We read How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World.  This book was a great transition from fiction to non-fiction!

In the story, the main character wants to make an apple pie, but the market is closed. She travels the world finding the ingredients to make her pie.We put pictures of the ingredients on the places where she found them in the book, and tracked the main character's journey. We also added a picture of where we live to the map.

Our first narrative writing assessment

Today, the students are writing about Cinderella.  Look below at the rubric we created:

Yes   No	My story has a beginning.
Yes   No	My story has a middle.
Yes   No	My story has an ending.
Yes   No	I have characters in my story.
Yes   No	My story has a setting.
Yes   No	The beginning of my sentences and names have capital letters, and all the other letters are lowercase.
Yes   No	My words have spaces between them.
Yes   No	I have punctuation at the end of all my sentences.

This is the end of our Wizard of Oz/ Fairy tale unit. How sad!!!  I am looking forward to our informational unit about maps, land forms, and water cycles next!

Compare and Contrast

In our fairy tale unit we read Cinderella, and parodies of Cinderella, including Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, and Bubba the Cowboy Prince. Using a Venn Diagram we compared and contrasted each of these books. 

Today we are watching the movie Wizard of Oz. and comparing it to the book! It is VERY different. I can't wait to see what our Venn Diagrams look like!

Take a look at what we have done with our book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz!

After learning about adjectives we made character charts with describing words!

When we worked on sequencing, we put the characters in the order that we met them!

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow the yellow brick road. 

Our yellow brick road helps us line up in a straight line!

What awareness!?!

For all those folks out their wondering what is phonemic awareness and why does my kid need it.....

Phonemic awareness is being able to break words into sounds and use sounds to make words, but only the sound part of it, not the written word... that's phonics

When you hear the word CAT, you hear /c/ /a/ and /t/.... That is phonemic awareness! you are aware of each phoneme (sound)

Check out this ladder... you start at the bottom. The top the ladder continues into phonics.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

We are off to a great start with our friends, Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion. The kids have had a great time learning all about these characters and the settings through out the story! We have made character charts, setting charts, and plot charts. Our first extended text has even helped us learn some grammar skills such as: nouns, verbs, adjectives, similes, and synonyms! We have even begun writing our predictions about the ending of the story! We sure hope all these guys get their wishes from the great and terrible Oz!

Diving Into ELACCGPS

After attending a County wide meeting to learn about ELACCGPS for first grade, we were inspired to begin looking at how a 2 1/2 hour block of ELA time would look in the classroom. We developed a plan, and we are now working to create a unit that we feel would meet the goals of the new standards.

With ELACCGPS, we understand that there should be an extended text used in a read aloud time, and that other texts used withing reading and writing instruction should relate to the extended text. Students should be reading around 50% fiction and 50% non-fiction. This is a change since we have mostly read non-fiction in the past.  It is also important that students are writing with reading. The students should be learning to write and use specific details from the texts to support their writing.

So, instead of having an hour of reading and an hour of writing time separately, we now see one large block of time used to focus on both. Our schedule of this time will be: 10 minute read aloud from the extended text, 30 minutes of  small group instruction, 20 minutes of share time, 30 minutes small group instruction, and 20 minutes of share time. There will be a separate 30 minute block of specific phonics instruction at another time in the day.

Reading is not the only thing that will change through this plan! In math we complete a story problem each day, and it will relate to the extended text. Also, in science and social studies we will use small group instruction and the learning will relate to the extended text also. Many of our non-fiction books used in reading will integrate both science and social studies with reading. We will also use reading during science and social studies. As you can see, all areas support insturction in the other areas.

We are very excited about this plan! Our next posts will detail the "unit" that we have planned and how it will work in the classroom. We would love to hear your thoughts and opinions about how you think this will work. If you have any questions, please ask those also. We are very excited, but we realize that this is not a perfect plan. Your comments and questions will help us to see areas that we can improve. If you would like to join us by following this plan in your classroom, we would love to hear your ideas and how it works for you!