Author Studies: Seuss

We do tons of author studies in 1st & 2nd grade. It started with our Seuss Study and it just spiraled from there lol

We go all out for Seuss!!

One year we decorated a separate room.  My mother is also a teacher at my school. She had been our reading specialist, but now teaches 2nd grade.  It used to be that teachers would sign up for time slots to have their classes visit  our very own Seussville.  We would read a book or share some facts.  We've given out birthday cake, cookies, cupcakes, but we always give out bookmarks.  They ask you to name your top three books.  Oh I forgot to mention, I dress up at the Cat in the Hat. ;)
You see all the books on the floor?  They usually go around our room.  I have collected almost all of his books.

So I took book covers of all of the books we own put Seuss Cat in the Hat hats under them.  The children get a black and white copy of the book sheets.  When children read that book, they color in the hat.

Then there is this recording sheet.  We record the date, book title, favorite part and then the "hat" rating system.  As a class we decide what each "hat" means.

Rating System in this case hats.  Here is an example:

1 hat- means the book was okay and I would only tell one friend about it.

2 hats- means it was good and I would only tell a couple of people about it

3 hats- means it was amazing and I want to tell everyone I know!!

We made an anchor chart with hats for display.

Seuss Rating Sheet

Currently, we cannot make copies in our building, so I just, display this one as a guide the first few days, and the kids record in their Daily Five journals.  I do have copies made for the  books read pages though :)  

Other Author Studies to come:

*Mo Willems

*Marc Brown

Which other author studies do you do? Leave me a comment or message me and perhaps I will make that one next :)

Write the room

For Daily 5 we combine classes and each room does a different rotation.

Here are half books with children's names and photos in them.

In the upper right corner you can see the recording sheet--

where they draw their friend and write their names.

 Here is the "sh" word family sheet that is another option.

Word Work

The  school year is done and now I have time to blog... well not really, but I have so many photos to share.

Magnetic letters on painted cookie sheets.

Word Work

I just created a new item for my word work center. It uses words from Harcourt's Trophies. I used Donna Glynn's Mystery Words sheet and made my own sheets for my students. At the bottom of every page, I ask the students to create two for a friend. Here is my dilemma- how do my students know which ones to do? I was thinking getting something like this:

I will make a label for "All Done, please check" and "Friends, please finish me."

 Here is a sample page of my Word Work unit. Stay tuned for the whole unit.

Whole Word Work Unit

Daily Schedule

During summer school we arrive at school and exchange our books in our book bins.
We make our choice on a graph.  (Great way to take attendance)
Then begin our morning meeting.

We do our morning cards.  I also added a blends card, but I use it on my computer and shine it on the SmartBoard.

The children point to the blend and then to the word.

After that we do a word family together.

After that, we do a mini lesson using the Emergent Reader Cafe Menu.
We break down into our rotation choices.  Read to Self, Listen to Reading, or Word Work.
Each day they get a sheet from the folder:

We read the words together.  I expect them to read the word of the day with me, but not the other words :}

After each rotation we do a brain break and another mini lesson.

I have 5 different colored dice that we use.   They blindly pick a number cube and roll it.
We do whatever it says on the chart.  I put the dice we used separate from the others and then we get a variety of choices.  The children have to find the color row and then find which square we read.

On Monday's, we do Work on Writing all of our words for that week.  We have 5 words.

I give each child a dice cup and they get a colored pencil, a marker, a high lighter, a crayon, and a pencil.
I have them under line the name with what they should use. :}

After that we have a brief recess.  After that they come in and relax on the floor while I read a book to them.  It has been a very hot summer!

We discuss our graph- how many on each choice ~ which had more etc.

Then on to math.  We used these to start with:

Then we graduated to these:

We did them both together when I used the ELMO.

We started the summer with a money booklet then have worked towards writing our numbers from
1-100.  We gradually built our stamina by adding ten numbers each day.  I do mine under the ELMO.

After that, we practice our take home books.  Yes each and every day, I send home a book to read to the parents. I listen to each child read the book to me and give a small star over each word they know automatically.  While I am listening to each child read, the others can color their books.  We get those books ready to go home and put into their reading bags.

Finally, we gather again to do a math mini lesson and "play" our math game. The students have no idea that they are learning and just think we are having fun- okay so we all know that there is a lot of learning when it comes to playing any game. :}

A favorite is the one HERE.  Another is tally marks. I created this sheet and the kids roll a die/ number cube and tally which one they had.  We have played this game several times and we are still using the same papers!

Another learning game we played was Addition Crossout from Shari Sloane

We played with partners using two different colored crayons.  At then end, we counted who crossed out more boxes :}

After we are done with our math activity, it is time to go home.  Lunch is provided at my school during the summer.

Daily Routines

We do Daily 3 in our classroom.  

~Read to Self~ Listen to Reading~ Word Work~

Here are our TagReaders:

Here is what we do during Word Work. 

They trace the word of the day and then color.

After they color and trace- then they read to me.

I give stars above the words they can read to me.

I got these sheets from Jessica Meacham   jmeacham.com

Word Work- Funky Letters

So part of my word work are these letters. I used a box from Target and added letter stickers to the back. Here is the problem. There are all these letters that are misplaced- see lower left corner. Yes some are from the kids, but some of the compartment walls move.  I am not sure how to fix this.  If I put tape to hold it, then the letters will get stuck. :(

For your help, I am including this Word of the Week Frame.  Each week we have "Cool Tools" from PBIS. So from that, I choose a word from that topic and that is our word of the week.  I hang it on my focus board.

Word Work

Towards the end of the year the first graders got to watercolor their word wall words.

Here was another word work for word families:

We have a word family per week based on our reading series :)

Snap it Up

The first graders played the game Snap it Up! during word work D5 time.  There are two types of cards in there, the yellow (on the back) which were the consonants and the green cards were the vowels.

This is a commercial game but one you could make yourself just as easy. Something I just realized is that their vowels are blue and consonants are red- this is backwards for me lol

If I made this game, I would make it out of cardstock scrapbook paper so it would be cuter on the backside.

Word Wizards

Starting this week, we are going to be starting a new project in school. Based on our CAFE menu, we will be learning about expanding our vocabulary.

We have this as an addition to our room. There are different levels for the children to climb.

Everyone in my reading groups will now have homework- each and everyday, they will need to find two Razzle Dazzle Words per day.  All of the children need to write down their words in the literacy logs.

We talk all of the time about "new" words instead of  Kindergarten words. For example, instead of using the word "kids" we might say children. I would say that we hear at least one new word a day!! Last week Tuesday, we talked about  3 Razzle Dazzle words!!  Mr. K, a student, came up with two of them!


Each child has a word collector to write down their words. It is one thing to hear the Razzle Dazzle words, it is another to use them in our writing.  I try to make it really exciting when the children use Razzle Dazzle Words in their stories and share them with the group.

We have run out of space in our room, so our chart and our words are behind the door!

Listen to Reading

I was truly blessed to receive a LeapFrog Tag Readers classroom set from LeapFrog.  I received 6 TagReaders, 6 headphones, 6 cases, and six books each of about 30 different titles.

Here is how I store the remaining books:

 In the class, they are stored like this:

I think there are four or five books inside the large plastic bins. Inside the case we store one of the TagReaders plus the headphones. You can store books inside their cases, but not the headphones, so we just leave the headphones and the TagReader inside.

All of the children really enjoy this center and now you can see why :)

Word Work

I have several different choices for our Word Work rotation.

They must do either Cube Roll or Trace and Write.

Then they may choose either Word Family sheet (I actually have three different sheets that I rotate)
Another is Making Words. I choose a theme related word and the children get letters and fill out some paperwork.

I created cards to hang in a mini pocket chart. That way I can rotate their options.

After they complete their "must do" choices, they can choose from the other choices:
*bottle caps
*magnetic letters
*stamps
After they create the words, I have them take a photo.

Their choices for the week are the Star Words or words from our word family.

Gold Bar Words

I am always looking for ways to re-use things in my room. I drink a ton of coffee. It never keeps me up, but it always warms me up :)

I reuse other plastic lids for "Finger Glue" when we do TLC Lessons.  I pour white glue on the lids and my students use the tips of their fingers to glue. I also teach them how to clean their fingers- which is rubbing it in the palm of their other hand. :)

Which brings me to another sort of recycled item. Because I have sooooooo many of these, I first used them to sort crayons (makes my TLC Lessons easier too!!!)
So they have a gold top. I think they look like gold bars to me :) Well what I see on TV anyways lol

For one of my Word Work choices, I created this Gold Bar option. I will write out five words for the week on them and have them fill out the sheet using a gold pen or gold colored pencil. To not waste them, I will be using both sides for different words.

Here is my Gold Bar recording Sheet.

In case you don't drink this much coffee, try scrapbook paper or just plain note cards using a gold sharpie.

Work on Writing

As part of Daily 5, the children rotate to Work on Writing. This needed a little bit more "beefing up" because one little guy just wrote list after list on the same thing! So I created this Writing Menu.

There are two menus on one page.  The second page contains all of the instructions and descriptions of each box. Please let me know if something is still unclear. :)

Monday July 12

Here is our CAFE menu. This is still a work in progress. I give them a sheet with a plain grid on it. We talk about where the strategy will go so they must think about that BEFORE we write it down.

Pensive

This is my pensive. Frog on the outside. It zips around the whole thing, which is a good thing!

On the inside left cover, there is a pocket, I put post-it notes in there. It also holds some pens.

Summer School Day

8:00 Students enter the room. Books shop for books if necessary.

8:05- 8:30 Making Words Lessons

8:30- 10:00 Daily 5 Reading Rotations

R2S (read to self) WW (Word Work) WoW (Work on Writing)

Mini lesson 1

Mini lesson 2

10:00 recess

10:15 snack and read aloud ( Snack will be up to the individual student)

10:30- 11:30 Daily 4 Math

Lesson: Teacher will meet with individuals and small groups based on student ability.

All games will be from EDM books.

Fact Practice: The children will use flash cards to practice their facts.

Fact Games

Number Games

Strategy Games:

Students will rotate to each section as their choice. One of the “Must Do” choices is the teacher; the other “Must Do” will be the workbook. The children will be assigned pages based on their individual need.

11:30-11:45 Share: TICKET TO LEAVE and prepare for dismissal. Assign homework

11:45 Dismissal

Listen to Reading

Here is our Listen to Reading anchor chart. One of my students was busy working when I took this photo. We all know what to do at this time.

Read to a Buddy

This is our anchor chart for Read to a Buddy. I took a photo of two of my students actually doing what they should. Now they and everyone else knows that I know what is expected during this time

Picking a Book

I made this anchor chart for how to read to a buddy. I cut apart the chart that I made and when the children told me that, I added it to our chart.