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First Grade:
Day 4

Morning Meeting

SEL & Community Building
9:00-9:15

the role of rules

Social Studies, Literacy, & Community Building
9:15-9:45

abc order practice

Literacy
9:45-10:00

snack & recess

Gross Motor Practice
10:00-10:45

Eagle Eye Reading Strategy

Literacy
10:45-11:00

Read To Self

Literacy
11:00-11:10

Science Safety

Science
11:10-11:30

Scientific Method

Science
11:30-12:00

lunch & lunch recess

12:00-1:00

Intro. to makerspace: Paper Folding

STEAM, MakerSpace
1:00-1:50

Clean Up

1:50-2:00

Special areas

2:00-3:00

flexible time

3:00-4:00

early finisher activitIES

enrichment activitY
OPTIONS

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morning meeting

15 minutes - 30 minutes

After completing the group activity, make sure you have a calendar time like described on Day 2.

Officer Buckle Rules

social studies, SEL, Literacy

30 minutes

Part 1

Note: I do not frame my classroom expectations as rules but rather classroom agreements. That said, there are still “rules” of life that are important to follow. 

Before reading, ask students if they have ever heard the word “rule” before, where they have heard it, & what a rule is. After they share, tell them we are going to learn more about rules with this story “Officer Buckle.”

While reading, ask guiding questions like “Why do you think that is a rule?” 

Part 2

After reading, recap that a rule is “a basic thought that is considered true,” where we have heard & see rules – we hear about rules for a game or a parent might have a rule like “don’t open the door without looking out the window first to see who it is,” & why we have rules – to keep us safe, to help us get along. 

In life, things can happen and they have an effect. Rules help us be aware of a danger that might happen if we do something. Let’s take a look at this cause & effect worksheet. Click the star to download the Cause & Effect activity. 

Option: Don’t do the worksheet, just play a game. Give a cause and ask what the effect would be. Do this 5-6 times. Then, have students come up with a cause & effect. 

Abc order independent practice

phonics

9:45-10:00

This time students try out the ABC order activity independently. Of course, they can ask for help. Teach them how to advocate for it if they need it.  

Why: This activity enables students to practice ABC order skills. This also sets the foundation for expectations during the year for whole group independent work. 

Note: I make sure to constantly refer to how this is also sorting & organizing our world – a math skill.

recess

a gross motor activity

Recess – OUTSIDE free play. Visit a park, play in backyard, etc. This can be hard if your student is an individual child. Ask him/her if they want to play with you, jump on a trampoline, kick a soccer ball around, sidewalk chalk, etc.  

Bad weather? Then have inside recess – free choice play with toys, do an active youtube video like this GummyBear Dance.

eagle eye reading strategy

literacy

20 minutes

written instructions

This lesson starts with the conversation that this year we will be learning a lot about reading. We will learn the sounds of the letters which will help us while reading AND we will learn other strategies to help us read. 

Today, I am going to read a story (any story) & if I get stuck on a word, I am going to use “Eagle Eye” – here a show a poster with Eagle Eye on it – to help me figure out what the word might be. Eagle Eye reminds us to look at the pictures while reading. 

Now, I want you to make a poster like mine that you can hang nearby that you can use to reminder you to use Eagle Eye. 

read to self

literacy

10 minutes

Now, we are going to start read to self. Let’s talk about what are some things that good readers do?

As the students list traits of good readers, make the anchor chart seen above. If you’d like, click the picture and you can download your own version.

Then tell the students that “today we are going to see how long we can go to our seats & read like good readers – keeping our voices off, eyes on our books, etc. I wonder if we can do it for one whole minute!  Don’t forget if you get stuck on a word – use Eagle Eye!”

Have students gather their books and then go to a reading spot. 

Start the timer when the whole group is ready. Hopefully they can do this for 1 minute. If they can’t, then just start it at “Let’s see how long we can read like good readers.” If they weren’t able to make it 1 minute (look up from book day dreaming, going to bathroom/water, talking), then I just stop it at that time. Then compliment them & praise. Now, I wonder if we can do it for 2 whole minutes! I usually stop at 2 minutes on the first day because I want to make sure they have time to share how they used Eagle Eye. I call them all to the carpet with their book bins. I ask them to share if they used Eagle Eye. They get to come up to the front of the class, put their book on the projector, & share.  

Science Safety

science

15 minutes

Step 1:
Hurtful vs Harmful

Step 2:
My Science Pledge

Students either repeat this aloud (you say a phrase then they repeat). Or they can cut it out and glue it in their science notebook.

Click the pledge below to download a paper version.

Step 1 of the Scientific Method:
ask a question

science

30 minutes

This activity is to practice the first step of the scientific method. The idea is for the students to come up with their own question that they can answer. The only supply they have is 2 pieces of play dough. The teacher should guide the students to come up with the question of “What will happen if I mix the 2 colors?” 

Just click the picture to download the experiment. 

Example of how to guide students: If students say “I wonder what will happen if I heat up the playdough?” Teacher responds: That’s a great question but heat isn’t one of the items we have. 

lunch & lunch recess

12:00-1:00

What a great time to try out a cooking lesson! 

Paper Folding

MakerSpace

30 minutes - 1 hour (or more!)

Step 1: Who are Makers and what is a MakerSpace?

Today, we are going to learn all about what a Maker is. The little girl in this story is a maker, let’s read and see what a Maker is. 

After reading say, we are going to get to be Makers. What are characteristics of makers? {make stuff, stick to it, keep trying}.

Exactly! While we are making, we want to make sure we are staying within our space – our MakerSpace. This is the area where we have our supplies and have space to make. 

Okay, ready? Watch the video below to see what we will be making today!

Step 2: Paper Folding

Click the picture below to download written instructions for lesson

This picture shows details for a MakerSpace lesson. In this lesson, students read Mean Jean Recess Queen and then make their own paper playgrounds using a MakerSpace.

flexible time

3:15-4:00

The time allotted to the activities planned for today are the average time it takes a student. In the classroom, students might be really engaged in the activity and so the class will spend more time on it. Throughout the day, students are pulled for speech therapy small group classes, 45 minute reading intervention small groups, math intervention small groups, and more. Also, we have transition times where the whole class has a bathroom break after recess. I did not include those times in this schedule above. Instead, I clumped all those transition times and small group intervention pull out times together and created this flexible time. 

Activities that are great to do during this time: any intervention support and reteach practice they need, complete assignments they haven’t completed yet, upload work samples to child’s classroom teacher, ZOOM meetings, student works on IPAD apps, enrichment activities, reteach lesson that student struggled with, etc. 

Beginning of the year
flexible early finisher activities

anything & everything journal

In this journal students can independently do anything & everything they want – draw, write a story, solve math problems, etc once they finish their work. I do tell them that it has to be school appropriate. They only get one journal for the entire year so they need to fill out every page of the journal so there is no white spaces left. 

Note: while this activity is available all year, it really does dwindle in use during the year once I introduce other fast finisher activities that focus on extension.

printable math games

Just click on one of the puzzle

challenges and print!

Math APPs/online games

Read

Grab your favorite book and read! 

Bonus: try out a new reading place 

 like resting with your back up 

 against a tree!

work on writing

Write a story, a letter to a grandparent, OR click the pencil above to check out some different Work On Writing activities! Suggestion: set up a folder to collect these stories. 

Passion Project

What is something you’d like  to learn more about? This is a time where you will research it so that you can learn more about it. Then, use what you’ve learned and create something that shares that information with others!

 

Suggestion: As you learn about it, write 1 fact on a flash card. Read and learn, watch a show about it, or observe it in real life to learn about it. Once you have 10 flashcards, create a project that showcases what you’ve learned!

 

Project ideas: Want to learn about an animal? After learning about it, create a model of it living in it’s habitat OR create a game that people can play! For example if you learned about dinosaurs, create a game where someone enters the time of dinosaurs and goes through the game board. While they are going through the game they have to watch out for things that happened during the time of the dinosaurs like acid rain. 

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