Reading Rainbow subscription at home for $4.99 per month. Visit their website for more information: https://www.readingrainbow.com/.

More Reading Royalty

Drum roll please......
For the last week in January, we have a Raz Reading King and Queen.  The King and Queen this week are repeat winners!  The king and queen returned their book~a~nights everyday this week and earned minutes toward the crowns.  Further, our Queen read 3 hours and 38 minutes on RazKids.  Our King read whopping 5 hours and 48 minutes.  Congrats!

For January 16th- January 23rd, we had a first time King and Queen.  They were so proud of their hard work!  Great job, readers!

We have our first February crowning on the 6th.  I have added a link to RazKids on the top button bar of the blog.  If you have a home computer, you can use the link to connect you right to the site.  Remember RazKids is also available as an app on the ipad or iphone and can be accessed from an Android device.  I am happy to help in anyway I can!

Studying Snowmen

 

Snowmen here. Snowmen there. Snowmen, snowmen everywhere!  We have been making snowmen, writing about snowmen, reading books and poetry about snowmen, playing math and phonics games with a snowman twist....so fun!  With all this background knowledge about snowmen, it seemed to be the perfect item to use in order to make an analogy to a very important writing standard: adding details to a narrative.

This writers workshop started with a lesson that looked more like art.  We all cut out snowflakes and then put them together into three, big, stacked snowballs.  I announce, "Voila, finished!"  The children wanted to be polite but I was getting some funny looks.  In the most respectful way, they told me we needed to add some details.  Details make everything better!  We worked together to add details like eyes, carrot nose, hat, mouth, scarf, buttons, until.....

Yes, a detailed snowman is so much more interesting.  We were on a roll, so I made the writing analogy.  I wrote a story that was one sentence without detail: "I went sledding."  We compared the writing piece to the plain white snowman without detail.  My writing needed details.  The students knew just what I should add and started telling me the missing details: who were you with, where did you go, what was the weather like, how did you feel....DETAILS!  I improved my writing piece and the students set to work on their own stories.

These 1st grader writers were detail driven.  They wrote pages and pages adding several events and details to their writing.  They were very proud of their hard work.  At the end of writers workshop the students shared their amazing pieces and complimented each other on adding details!

Mitten Weather

  
We are not done with mitten weather yet!  Last week we read one of my favorite books,  The Mitten.  Jan Brett made a beautiful adaptation of the Ukrainian folktale.  The illustrations and work choice are just amazing.  The children loved the book.  When we read the book the second time we really focused on the great verbs that Jan Brett used to describe how the animals move: wriggled, lumbered, snuffling along.  We read several other Jan Brett books this week as well like  Three Polar Bears and The Hat.  She is quickly turning into one of the class's favorite authors.  The Mitten seemed to start a bit of a winter clothing theme, so we did a little mitten science.

Our question was "Are mittens really warm?"  First, the children made a hypothesis.  Then, we set up the experiment.  We had to learn how to read a thermometer.  We read the thermometer at room temperature.  We put the thermometer inside the mitten for two minutes and took the temperature again.  The students used their ipads as accurate timers.  Last, we put our hand in with the mitten for two minutes and took a reading.  The scientist recorded the data and their observations in their science notebooks.  We found that the temperature went up when the thermometer was inside the mitten and it went up even more with a hand inside.  Our conclusion, mittens ARE warm and perfect for January (now February) weather.