Why Use Twitter?

Recently I asked some teachers at my school if they tweet. They looked at me in disbelief. I knew the answer would be no. I geared up to make a case for the use of Twitter in education:

1. Student Voice
What is more powerful than making students feel like the work they do is important- and worth tweeting to the world? 

2. Parent Communication
Do parents know what happens everyday in your classroom? Many parents love to see what their students are doing and especially to see pictures of their child in the classroom!

3. School Community
It is amazing benefit to see what other teachers are doing in their classrooms. We can share what we do and in return get new ideas, inspiration, and community!

4. Lifelong Learning
Twitter has a wealth of individuals and chats posting the latest books, blogs, podcasts, conferences, and more. There is always something new to learn!

10 Things I LOVE About Elephant and Piggie Books by Mo Willems

1. Kids Love Them! These books are so much fun to read! I had my entire class of 1st graders hooked on reading with these books. They enjoyed hearing the stories, talking about what was happening and the characters, and always wanted to have them in their book boxes.
2. Morals These books have great messages inside about friendship! Elephant and Piggie are best friends, and they learn a lot about what it means to be a good friend in these books! These stories are great conversation starters.
3. Readability Not only are the themes appropriate for primary students, the words are also appropriate for 1st graders to be reading! These books have a lot of sight words, and each page has a small amount of text. All of the text is written in speech bubbles which makes it easy to know who is talking and fun to see the conversation. So much of the story is told in the pictures!
4. The Illustrations! The illustrations in these books are priceless! They capture the story line as well as the emotions of the characters. Kids can know the whole story without reading a word, which helps build confidence when they are reading. It is also a great mentor text for adding details to pictures (action lines, speech bubbles, facial expressions and more)
5. Emotions The characters feel real emotions. You can see it on their faces as well as in what they say. It helps students be empathetic and understand how certain actions make the characters feel. 
6. Punctuation These books are filled with questions marks and exclamation marks. Students can practice their fluency by appropriately saying what is in the speech bubbles. With a little instruction, they will adjust their intonation to accurately say how it is written in the text.
7. Font This book also has a variety of all capitals text, small text, and big text. They could not believe that I raised my voice so high, but once they understood that the book indicates to say it loudly with all capitals, then they love to copy. They are generally good at pretend screaming in a 6 inch voice.
8. Partner Reading These books are great for reading with friends. The different colored speech bubbles practically make it reader's theater. Each student can choose a character and they can act out the dialogue with expression. I got my cousin hooked on these books and now he won't stop asking to read them- "Do you want to be Elephant or Piggie?"
9. Metacognition Although these books can be read by 1st graders, there is also a lot of thinking to do! "Uh oh, where do you think he's going?" "What will he do?" "Why do you think he is sad?" "Look at her face, do you think she liked that? What is she thinking?"
10. Story Structure These books also uphold great story structure. There is always a beginning, a middle, and an end. You can find cause and effect, problem and solution, somebody wanted but so, and all the elements to a story.

Enjoy!

Math Fact Fluency Games

Math Magician 

Alien Addition 

Sum Sense 

Math Baseball 

Puppy Puzzle

Word Tiles Game for Fluency

Yesterday I introduced a new game to my class using buckets of word tiles (Tub O' Words from Lakeshore- you could also write the words on paper, beads, etc).

I cannot believe how much my students love this game! And moreso, how much they say the words and talk about phonics when playing!

"Aw you got their- that was my word!"

"Look- you have was and saw- that's backwards."

"cute fat cat" making phrases out of the words or reading all of the tiles they have. 

The tiles have a mix of sight words, short vowels and long vowels. It is great practice for students who are still working on identifying long vowels. Ex: if a student got cute but said cut, I could say, "well, there's an 'e' on the end so it's....." and the student would say "cute!"

Check out the video to learn how to play!


Basics:
1. If you say the word correctly, you keep the word
2. If you get an underlined word, put all of your tiles back *Forgot to mention that I also swapped an orange for a green in each bin- if you get that tile it means that you get an extra turn. You could also circle the word to indicate that you get to go again.

Practice: Adding Tens

This video shows a fun way to practice adding tens using playing cards. I use this game as a math center, or also as a task students can do when they finish early.

The video highlights three strategies to solve to find the sum:
1) Skip Counting by 10's 
2) Adding On with 10's 
3) Using Ones to add 10's

This game is closely related to Tens War. To play Tens War, each partner needs a stack of cards. Simultaneously, the two partners draw 2 cards. Each student determines the sum of her cards. Whoever has the higher sum gets to keep all 4 cards. 

The Best Part of Me Project

My first graders worked extremely hard on these poems based on the beloved book, The Best Part of Me: Children Talk About their Bodies in Pictures and in Words by Wendy Ewald. I want to share the process that helped students create such masterpieces.

First, I read two poems to the students, stopping each time to ask what they liked about the poem. After the third poem, I got out some paper to start recording what we liked. I knew that we would use this later for inspiration. I read a total of about five during this session. 

The next day I worked with half the class at a time. I reviewed the chart then read two more poems to the students, again asking them what they liked about each poem. Next, I told the students that it was their turn to write their own 'Best Part of Me' poem. 

Once students had chosen what they intended to write about, I handed out the graphic organizers (click here). I helped the students fill in the bubbles by going through each technique on the list one at a time. Ex: I asked the students if the body part that they had chosen reminded them of anyone in their family.

Later that day, I returned the graphic organizers to students whole class and explained how to transform the bubbles into sentences that would form a poem. I worked with a small group who needed extra help.

The next day I had students copy their poems onto 8x10 papers- encouraging them to write with a margin by drawing a pencil line for them to always start writing at. Last, they traced over their letters with sharpies. I later erased pencil marks and mounted each child's photograph and poem together.

This was a long process, and it was well worth the time and energy!

Rolling for Tens and Ones

We play this game during math centers or when children finish their work early. It reviews place value of tens and ones. Students roll the dice, draw or model the sum of the tens and ones, and write out two number sentences to show the process.

Number Pieces is available as an app or click here to go to the website.

Have Fun!