Student Teaching in grade 1!

It sure has been a great five weeks here in Mrs. Obach's class! The Grade ones have taught me so many new things like coding, how to use Book Creator, and how to do Daily Five ELA and Math. I have so enjoyed my time at HES and am very sad to be leaving.

Our last book for week 6 of the Global Read Aloud was Friendshape by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. Amy Krouse Rosenthal used shape characters to remind us what good friends do. There were also lots of funny jokes that we really enjoyed. After reading Friendshape we decided to create our own friendshape pictures  and write about what we felt was important for a good friend to do. We used fun paper cut-out shapes to create our pictures. We sure had a great time doing this activity!

Amy Krouse Rosenthal has certainly become a favorite other for all of us here in grade one.

Global Read Aloud: The OK Book

Our week 5 book for The Global Read Aloud was The OK Book.  We were so inspired by Amy Krouse Rosenthal's work that we wrote our own OK book with our student teacher, Miss. Barkley.  Check out our book:

Global Read Aloud: There Was Much Exclaiming

Our book for week 4 of the Global Read Aloud was ! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal.  Our class really enjoyed this wonderful story about an exclamation mark learning that it is okay to be different.  In the story, the exclamation mark learns to exclaim all sorts of fun words and phrases.  We had a great time writing and exclaiming our own words and phrases.  Using ChatterPix, we even made the ! character do the talking!  Check out our work below:




We really enjoyed exclaiming all sorts of things and I know this will be a valuable activity to build on as we learn to be expressive Grade 1 readers!  I loved the positive message that this book shared about embracing our individuality and special talents.  Amy Krouse Rosenthal is fast becoming our favourite author with her meaningful, yet entertaining and funny books.  Check out the book trailer for !  here. 

Global Read Aloud: More than Just Reading!

We kicked off the Global Read Aloud on October 5th and we've had so much fun reading and learning together since then.  The GRA is a wonderful opportunity to promote rich, deep learning while connecting and collaborating with other classrooms.  Our class is interacting with classrooms in Ohio, Illinois, Virginia and Thailand to engage in a variety of activities linked to the GRA books.

Here's a sample of what we've been up to:

Making Connections
We shared our personal connections to the text Chopsticks on a digital Padlet bulletin board.  Check out our ideas at the 2KG blog.  It was interesting to read how other students connected to the text and their ideas even inspired more connections from our class.

Vocabulary Building & Word Study
We loved our first book, Chopsticks, and reread it MANY times.  We used our Daily 5/CAFE literacy strategy "Tune in to Interesting Words" to learn new vocabulary and created a Mindmeister web of words to share with our partner classrooms.

Inspired by the students in 2KG class in Thailand, we studied compound words and shared our list with our partner classrooms. 

Data Collection & Graphing
We completed the 2KG online survey for Duck! Rabbit! They found out that more students thought it was a rabbit. 

We also graphed our class opinions for Duck, Rabbit and shared with our partner classrooms.  

In preparation for a Skype discussion with Ms. Loverde's class, we collected data and graphed our favourite book so far.  When we met on Skype, each class shared their results and we found that both classes like It's Not Fair the best.  Then, students from both classrooms took turns sharing which book they liked the best and why.  We had a lot in common - many of us liked the same parts of books or enjoyed the books for similar reasons. 

Skype Story time - a cross-classroom read aloud!
Sadly, our copy of It's Not Fair is STILL backordered.  Thankfully, we have awesome partner classrooms willing to help us out.  Mrs. Grodek and her class in Brooklyn, Ohio read the story with us on Skype earlier this week and also recorded it for us to enjoy.

I can hardly believe that we are halfway through the Global Read Aloud!  We have had so many great learning experiences so far and we are really enjoying this special author study! 

Global Read Aloud: Chopsticks & Meeting 2KG

Today our Global Read Aloud books by Amy Krouse Rosenthal arrived!  We were so excited to see our set of books for this reading project. 

Right away, we decided to read aloud this week's featured book, Chopsticks.  Our class thought it was funny and we enjoyed the beautiful illustrations.

We also met another GRA partner classroom today!  The 2KG class in Bangkok, Thailand sent us a video to say hello.  Using Bing Maps, we added their city to our map and looked at how far away they are from us! 

We were also surprised to learn that at 11AM this morning in Canada it was already 11PM in Thailand.  In order to share our ideas and learn with our new friends, we will have to use messages and videos rather than live video calls.  We started by sharing ideas on this Padlet board created by 2KG teachers Ms. Jennifer Baccon & Ms. Kathryn Grossi.  Their focus question for us was "How did you connect to this book?"  Many students in our class could relate to being separated from a special person (just like the Chopsticks decide to spend time apart in the book).

We are looking forward to learning more about the 2KG class and sharing our ideas about our read aloud books!