Math, Writing, & P/T Interview FREEBIES!

Phew! This pregnant person is popped! We had another busy week that seemed to just fly by.

All the schools in our area headed to the arena for school vs. school skating races. 

The kids raced by age group and then there was a hockey game in the afternoon. It was so fun watching some of my firsties participate in the races! 

I won't lie, the wipeouts were my favourite part...what a terrible teacher!

And those who didn't race, happily cheered our school on:

It was fun, but definitely *way* too much chaos for this Type A teacher. I was so happy to get back to our classroom!!

So anyways, amid the rush of the week, I didn't get around to documenting our activities much. The good news is, that means this post will just feature some random FREEBIES for y'all! 

Let's start with writing! We have been working on opinion writing and I created this graphic organizer to help my firsties organize their ideas:

We originally started out just writing our opinion pieces on standard lined paper (following the same structure: a statement of their opinion and three reasons for their opinion) but I have found this organizer to be SO helpful to my firsties. Their writing is so much clearer and has actually improved quite drastically as a result. 

If you read last week's post, you already know that we have been working on balancing equations. We finished up this unit with some more simple skip counting & balancing equations math centres:

*Click HERE to download the above activity as well as the activity featured in THIS POST*

The kids loved making their own little cut & paste skip counting books. Once they were done, I stapled them on the indicated staple lines (as seen on the left side of the booklet) and then they coloured their book if they had extra time. 

One of the other math centres was a balancing equations partner activity, where my firsties worked in pairs to complete a booklet:

Title Page:

Interior Pages:

*Click HERE or either pic above to download!*

Each partner got their own booklet with one title page and 4 interior pages. They completed one side of each pan balance on their own by either writing a number, addition sentence or subtraction sentence, or by drawing any number of objects. Once half of each page was filled out, they switched booklets with their partner and their partner had to complete each page by balancing the pan balance in a different way (e.g. If one partner wrote the number "4" on the left side, then the other partner might draw 4 stars on the right side).

Last but not least, Term 1 report cards went home last week which meant Parent/Teacher interviews this week! I tried something new and created this printout to help guide each interview:

*Click HERE to download this FREEBIE!*

I found it much more helpful (and efficient) to write my thoughts on this page as opposed to a little sticky note. Plus it was nice to be able to provide a copy for each parent to take home at the end of the conference.

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I hope you find some (or all!) of those freebies useful! Have a wonderful weekend :)

Earth Day, Probability, and Kandinsky...Oh, My!

Hello everyone! We started off the week with one of my favourite celebrations: Earth Day! We kept our lights off and made lots of promises to help the Earth throughout the day. 

This little writing craftivity was inspired by Cara over at The First Grade Parade. I fell in love with the handprint idea and had my kiddies "lend a helping hand" to Mother Nature on Monday.

(click the pick for the FREE download of the above writing paper as well as an Earth Day opinion writing activity!)

We ended up dedicating this whole week to the Earth and kept our classroom lights off for the week...it was actually quite calming so that might become a new "healthy habit" of ours!

Moving right along to math...We finished up our quick 2D & 3D Shapes unit with position and direction words. Here's the anchor chart I whipped up (the smiley faces really helped my emergent readers become more confident with these words)

...And the Poultry Party continues! 

We spent a period this week with our precious soon-to-be-hatching eggs; observing, recording, drawing, labelling, reading, and discussing. I pulled out a bunch of resources for the kiddies to simply explore and they went to town.

...there's my "inquiry" for the week (that totally counts. Right, Mrs. Montgomery? haha)

As a mini review/introduction to our oh-so-short Probability unit (that we began and finished all this week!) we graphed our opinions of pet chickens. I was quite surprised by how many kiddies did NOT want a pet chicken (although, I'll admit I may have mentioned something about "stinky chicken poop" prior to popping the question!)

After graphing our answers as a whole group, we completed this worksheet to reinforce our knowledge:

(Graphing labels and worksheet included in my Holy Hens! Pack)

*2016: THIS PACK HAS SINCE BEEN COMPLETELY UPDATED!* 

(images in this post do not reflect the updates)

We wrapped up our speedy probability unit on Friday with 3 math centres...

#1: my crazy chickens took turns surveying their group and graphing the results (who would have thought that the simplest centre would be the biggest hit?! They were ALL.ABOUT. that giant graph)

#2: next, the kiddies got to create their very own die and use their creation to build a graph:

#3: finally, a make-your-own spinner activity! Similar to the dice, the kids made a spinner and graphed their results:

It was exciting to see how much they loved these three simple centres. 

Here is a closer look at activity #2 and #3:

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Now for my favourite subject...ART! I have such a creative bunch and I LOVE that they love to do art. This week, our art period focused all around Kandinsky. I was inspired by a particular piece that I saw floating around Pinterest, "Concentric Circles"...

Like most people, I concededly thought, "I could do that!"...well, more like, "my Grade Ones could do that!" ...so we did!

They couldn't get enough of the fact that they could paint something that looked just like a famous piece of artwork...also that Kandinsky closely "looks just like" our Parish Priest (HA! They crack me up...it's so true though)

Here are some of their final masterpieces:

Amazing, right??!! They also painted "Kandinsky circles" on paper plates. My plan is to make a Kandinsky tree to brighten up our hallway like the one I found on Pinterest:

I can't wait! ...More pictures to come when I finally have ours up!

Anyways, it's Friday and I could not be happier that the warm weather is FINALLY here in NWO. I cannot wait to spend my entire weekend outside in something other than goose-down. So in celebration, here is an opinion writing FREEBIE for you all :) 

(Click the pic for the above--and two other--topics for when your class is focused on Opinion Writing)

Have a happy weekend :) Enjoy the warm weather!