St. Patrick's Day Writing

We have been really working hard on paragraph writing.  Our goal is for every student to independently write a paragraph with a topic sentence, at least 3 details, and a closing sentence.  We focus especially on informative and opinion writing since those are the common core focus for first grade.  We work on this skill all year.  There is lots of modeling, shared writing, and support.  We try to integrate paragraph writing into all areas: math, science, social studies, and holidays of course.

For a fun St. Patrick's Day prompt, the students wrote a piece about reasons they are lucky.  We called it Lucky Me!  They had to include 4 reasons.  I provided them with a 4 leaf clover to take home and illustrate (with actual photos, drawing, words) the reasons.

Super simple, but fun!  I love the opportunity to encourage my students to focus on the positive in their lives.  How can you not have a good day, when you are thinking and writing about all of the things you can be grateful for?!

The Lucky Me writing templates can be found here in my TPT store.  

Bossy R

This week we started bossy r.  We began with ar and used a pirate them.  (Pirates say aargh!)  There are so many good pirate books and the hardest part is choosing which anchor activities to do!

I actually reserved a bunch of pirate books from my library, stopped by on my way to work to grab them from the anytime locker, but my code didn't work!  I totally panicked for a few minutes, but was able to get a couple from our school library and a 3rd grade teacher.  Whew!  That will teach me to make the time to get to the library on Saturday next time:)

So, this is the perfect book to introduce ar with if you are using the pirate theme.  It gets the kids saying the ar sound right away due to the interactive nature of the story.  (Because I clearly was a disorganized mess in terms of gathering my materials this week, I left my copy of this at home and didn't get to start with it.  But I'm sure you are much more on top of things:)

I started with How I Became a Pirate and it grabbed their attention as well.  (We just had to add our own ar sounds:)

I also used the ever-popular Magic Tree House books.  I told them that I would read aloud from both the fiction and nonfiction books for the next several days.  My own son (2nd grader) is completely obsessed with the Magic Tree Fact Trackers.  He can't get enough so it has inspired me to read them aloud to my class whenever I get the opportunity.  

A to Z reading has 3 levels of Blackbeard the Pirate.  There are so many things you could do using the 3 levels of the same book, but I needed to keep it simple this week.  I chose the level K to use in my whole class reading block.  We made predictions and asked questions before reading.  (Students had their own paper copy of the book).  We summarized and clarified during reading (and continued to make predictions and ask questions).  Most of them don't have much background knowledge on Blackbeard so it is so exciting to introduce them to some pirate facts.

I prepared a little treasure hunt for my firsties.  I simply stapled cards with ar words written on them to two pieces of red construction paper to look like an x.  I put them around the school.  Each student took a turn leading the line and finding an ar card.


We all quietly whispered the ar sound with our best pirate motions and faces.  It was quite adorable.  The words led us to the office where I surprised them with a small treasure chest full of chocolate (which I borrowed from another first grade teacher) and stickers (which I found in our desk).  We then went back to our classroom and the students wrote all of the ar words on their own treasure map.

And finally, we made pirate handprints.  Next week, we will do some word dictation and they will fill these up with ar words.  (It makes the assessment just a little more fun:)

My job share partner continued with or the second half of the week using a popcorn theme.  Next week, I will use a car them to teach the sound of er, ir, & ur.  My bossy r resource is available here in my TPT store.  It has word cards for all of the bossy r sounds and a simple template for students to create their own anchor charts.

It was a FUN week and they definitely have the hang of the ar sound for sure.  And luckily for me, they didn't have a clue that I was throwing some things together at the last minute!  I must say, last year I had much more elaborate plans and materials.  I had treasure boxes that I got from amazon for each student, pirate eye patches, pirate coins (Rollos) attached to each word card for the treasure hunt, and they made their own pirate hats for the hunt as well.  But honestly, there was the same level of enthusiasm with my more "last minute, beg, borrow, and steal" plans for this year.  So if you are short on time, clearly it's not too hard to put together a memorable anchor experience to introduce the sound of ar.  Have fun!  Aargh!!!