Water Cycle Week

This week we learned about the water cycle. My students loved learning about it! They were excited to learn big words. We focused on syllables as we said the words. They were so proud of themselves when they learned how to pronounce it correctly.

 

 

 

 

They Especially loved this song. It goes along with, "She'll Be Coming Around The Mountain".

How's the Weather?

In my class we are learning about weather! I got so many great ideas from pinterest and will do my best to give credit to where it's due!

I read these books through out the few weeks that we were learning about weather.

On the first day we did a KWL of what my scholars know about weather. The next day we listed all of the weather words that they could think of. Then they each picked a weather word they wanted to write and draw for the class. We wrote and drew the words on raindrop cut outs. I got this really cute idea from over all Teaching In High Heels.

Weather words. 

Their rain drops hung up in the window. 

Close up. 

The next day I folded up pieces of paper and had my students write down 8 weather words along with a drawing. They had a really good time drawing and talking about weather words they chose. 

After a few days of discussing and getting comfortable with weather words we were ready to think about making sentences. Here I made an anchor chart with 3 kinds of weather. We discussed what we can do and what we can wear for each kind of weather. 

The next day they picked their favorite kind of weather and wrote at least 3 sentences about it. 

(I'll have to remember to take some pictures of their work because it turned out super cute!)

Here are some of their writings:

I found this SUPER cute poem about weather. I wrote it out and we read it all week. We also reviewed nouns and verbs using this poem. We under lined all the verbs with green and all of the nouns with red. 

I found this poem over at Mrs. Saylor's Log. She has a really cute hand out that goes along with the poem. 

I also printed this WILD WEATHER book out. My kiddos L-O-V-E-D it!

They had so much fun doing it! You can buy it if you'd like over at Teachers Pay Teachers.

After learning about weather, we moved onto clouds! Holy Moly, my kiddos L-O-V-E-D learning about clouds! This anchor chart took me 2 days to make. I started off with stratus clouds and cumulus clouds. The next day we finished it off with cirrus clouds and cumulonimbus clouds. On the third day my kiddos used this information to write about their favorite kind of cloud. On the forth day we edited their work and started on the final draft. 

I continued with clouds for another week. I wanted them to use more adjectives. After we listed adjectives for each cloud they wrote a sentence for each cloud.

Monster Adjectives

So let me explain my situation. Before starting my current job, my little family and I were living in the Caribbeans on a little island called Dominica. No, not the Dominican Republic, just Dominica! My husband was accepted as a Medical Student there and so as a loving and dedicated wife(well...I tried fighting it for a few months), I left my job as a 2nd grade teacher, my friends and family and moved to this little humid island! Now if you want to know about that experience, you'll have to read about it on my other blog here because that experience needed it's own blog!

Anyway, we were there for about 1 year and 3 months. My hubby and I decided it would be a good idea for me and the kiddos to come back to The States so that the boys could start school at the beginning of a new school year and so that I could possibly find a job. Needless to say with in a month of searching I found one as a 1st grade teacher!

However, before I got that job, I was asked by my old my old school to sub, for 2nd grade....in my old classroom. BIZARRE! I said, "Heck yes" and started working again 5 days after I got back from Dominica!

Here are some things that we did while I was subbing there.
This is Charter School in Sacramento. While I was working as a 2nd Grade teacher a few years earlier, we were asked to basically create our own Curriculum. It was the most stressful, crazy, yet fun and amazing 1 and 1/2 years of my life! I had the MOST amazing 2nd grade team and we had so much fun creating our 2nd grade curriculum.

I remember we were teaching adjectives and wanting to do something fun. So my team and I thought...why not describe monsters! Thus leading to our Monster Adjective! I even made a monster adjective worksheet/workshop activity that's up in my TPT store.


What we did in the pictures below is different from my Monster Adjective worksheets. I had my scholars describe their monsters and then go back and highlight the adjectives that they used. Then they glued their drawing and writing paper onto construction paper. I thought they did a really good job! :) If you'd like to grab the lined Monster Adjective paper, you can grab it here.

Inspired!

This weekend I attended the Northern California K-1 conference in Santa Clara and was so inspired by all of the amazing teachers out there! It gave me a sense of renewal and reminded me why I became teacher. This is my first year in 1st grade and it has been a crazy road, but I am growing and being challenged in many ways (Some good and some bad)! I was so inspired over the weekend that I even decided to start a teaching blog! I hope you'll join me on this crazy and wonderful journey called teaching!