We're on a Roll!

Over the past several weeks, my students and I have been working on informational writing.  We made snow and wrote about how to make a snowman.  We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and wrote about how to make PB&J.  We made informational posters about animals we researched.  And then we wrote informational books.  And if I say so myself, they are awesome!

I worked with my kids on their books, of course, and I have helped them through the whole process, but I actually sat down on Friday and looked at their completed books, and I am so proud of them!  I was just so impressed and blown away by what I saw, I actually had tears in my eyes.  Silly, I know, but we've spent so much time working on these, and they've worked sooooo hard, that I was so proud to see what they've accomplished.  I still have about 6 or 7 kids who have to finish up their books, but they'are all almost finished with them too.  I can't wait to see the completed product!  Or share them with their parents on Wednesday during our Writing Celebration!

We have been using this unit that I have in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  We did a lot of the "research" on the different animals together, and read a whole lot of informational books at the same time!  The kids each had their own sheet that they used to take notes.  We made posters first, almost as a sort of concept map to help them, but not quite.  The posters were awesome!  Then we started working on the books.  Each student had a "sloppy copy" page that they did their writing on.  I gave them back their posters to help them figure out what to write.  They wrote their sloppy copies, and then we planned their Table of Contents, Dedication Page, About the Author Page, and Glossary pages.

  Once they finished their planning, then we worked on putting their books together by coping the sloppy copies onto the "clean" copies.  Once the kids copied their writing, they got to copy their Table of Contents, Dedication Page, About the Author, and Glossary pages.  

I used the half page books to conserve paper!  But I have whole page and half page books included in my unit pack.

And this is what they came up with!  These books are so amazing!  Some of the kids used labels and diagrams in their books, without being asked!  I would say this shows they really understand how text features work!  (Now if I could just get some of the kids to pay attention to their very existence, we'd be all set!  Ha!)

 Cover pages.  Love the cute pictures!

 Every informational book needs a Table of Contents!  (And this kid can't spell eat, lol)

Check out the diagram on this page!  I can't believe this kid used a diagram!  Holy cow!  We briefly discussed them, but we didn't go into great detail about them, so I'm amazed.

(The books aren't actually stapled yet, because I need to copy them for our Program Review, and it's easier to do so when they aren't stapled!)

Love their writing and I love the fact that several of them used labels on their pictures even though I didn't tell them they had to.  I don't even think I mentioned it!

These labels say "no fur" and "some fur".  So cute.  Notice the underlined word.  It's defined in his glossary. 

I love the bear cubs in the den! 

  Love the adorable picture of the mother polar bear and her cubs, and the fact that this little one knows what a mammal is!  I also love how the other student underlined 2 words on this page for his glossary!

From one of my strugglers... I love her penguin.

"What Penguins Like To Do"

 We also included About the Author pages.  I wanted my students to feel like real authors, so they got to make this page.  It's lined out on the book planning pages, so the kids just had to fill in the blanks and then copy the whole thing onto their clean copy.  I thought this was a good way to give them the opportunity to do this without getting 2 sentences about the kid.  I know how first graders are!

I love how this kid said he wanted to "help the Earth" and had a picture of himself throwing away recycling.  Adorable!  And this was before we read The Lorax this week and talked about helping the Earth!  

 They also put a glossary in their books!  We talked about how the reader might not know what the different words mean in their book, so they had to choose at least 2 words to underline in their book and put the definition in their glossary.  Their definitions aren't what you'd find in a dictionary or anything, but I think it's a good thing they got the experience!

They are going to share their books (and posters) with their parents on Wednesday during our "Writers on a Roll" celebration!  I can't wait for these parents to see how smart their kids are!  I haven't exactly decided how they are going to share their books on Wednesday, but I'm thinking they can read the actual writing in their book, and then they can show their parents their books afterwards.  I would love it if there was a way the parents could walk around and browse the books, but I don't know if we'll have enough time.  I am going to have the posters outside on our bulletin board, so the parents can check them out then.

Another teacher had the kids read their books and videotaped them, then played the video on her Smartboard the day of Writers on a Roll.  That might be a good idea, since most of my kids talk so silently that the parents can't hear them!  

After the students read their writing pieces, they get to go to the cafeteria and have cake and juice as a celebration of their progress in writing.  We'll have another celebration called Writing Stars at the end of the year where the kids have to actually meet the writing benchmark; right now, they just have to show that they've made progress.  We have already had one "Writers on a Roll" celebration back in the fall, so this is the second one this year.  It's always fun for the parents to come in for an academic celebration.  They all come in and take pictures of their kids reading.  It's so fun. :-)  In our school, we often have low parent turn out to events, but this is one that we always have lots of parents attend!

Does your school have any way to celebrate your students' accomplishments?

Investigating Arctic Animals Posters!

I have the world's smartest, cutest, sweetest first graders, ever.  I know you think yours are pretty great, but I promise... mine are absolutely the smartest, cutest, funniest, sweetest, most amazing group of first graders ever.  How in the world does one teacher get so lucky?

*Cease bragging*

I promised my first graders I was going to brag on them.  Well, I bragged to everybody in the school, so now I have to brag to the entire internet. :-)

When I took a class over the summer appropriately called "Informational Books", we did something called in "investigation."  While we didn't do it as in depth as a student might, we got the concept of how students can take information and "investigate" it and make a poster with this information as a sort of visual display of the information.  This got the wheels in my head turning.  After our Winter Break, I decided that my class would do an investigation of their own.

You know as well as I do that asking first graders to do research on a topic is pretty much futile.  We did our research as a class.  We started doing research as a class on whales to go along with the book "Our Whale Watching Trip."  I even mentioned what I was going to be doing to my librarian, and she helped my students look up information in the encyclopedias and on the internet. :-)  Then we did some research on penguins and polar bears.

We read some informational books, and I gave my students one of these "Cool" Facts sheets on a clipboard.  We would read a little bit of the book, then I would stop and give them time to write down facts they thought were interesting or that they might want to share with others.  I let them share their facts with their partner, and their discussions about what they had learned were so cute!

I learned from my mistakes the first round, so when we wrote about the polar bears, I showed my students how to use bullet points to help them with their note taking.  So cute!  I told them it wasn't necessary to write "polar bears can" every time, but that they could just write the fact on the paper with a bullet point.  This really helped them organize their thoughts in a neat way.

Once we did all of our research, we practiced writing sentences using the "Can, Have, Are" graphic organizers.  I added the "Eat" and "Live" sections as well.  We compiled our interesting facts onto these graphic organizers, and then used it to help us write complete sentences about the animal.

Fast forward a few days, and we started to work on our posters.  Holy cow, I was so impressed!  To help them organize their thoughts, I gave them 4 squares to do their writing in.  At the top, we wrote the "topic" they were writing about.  Then they had to write 2 facts in each square.  To help them think about the topics, we brainstormed some topics we could use.  It was hard at first, but they figured out what they were supposed to do, and we came up with a great topic list.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of it!

Then they got to work writing in their squares!  I asked for a minimum of 3 squares, though many (most!) of my students wrote in all 4 squares!  I checked their work to make sure it was factual and correct, as well as neat.  I also checked to make sure they had at least 2 facts on each topic.

Before we began actually making our posters, I modeled how to lay out their posters using their squares, the pictures I provided that they COULD use (not had to!), and their text feature.  We talked about leaving space for a border and title.  We discussed laying things out where we wanted them before we glued, so we didn't have to pull things up.  The students watched as I took my pieces and laid out my own poster and thought aloud about how I wanted to arrange it.  It must have worked, because almost all of them listened to the directions and didn't pick up a glue stick until after they had everything where they wanted it.  I was so proud that they listened so well and took the time to lay out their posters so they were nice and neat.  We talked a lot about how they needed to be neat instead of messy and sloppy.  Nobody wants a sloppy poster!

The process took a lot of time, I admit, but it was worth it.  When it was time to assemble our posters, it was easy!  Each student cut out their squares and arranged them on their poster.  Then they had pictures (clip art) available to put on their posters if they wished.  They also had to use one text feature; most of my students chose a map that showed where the animal lives.  A few chose pictures with a caption or label.  I would not let them glue anything down until I had checked them.  Once they had arranged their poster pieces and made sure they left room for a title, I allowed them to glue and add a border to their posters.  Watching these posters take shape was nothing short of awesome.  Every student (except one, but I'm not talking about her!) was working so hard on their poster.  The students who were still working on their writing worked so hard so they could get started assembling their poster.  And every single kid was working so hard, they didn't even notice when I stepped out of my door to flag down our Writing Coach so she could come see what they were working on.  She was also super impressed!

They even used books as resources when they needed information to complete their poster.  One of my students is helping another figure out where her animal lives on a map.

I was so super impressed and proud of their work!

Would you like to see some of their awesome posters?

Love the picture with labels!

This little cutie used a picture with a caption.  Penguins like to toboggan. :-)

 

 

Tell me those aren't absolutely amazing?

I am SO PROUD of what my babies did!  I just love it when something comes together and is absolutely perfect.  I have literally been working on this unit for weeks and weeks!

I thought that maybe some other people might want to use this unit in their classrooms, so it is now in my Teachers Pay Teachers shop.  In the effort to NOT turn this post into a commercial, I will post a link to it here, but I will make another post about the unit itself later.  I want you to focus on my SMART STUDENTS!!! :-)  But I did work really hard on this, and I'm quite proud of it.  So if you would like to at least check it out, there it is!

What do you think of our little project?  Have you ever done anything like this with first graders?  It was a lot of work, as I said, but the outcome has been amazing.  Just wait until you see their books... :-)