I wanted to take some time today to share (3) different retelling strategies that work with my first grade students. Hopefully you find them useful as well! At the beginning of the year, I teach my students the 3 ways to read a book: read the illustrations, read the text, and retelling the story. These […]

Do you use Reader’s Workshop in your first grade classroom?!   It was an absolute game-changer for me when I started researching and implementing Reader’s Workshop and its benefits in a primary classroom. I really wanted to get away from the overwhelming prep of literacy centers and I had my “aha!” moment when I walked […]

It is no surprise that I love a good read aloud. I have written numerous posts about why I love interactive read alouds and spent years finding the perfect picture books to use to teach different skills in my primary classroom. It wasn’t until later that I began to dive into some of our favorite […]

Book clubs in first grade?! It may seem like a stretch, but the Spring is such a great time to get your students ready and used to reading, thinking about, and discussing books with their peers instead of me, the teacher! When done right, it can be such a fun learning experience for both the […]

Writing reviews, subtraction strategies, & more! Well, this momma is full swing back into teaching mode! My first graders and I are getting used to one another again and trying to continue our learning without skipping a beat. It is an interesting transition to come back after maternity leave. My classroom was in someone else’s […]

We are three weeks in and my data binder is well under way.   Our benchmark and QPS scores are finished and are being used to create groups for guided reading as we speak. Hopefully, I can start some groups next week! I thought I would share some data tracking sheets for you!   Pin it: […]

Last year, I taught how to make inferences for quite some time. With such an emphasis on close reading, I wanted my students to read between the lines, to dig deeper, and to find out the answer to the question, “what is the author really trying to say?!”   I spent a lot of time […]

Do your first graders love Mo Willems? Mine sure do and we have been learning alllllllll about Mo Willems this week! Pigeon, Elephant & Piggie, and Knuffle Bunny… my students are loving being immersed in all things Mo. We started the author study on Monday learning a little bit about Mo Willems and then throughout […]

Monday funday! We started off our day making some text-to-self connections and I must brag for a minute, my kids did an amazing job. First, we reviewed what a text-to-self connection was and made a quick little anchor chart. Then, we read Thank You, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco (click below for the book). During […]