Friday, May 11, 2012

Happy Mother's Day!

We hosted our very special Mother's Day Tea this morning. It was a very special time. We sang four songs, read Love You Forever and shared our gifts. Thank you to Mrs. Weiler and Mr. Holden for all their planning. Thank you to the guests who were able to attend. I know some were not able to make the event. I recorded one song to share with you.






We also shared our Mother's Day gifts.


Here are the gifts we made. They were the books from the talented Deanna Jump.
This student wrote..."I wish I could buy my mom a Nick Lachey toy doll.!" I love her illustration!


We had a great time this week celebrating moms. I want to wish all the moms out there a very Happy Mother's Day.


Thursday, May 10, 2012

13 days to go!

What day is it? It is hard to believe that there is only 13 days left. We have so much to do!! You can hear the summer excitement and you can see it as well. This is the beginning where our daily schedule begins to be replaced with special events, assessments, and just end of the year activities. We celebrated Right to Read Week, rehearsed our Mother's Day Tea, and began our end of the year assessments. All this, while trying to continue our current units of study. In addition we kicked off the Walk-a-thon today! I am so excited for this event! Here's a few photos from the week...

Finishing up our fiction unit in Writing Workshop.

Working on our Comparing and Constructing unit in Math. Here, students had to build a wall using a rectangular prism as a starting place. The middle group decided to work together to build a wall the length of the table. Love it!

Here are our guest readers for Right to Read week.


We had one tough PE class! I picked them up from special and almost every student was bright red in the face and dripping in sweat. The children told these boys they looked like mad scientists :). They decided they liked that role. I couldn't resist taking a photo.


Walk-a-thon 2012! We kicked it off today. The committee introduced the theme, shared the prizes, and got the students pumped up! We were ready to dance!





I'll end with a sneak peak at our Mother's Day gifts. I will share more photos this weekend.
 


Tuesday, May 8, 2012

A MUST purchase for Primary Teachers

Common Core is now a focus across the country. In first grade, we will be diving deeper into punctuation. This is a MUST buy from Michelle Oakes. It is the most adorable unit on punctuation and your students will flip over it. I was not looking forward to teaching commas, but now I cannot wait to use this! It is 63 pages of pure fun.




In memory...


"Please don't go. We'll eat you up. We love you so."
(Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, 1963)



Thursday, May 3, 2012

My name is Mrs. Langston and I'm your child's teacher

So hi there! I know I kind of disappeared there for about awhile. I cringed when I saw my last post. All I can say is sorry. We have been very busy in room 105. Author visit, Poetry Coffeehouse, and of course reading, writing, and arithmetic. I will share just a few things.

First up...Poetry Coffeehouse. This was a HUGE success. The pictures do not do it justice. We had a "fire" going on in the background, student artwork hanging up, and some pretty amazing poets!

We also had our annual school Art Show. Mrs. Cooper always does an amazing job! This year the lead artists made stained-glass art to put above the doorways in our entrance. Isn't it beautiful?! This was done by 4-6th graders!






Speaking of Mrs. Cooper...did you hear she got us a pig?!! To my readers not from Cincinnati, businesses and organizations can purchase a pig to decorate. You can read more here. They stay downtown all summer. This year Cincy is hosting the World Choir Games. Mrs. Cooper was able to get a pig donated!! The students and parents have been busy getting it ready for the flying pig marathon. It turned out a-mazing! I'm not sure if you can see it in the photo, but those are silhouettes singing toward the musical notes, which spell out BES.  WOW!



Let's move onto another exciting event. Our author visit. We were SO lucky to have Christopher and Jeanette Canyon come to our school. I do not have words to express how fantastic they were. We learned so much about illustrating and we even sang! Here is Jeanette talking with our students about how she created some of her images in Over in the Ocean.


So now I will share a few things from our room. We have been working on our reading fluency. Students are using the iPad to record themselves reading, then playing it back to hear if they sound fluent. The kids LOVE it! We use the iTalk app.



In celebration of Earth Day, we made reusable bags out of old t-shirts!





Finally, we have been working with magnets this week.


The magnetism goes through the paper!
This student taped a string to our table and put a paper clip in the string. The students had SO much fun making the paper clip "hang" in the air!

Well, that is all I will share this evening. I will be back..I PROMISE! I want to share photos of our "Synonym Rolls" and next week is the Mother's Day Tea!