I love celebrating a student’s birthday with them. It not only makes them feel special, but let’s them know that you care about them. I usually have the class sing them happy birthday, I give them a card with some treats, a birthday pencil, and a birthday badge. I also let them be a special helper for the day. How do you celebrate your students’ birthdays?
I will begin an author study on Chris Van Allsburg in just a short few weeks. I’m very excited because he is a very talented author and illustrator. Some of his famous books (Polar Express and Jumanji) became featured films. This is my first year completing an author study on him, but I am very excited. In the past I’ve done author studies on:
Eve Bunting (Does not have her own website)
All of these authors are well known and have many great books published. Several of them also have websites that you can visit for author study information. Many have printable worksheets, information on the author, games, etc. If you are interested in one of the authors above, click on their name and visit their site.
As you already know Earth Day is April 22nd. It is a great opportunity to teach your students about recycling, reducing, and reusing, as well as planting trees and picking up litter. Have your school create a clean up day. Each class can have a 30 minute slot to clean up your school campus or plant flowers. PTA may be able to help and you can raise money as a school to plant flowers or trees. I have also attached cute printable bookmarks for the students. Click on the link below.
We had our play day and egg hunt yesterday. The day was fun, but exhausting. We hid 1300 eggs for our four first grade classrooms. Thank you parents! Without them, I’m not sure how we would have hidden all those eggs. It ended up being a huge success and the smiles on the faces of all those children was priceless; however; I’m glad it’s over.
After my one week off, I will continue on with response to literature. We will be working on evaluating books. After reading some of my favorite books, the children will have the opportunity to evaluate them. After I model it of course, I will have them write this in their journal:
My opinion of the book was…
My reason was…
My example…
Their example must be an actual quote from the story. If you don’t like the format above, you can also go with: I liked it when… I did not like it when… My favorite part of the story was… Good Luck!
