Five for Friday... MLK Jr Style

It's time for...

 

 

This week our focus was Non-Fiction. What a better way to kick off this unit than by learning all about Martin Luther King Jr!

 

This is my favorite topic to teach! I just LOVE teaching my kids about equality!

 



 

We began our week by reading a close reading passage about MLK from TGIF! Thank God it's First Grade and highlighting the words that we had no clue what they meant. We then created a vocabulary chart with these words and defined them.

 

This photo is from Susan's blog (I forgot to take pictures of my student's work).

 

This close reading packet is a FREEBIE on her blog.

 

 

We read several books about Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges.

 

 

Every year I tear up whiling reading A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr.

This year after reading it, one of my little boys said 'Miss Porche that was so sad, I almost started crying. I have tears in my eyes.'

I know...me too!!!

 

 

We created tear art portraits of Martin Luther King Jr.

Happy to announce there were no tears this year!

 

 

They always turn out so funny and cute at the same time!

 

 

We compared/ contrasted the outside and inside of a white and brown egg.

 

 

 

You can find the Are we really different? worksheets in Erin's I Have a Dream! A MLK, Jr Mini Unit {here}.

 

 

What a better way to 'wrap' up our week of learning all about MLK, Jr than with a rap!

 

 

 

 Enjoy you're 3 day weekend everybody!



Jamberry Sightings!!!

Ok all you Bachelor fans...

 

 

Did you see them?

 

 



 

One of the girls was totally sportin' her Jams!

 

How cool is that?

 

But wait...there's more!

 

Bisous Magazine also recently featured Jamberry Lacquer and Nails in their 'What we're crushin' on' article.

 

 

 

I'm totally obsessed with these DIY, budget friendly nail wraps!

 

 Want to try them? Click here and leave a message requesting your FREE sample.

 

Haven't heard of Jamberry? No worries!

Click here to learn all about them.

 

 There's so many colors and styles to choose from.

 

 Be careful...you may become the next Jamberry addict!



What Would You Do?

Ever had one of those moments when you think you are on a hidden TV show?

 

 

 

 

Our speech pathologist had one yesterday!

 

She had walked into the teacher's lounge and a guest teacher was in there.

 

The guest teacher was going through the flatware picking out the sterling silver pieces.

 

She told the speech pathologist that she was glad she was there to witness what she was doing. She proceeded to tell her that her daughter has the exact same set of flatware and it is no longer available, so she was taking OURS but not to worry because she was replacing it.

 

She was replacing it with CHEAP flatware crap!

 

You know the kind that has the plastic handles (no offense to anyone that owns this kind)!

 

The speech pathologist was speechless (Heehee!)

She didn't know what to do! She was in total shock!

 

I can not believe that someone would have the nerve to just take something that was not theirs!

 

If I were the one in there I probably would have just looked at her funny (if you know me, you know what kind of look I'm talkin bout), turned around and went and got the secretary.

 

Then I would have come back and confronted her with the secretary in tow...because I'm tough like that!

 

How DARE you come into our 'home' and take our stuff!

 

What's next? The Crayola crayons? Are those going to be swopped out for RoseArt?

 

Imagine if she was in your classroom and liked something? Would she just swop it out?

 

The Nerve of people!!!

 

She must be Cra-Cra!!!

 

Do you think what she did would be considered stealing?

 

I DO!

 

She didn't ask anyone's permission and she didn't even leave us anything comparable!

 

We are bringing this up in the staff meeting tomorrow. Can't wait to see what the principal's take on it will be!

 

 

 



Tried it Tuesday

 

I haven't actually tried this yet, but decided to try it starting today so it counts right?

 

I spent the day at a math cadre meeting.

 

We were given the opportunity to look at CCSS progression documents.

 

If you haven't seen these, you are missing out!

 

You can take a look at them here.

 

These documents lay out the natural order that each standard should be taught for student understanding.

 

One of the other 1st grade teachers and I looked at the progression document for NBT and aligned it with our current math curriculum.

 

In doing this we discovered that there is A LOT in our current GVC that we DO NOT need to teach!

 

We took everything out that was not in the progression document and created a document with the lessons we will teach, in the order we will teach them, using our current math curriculum.

 

By doing this we will be jumping from ch 8 to the 13, back to 8, then back to 13. Of course we will need to supplement to meet all of the standards in this domain.

 

Our current curriculum is not very logical in it's layout and doesn't do a very nice job of covering one concept before moving on to the next.

 

There are only 14 lessons that we will be teaching starting now until March! We will be able to spend 2 or 3 days on each lesson before moving on!

 

It makes so much more sense to teach this way, building upon skills and spending much needed time going deeper within each standard!

 

Hopefully their understanding of the NBT CCSS will be more rigorous.

 

I am so excited to give this a try and wanted to share it with you all!  

Oh, My. Word.



Wait! Stop!

 

You're in the right place!

 

My blog has had a makeover!

 

But I didn't know it needed one until I logged on yesterday.

 

You see, Lee Lou's free blog designs had been removed...in Nov! WHAT!?!?

 

I thought something looked funny in my previous posts but just brushed it off.

 

Did a little investigating last night and found out there was a reason it looked funny.

 

PLEASE DON'T JUDGE!!!

 

Sometimes I wonder about myself too!

 

I'm using another free design from Blogger. Not sure I'm ready to make the money commitment for my blog design yet. I kinda like this one. What do you think?

 

I'm going to marinate with this one for a while and see what happens. Maybe it will disappear too and I won't notice for a couple months?!?

 

Let's hope not!

 

I'm off to work on a new signature and button. Stay tuned...