Creating Mental Images

Creating mental images is one of my favorite reading comprehension units to teach.  For mental images, I use a lot of ideas from Debbie Miller's book, Reading with Meaning.  Below are a few of the lessons and activities we did in my classroom.

Using Poems to Create Mental Images from Reading with Meaning:
Each child got to pick one of the four poems that they had the best mental image for and drew their image. Afterwards, we looked at each image and noticed that even if the image was for the same poem each image was different because everyone has different schema. Below I have pictures of the bulletin for this activity that is also found in Miller's book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most Vivid Mental Image:

 

Using the stories, A Bad Case of the Stripes and Pigsty, students had to pick their most vivid mental image to complete the mental image handout. These stories are fantastic for mental images and provide great details to help students create the image in their head.

 

 

 

 

 

We worked on some other lessons from her book, but unfortunately I didn't get pictures of those lessons.



 

 

 

 

100th Day of School

We had our 100th day of school a week or two ago and we had a blast.  The 100th day of school celebration is always a lot of fun and we added some great new activities to our celebration this year.

Finding 100 Words
This page I found on atozteacherstuff.com.  The kids take clipboards, their paper, and go around the classroom trying to find 100 words to write down. They love this activity and they always get excited to see how many words they can find. 

 



 

Story and 100 Things Activity
Then, we read the story 100th Day Worries and decided what we would collect if we needed to collect 100 Things. The cute 100 Things collection page comes from FirstGradeBlueSkies Teacher's Pay Teachers page.  She did a great job designing these cute 100th day pages and the best part of all...they are FREE!

 

I would have 100 clothes because they are so very stylish.

I would have 100 diamonds because they are so very shiny.

 

 

 

Special 100th Day Glasses

This is one of my favorite activities that I've done every year in first grade. This one just takes a die cut machine for the numbers and a craft stick.  These special glasses are decorated by the kiddos and then used with a math activity later in the day.

 

 

 



 



 

 

Math - Find 100 Stars:

For this activity, the kiddos use their special 100th day glasses. Now, these glasses have magic powers. These glasses make it possible for the kids to find the 100 stars I've hidden around the classroom.  For this activity, the night before, I hide 100 stars (with the numbers 1 through 100 written on them) around the room. Some in easy locations and some in some harder locations.  The kids use their special glasses and search the room for the stars. Then, after about two minutes, we start filling in the 100's pocket chart.  After filling in the stars we've found, we then see what we're missing and go on the hunt again. Some years you end up losing a star or two, but it's always funny to see how excited they get when they find that missing star a month after 100th day.

 

Hidden Stars:

 

 

 

Pocket Chart:

 

 

 

To end our day, we talked about what we would buy with $100 and filled it in on a cute worksheet. It's pretty funny to see what the kids think they can buy with $100.  Afterwards, we decorated this cute 100th Day Bookmark that my teacher candidate found.

 

Hope everyone had or a has a great 100th day of school!

 

 

 



New Year's Resolutions

I'm aware New Year's was a few weeks ago, but this is one of my favorite activities so I had to post it.  Every year on the first day back from Winter Break we talk about New Year's resolutions.  I always start by reading the book Squirrel's New Year's Resolution. This book puts explaining a resolution in simple terms and also shows some examples that the kids understand.

After reading the story, we come up with a list of resolutions. The kids pick things like - "I will read more books, I will try to stay on green, I will try to help people, etc.  Then, they write their resolution on a piece of "toast" (used the die cut machine at school) and we make a "Toast to 2013." See bulletin and examples below.

I want to help others be good students.

 



I want to be a better reader.

 

I want to make people happy.

 

 

And, a belated Happy New Year's to everyone!



Time flies....

Wow - I have absolutely no idea where December and half of January has gone.  Things got pretty busy as they do during the holiday season so now I have lots of catching up to do with  my blog. Look for lots of blog entries today and I apologize that some are out of order (a New Year's post), but I figure better late then never.  Hope everyone is enjoying their 3 day weekend!