WHooooo's Been Busy in First Grade and a freebie!

We have been busy in first grade finishing up our Nocturnal Animal Unit while beginning our Circle Story Unit and squeezing some Native Americans and Pilgrims in when we get the chance.  I don't know about you, but I am ready for some Thanksgiving Break.  Time to relax and get my shopping on!

Anyway, I wanted to share with you the owl anchor chart we used.  I got the general idea for the anchor chart over at The First Grade Parade.  Cara made the cutest bat with her kiddos and I adapted it for our owl discussion.  You can find her chart here.

This is how our owl turned out.  Note that some of us had more schema coming in than others.  One of my little girls was so proud to tell me that "Owls can't cook!  It true!"  :-)   I just LOVE first grade!  Well after reading Owls by Gail Gibbons, we know everything there is to know about owls.  You can find the packet we used to accompany the book below.

 When we were finished with our owl, the class wanted to make little mice running away from the owl before he made them dinner!  While we were busy learning about owls in our reading classes, our art teacher was teaching the first graders about warm and cool colors and making beautiful owls to add to our hallway display.  They turned out so cool!  Don't you love them!

Circle stories were introduced this week with If you Give a Dog a Donut.  We retold the story in words and then we illustrated what happened and labeled our donut with the pictures to show us that a circle story never ends.  They loved it! (I got this idea from a colleague who made a very neat retelling cookie for her mouse!)  We then got to do Erin's  packet and they got to get into the cause and effect reading skills in other Laura Numeroff books. 

Erin's packet can be found here.

And now the freebie. This is a math freebie we used this week to review related addition and subtraction.  It really was telling when I corrected them.  This a great way to determine who really has a solid grasp on the related facts and who doesn't.  Enjoy!
 

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We have linked up with Manic Monday at classroom freebie this week. Don't forget to check all the other great ideas linked up here! Have a great week!

Circle Stories and a freebie

This one is going to be short and sweet.  We have been trying to get report cards ready and share all of our information for conferences so we are on brain overload.  Our first graders change classes for both Language Arts and Math so there is a lot of coordinating that has to take place before the student's reading teacher can meet with parents for conferences.

We are also introducing a new LA curriculum in our district that is theme based.  We love all of the great books we can pull into our instruction and our students are just loving it!  Our new unit "circle stories" is starting this week and even with all of the chaos, we are having some fun making some new retelling/comprehension packets for our students.  We are also trying to make some cute centers to reinforce the phonics we are working on.  Well we started where you would expect with Laura Numeroff and Erin has made this great packet to get us started and focused on the theme.

You can click either picture to get this packet.  Aren't the graphics from mycutegraphics.com adorable!  I used them to make this freebie compound word center too.  Look for more LA centers with Laura Numeroff's wonderful characters to come.

click here to get your freebie!

We hope you all have a great week!  Don't forget to head to Manic Monday at Classroom Freebies for more terrific freebies.  And please follow our blog if you like what you see!