This week I introduced 2 more puppets to my class, Capital Cam and Punctuation Patty.

Capital Cam and Punctuation Patty generally come out together and give out double cheek kisses during writing if students remember to use a capital letter to start their sentences and punctuation to end their sentences. Both puppets came in a set of 8, buy yours here.

Capital Cam - On Thursday Capital Cam came to our English class (a 50 minute period, once a day), and taught my students all about CAPITAL LETTERS and when to use them. After the students met Capital Cam, they practiced using capital letters in the 4 main ways that Capital Cam introduced to them. While the students are writing, Capital Cam loves to circulate and give out high 5's and kisses to all the students that are using capital letters properly. Capital Cam arrived last year in Grade 1 and has made his permanent home here. I absolutely love using him to reinforce the proper use of capital letters during writing time. I would have had liked to make a new anchor chart for him this year, but our large flip chart paper is an extremely precious resource as it is ordered from Lakeshore Learning and shipping costs are high. So in the name of conservation I just went over everything again with markers as the hot Taiwan sun had faded it pretty bad.

Teaching with Puppets - Capital Cam reinforces the proper use of capital letters during writing. Just noticed that one of my students photo bombed my pic haha. 

Punctuation Patty - On Friday, Capital Cam's girlfriend, Punctuation Patty, moved into our classroom and taught the students all about punctuation! The students then practiced writing sentences and questions using periods, question marks and exclamation marks. Punctuation Patty then made her rounds and gave out kisses and high 5's to everyone that used punctuation properly. Capital Cam and Punctuation Patty generally come out together and give out double cheek kisses during writing if students remember to use a capital letter to start their sentences and a period to end their sentences. Using puppets to reinforce punctuation and capital letters is one of my favourite tools that I use in my classroom. Students begin to immediately self-correct their writing as soon as they see my little puppet friends come out! I might use another precious piece of imported flip chart paper to make her a new anchor chart as I would like to add '"commas" to the list of punctuation. Or I might make a 2nd anchor chart to introduce further punctuation for my students that are ready to use more in their writing. As of now, periods, question marks and exclamation marks are enough to learn to use properly for my little EAL monkeys!

Teaching with Puppets - Punctuation Patty reinforces the use of proper punctuation during writing. 

Math Stations!

Ariel and I try to integrate Math as much as possible with our current Unit of Inquiry. We create Math Investigation booklets as well as bilingual work booklets. As our UOI is all about organization, we have been tuning into how numbers help keep us organized. We spent the first few weeks pre-assessing and reviewing and have now started some of our Math Stations. The Primary Department just purchased buckets of coloured manipulatives and I was lucky enough to be the first to snag them (they haven't even been officially checked into the library, shhhh!), and created some quick math stations to reinforce skip counting and sorting.  My little monkeys are LOVING the stations and the manipulatives are just so cute! Manipulatives are hard to find in Taiwan (despite the fact that EVERYTHING seems to be made here), so I'm super happy that our Director found these! We usually have to order everything from North America and due to budget and shipping costs, we have limited math resources.

Counting Station - Counting by 2's, 5's or 10's. Students choose a way to count and then draw how they counted their objects.  

Sorting Station - Students choose a way to sort and then draw how they sorted their sea creatures. This student sorted by topic. 

Sorting Station - Students choose a way to sort and then draw how they sorted their sea creatures. This student sorted by colour.  Aren't these manipulatives adorable!

How We Organize Ourselves - UOI Organized Community

Our first Unit of Inquiry is Organized Community. I love starting the year with this UOI because it gives us lots of time to set up classroom routines and procedures. We are already in week 4 and we have done tons of great things to explore the lines of inquiry and concepts, but I thought I would post my favourite activity so far.

 Tuning In & Sorting Out - We posed the question, "how is our classroom organized?" and the students walked around and used their observation skills to identify different ways. The students noticed that labels and baskets were used the most, and that everything was sorted in one way or another. We decided that "sorting" was a major way in which we organize ourselves, and that we also use a lot of "tools" to keep us organized such as baskets, name stickers and schedules. As the students identified each tool and method of sorting, I took a picture of it. We then took all of our photos and decided to make a large concept map to organize our thinking and learning. My little monkeys are still developing their writing skills in both English and Chinese so Ariel and I wrote the titles and had the students use sticky tack to put up pictures of our classroom under the correct titles. We are still tuning into other ways in which we organize Grade 1, and will be adding to our concept map soon.

Last year I was given permission (which is extremely hard to get at my school) to use chalk on one of the walls outside the classroom to save on paper. I use this chalkboard wall as a visual thinking tool for the students to reference and add to throughout the UOI's. I usually try to introduce one "thinking tool" per UOI and I picked a concept map for Organized Community.  As you can see, some curious student wiped away some of the Chinese already, but usually the students are pretty respectful of our chalkboard wall. And no this is not chalkboard paint, just a concrete wall with regular paint. Chalk washes off easily, except red chalk stains.

Going Further - After we finished the first parts of our concept map, the students were given their own concepts map and we went to the library and to the cafeteria to see if we could find evidence of sorting and identify organization tools used in the library and cafeteria. I was quiet impressed with how quickly they learned how to use a concept map and they were able to find so many different tools in the library that we don't use in the classroom! It was a great formative assessment of their learning thus far!

Did you celebrate International Dot Day??? We sure did! This was my first year taking part in International Dot Day and we had a blast showing off our creativity and making our mark! The students were first read the book "The Dot" by Peter H. Reynolds in Library class. My co-teacher then read the translated Chinese version to them and then we watched a video of it. As a class we discussed the book and linked it to the IB Learner Profile Attributes and Attitudes. My students decided that the book was about being a Risk-Taker and about having Confidence in yourself. We then got started on making our own dots. Some of the students used markers, some used crayons and the rest chose to paint their dots. It was supposed to be a whole school activity but I think only us and Grade 2 ended up doing it. Grade 2's dots are on the left and ours are on the right. Next year I hope to get the whole school involved!

Make Your Mark - International Dot Day September 15th ish

International Dot Day - September 15th ish

Teaching with Puppets

Do you teach with puppets? Last year I introduced puppets into my classroom and my students are absolutely in LOVE with them. They seriously go nuts, nothing has made my students laugh more than my puppets! They are such a great teaching tool. My students listen to EVERY word that they say. I use several puppets in my class and slowly introduce them. The first puppet I introduce is Walt. Walt is also the name of my objective board (We Are Learning To). I use Walt every day to remind the students what we are learning to do in each subject area. He acts as a good review tool and the students are always eager to answer Walt's questions to get a high five or a kiss from him.

Teaching with Puppets - WALT (We Are Learning To...) WALT is used to introduce our focus board and review what we are learning and why. 

Walt comes from a set of 8 puppets purchased through Lakeshore Learning.

Week 1 & Pre-Assessment!

Well all last week I was busy pre-assessing all my new little monkeys. I definitely have my work cut out for me this year! I have about 9 students that still haven't mastered their letter sounds! I'm pretty used to my students not being able to understand much English when they first arrive at school, but WOW, this group is going to be a challenge to find ways to communicate with them. Thank god for Ariel, my wonderful Taiwanese co-teacher! If it weren't for her translations, we wouldn't have gotten anything accomplished. Thankfully this week I am already seeing an improvement in them as they are starting to learn the rules and get into the daily routines. AND they are starting to remember some of their English!

For my writing pre-assessment this year I decided to use the "My First Week in First Grade" journals that I picked up from  the "Fun with Firsties"package from Babbling Abby. The students really enjoyed making them and I was able to get a pretty good assessment of their writing abilities from the journals. We will be putting these into our Progress Folders in a few weeks after they have been displayed for awhile. I always have the students complete a year end reflection journal and it's going to be great to have a journal from their first week of Grade One for them to reflect on and see how much their writing has improved since the first week of school. I also had the kids cut out the pages themselves as I thought it would be neat to also compare their fine-motor (scissor cutting) skills from the start of the year with the end of the year.

My First Week of First Grade - Pre-Assessment

I love the honesty of this little monkey, for his friends page he wrote "I don't know yet."

Monkey Work

Ariel and I chose a monkey theme for our classroom this year. Last year our classroom was monster themed but we always end up calling our students "little monkeys" so we figured we should "monkey" up our classroom this year too. For this bulletin board I used green paper twine and hung it from 3m hooks on the sides and in the middle so that the "vine" can support all their monkey work. I then used clothespins to pin up their work. I bought monkey accents when I was back in Canada this summer with the intentions of gluing them onto the clothespins, but I ended up using them as name tags because they easily clip onto their uniform so they can wear them when they go to the special's classes. 

Star Work

We played some ice-breaker games to help the students learn about each other and get comfortable in class. They really liked playing People Bingo, but I think their favourite was My New Friend partner activity that was also included in the "Fun with Firsties" package. We displayed their "New Friends" on our Star Work board. This display board is a bit different as I just used paper and borders to make a display board on the concrete walls. Last year I tried hanging up their work just using sticky-tack but taking off their work always seemed to be a problem as the sticky-tack melted too much and I would rip the paper. This year I used double-sided tape and hung up plastic page protectors so I can easily put in and take out work. I'm hoping this will last all year. 

Find "Fun with Firsties" package here

Essential Agreements

We made our Essential Agreements yesterday. I had the kids choose one and write it our bilingually. They then illustrated them, they turned out great! I posted them on the door so that they are in constant view. Each student also signed their name to show that we all agree to follow our class rule. We review them everyday and have been focusing on "Use Small Voices" as we have some very loud students in class. I'm thinking of getting a rain stick or a tambourine to use to remind them to quiet down.

Essential Agreements

Our Essential Agreements focus on all the things we WILL DO to ensure a safe and friendly classroom. Focusing on the positive things that they can do, rather than the negative things that they can't do, helps the students to see the classroom as their learning community that is equally shared by all, rather than "owned" and "operated" by the teacher. All of us are responsible for creating a fun and safe classroom. 

 Back bulletin board for our class goals to be posted. We set goals every Unit of Inquiry.
I start every morning with a Morning Meeting. We read the Morning Message together, go over the calendar and then a student shares an item from home. We use sharing time to practice our questioning skills.

Action board where I will be posting student action. Monkey Business board will eventually have each student's picture. When students demonstrate a Learner Profile attribute or one of the Attitudes they will get a "banana" highlighting their achievement. 

I put black paper on half of the windows and used borders to create my Math Word wall. 

My Math Wall words are from Kim Adsit's Math Vocabulary & Word Wall package. Find it at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Kim-Adsit

Wonder Wall and Resources board. Students will write their questions on sticky notes and place them on the Wonder Wall throughout the Unit of Inquiry. Within the first week of school we will be learning about all the different resources that we can use to help us find answers to our questions. I will post another photo of our completed Resource board soon.

WALT & WILF Objective Board

My objective and assessment boards. WALT, is an acronym for We Are Learning To, and WILF is for What I'm Looking For. I will be hanging the rubrics and assessment tasks under the WILF heading and posting the objectives under the WALT heading. I use two puppets (Walt & Wilf) to review the board and what we are learning. My students LOVE telling Walt and Wilf what they are learning and what they need to do to be successful. 

My Unit of Inquiry board where the central idea, Lines of Inquiry, Key Concepts and Approaches to Learning can be found. On the right hand side I have 4 sets of "Key Chains" that have the Key Concepts written bilingually for students to refer to. 

LOVE my new Anchor Activity board! Ideas came from Pinterest, don't you just love Pinterest! The top part is for students to find words (Boggle), the middle section is for Math, students need to create math questions in which the answer is 10. The bottom section is for my co-teacher and she will be doing a Chinese version of Boggle but with Chinese symbols.

New Beginnings

I'm so excited to be starting my own blog! I've been an active reader of so many great teacher blogs and have been wanting to start blogging for a few years now. I finally managed to get myself organized enough to start, yah! I'm looking forward to sharing what goes on in my classroom and how I teach through inquiry.