Confessions of a First Year Teacher - Weeks 5, 6, 7, & 8?

I know, I know... It has been several weeks since I posted but umm Hi! First year teacher here and prone to becoming overwhelmed with all the lesson planning, parent teacher conferencing, fire safety assembly, field trips, surprise cupcake parties, grading and first ever report cards.

I experienced and survived my first parent teacher conferences. I am so fortunate to have been able to hold the conferences with my team mates. They were both awesome and it made the process far less stressful and intimidating.

Fun with Pumpkins!

We had another field trip and let me just say I slept really well that night. We took all 5 first grade classes to the pumpkin patch. It was an adventure for sure, a bit stressful but I didn't lose any kids in the corn maze. However, it might have been a close call. Close your eyes and picture just my class of 21 kids. We come out of the corn maze into the pumpkin patch and they all scatter in 21 different directions with only one Mrs. Ogier wishing she could clone herself. I did have a very sweet and helpful parent show up and help me corral my kiddos. Without her I would have seriously lost my mind a couple of times. I took advantage of excitement surrounding the field trip to have students practice their subtraction skills under the guise of creating their very own patchwork pumpkin. Students rolled a dice twice, subtracted the smaller number from the larger number, looked on the pumpkin to find the difference and picked whatever color they wanted to color that one spot on their pumpkin.

Just the facts!

I feel like the school year is speeding by quickly. Halloween is already upon us and the 2nd progress reports of the school year have already gone home. We have introduced fact families and students created fact family neighborhoods for each teacher. (Fact Families of Ogier Avenue, Saavedra Lane and Vazquez Street)

Future house builders?
















We have also started base ten blocks. I introduced the base ten blocks by reading a story about how a house is built and then giving each table group a random number of base ten blocks to build their own "house". After they built their house I had them count how many longs (tens) and how many units (ones) they used to build their houses. Finally, we discussed the total value of each groups houses and compared values.

Let's get specific!

I am also learning that I need to be VERY specific when I give instructions. This subtraction practice worksheet was my classes daily math activity. At the start of every day students come in and find some sort of activity to complete before we start our lesson.  On this paper the middle section the student was supposed to draw a picture to reflect the word problem. Apparently, this student took my "Simply draw a picture to go with the word problem" instruction as a creative challenge to simply draw whatever picture they wanted. :P

Yoda Says!

I "installed" a duct tape number line on the floor in my classroom and to practice subtraction solving skills using a number line we played Yoda Says. My students thought it was hilarious and were so excited for their turn to get their Yoda card and hop along the number line.

Crazy Red Ribbon Week

This past week was Red Ribbon week and each day was a different theme. One of the days was crazy hair day and we had so many imaginative crazy hair styles.

We also had Hawaiian shirt day, college gear day, twins day and costume day. Friday was by far one of the craziest days I have had so far. Not only were the kids allowed to wear their halloween costumes to school, we started the day with a math rally, PTO opened the snack bar at the end of the day, 2 of my students parents sent goody bags of candy and toys for each kid and I had a parent show up with cupcakes for the whole class. To say the kids were excited is an understatement.

 I dressed up as Chewbacca, of course. However, some kiddos thought that I was a bear and wouldn't stop hugging me because I was so "soft and fluffy".

Never a dull moment in 1st grade!