The Drama Queen 2017: SuperBlog Sunday

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!

Since I primarily watch the game for the musical performances (Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce in one night--pumped!) I thought I'd sneak in a little blog post during the game. We are only a little over an hour away from Baltimore, sooo the Ravens get my vote for today... other days I am a Philadelphia Eagles girl! Before all of this football craziness I was actually fortunate enough to spend last weekend in Baltimore visiting my bestest bud from high school. She is also a first year, first grade teacher in the Teach for America program.
It has been a godsend to have her experience this journey with me! We have chatted about lesson ideas and have shared many resources. I don't know what I would do without her (as a friend and a fellow educator!!)

We thought it would be fun to have our students become "pen pals". Last quarter my classroom studied "letter writing" so this was an excellent review for us about parts of a letter.
Our class is initiating the letter writing and we will send our letter down to Baltimore. My kiddos are so excited to see what they get back!

We have also been studying vowel pairs the last few weeks. One of the kiddos favorite activities this week was our vowel pair bingo. The bingo cards were easy to generate using this website:
http://print-bingo.com/

I got to choose the words I wanted to include on the cards and then I printed out a few different versions. When calling the words, I gave clues about the word instead of reading it. I told students which vowel pair it used and then gave the "hint".
Naturally there were small prizes for the Bingo winners, so that is always a hit with the students!!! ;)

Now to be completley honest, Groundhog's Day kind of snuck up on me! I felt a bit guilty because we did no cutesy/crafty things to celebrate :( Shame on me as a first grade teacher!!! However, we did chat about the holiday, learned about PA's famous Punxsutawney Phil, and incorporated it into our math lesson.
We did a graphing review... graphing our predictions on whether or not Phil would see his shadow.
Our class does NOT like to be chilly-- as 22 of us voted for him to bring early spring. Only 1 of my kiddos wanted more winter!!
(I may have voted for the early spring as well :)

I promise the 100th day and Valentine's Day will bring more creative crafts our way!

Lastly, I wanted to share one of the things I do in my room to differentiate instruction for some of the kiddos that I have in our gifted/"Challenge" program. These are my students who usually get done a task VERY quickly and are looking to move on to the next activity. I give these kiddos a "Busy Bee" book.

Inside are a variety of extension pages for skills we have currently been working on. These pages match the current levels of these students and give them a goal to accomplish during their extra time.

Once they complete their whole book, they get a small treat from me!!

It's a great way to be sure I am challenging and meeting their needs for growth!