It’s February 1st, a month and a day from the start of my maternity leave. And things at school have kicked into high gear since New Year’s while I wind down my school year and try to fit everything in with the kids before I go. I’ll be back for 2 weeks in June, but really this is my end-of-year in a lot of ways.
Tag: 1st grade
So it’s Clementine season again with all of my first grade classes. We’re actually almost finished with the now-annual adventures of Clementine, Margaret, and the pigeons.
Before the holidays I took a page out of this teacher’s guide for the book and asked the kids to think about whether they were more like Clementine (messy, active, gets into trouble, comfy clothes) or more like Margaret (neat, nice clothes, tidy room, lots of rules, kind of bossy). Then the kids illustrated some pictures of their characters. I was surprised how many boys identified with neat and tidy Margaret, I thought for sure I’d see some more gender divisions there. It was great, and their pictures were pretty neat, too.
I can’t believe the end of March is finally coming this week. It’s always such a long month, but it’s also a great time with my students, knee-deep in library projects. Here’s what’s been happening in library class this month:
My special needs classes have been reading Dr. Seuss stories, and we made these Horton ears last week.
The kindergartners all took out books for the first time this week, we had a big checkout ceremony in each class. They were really excited.
The 1st grade classes are all up to chapter 5 of Clementine, and the 2nd graders have been learning the layout of the library. We’ve also been talking about how we pick the books we like. This week it was time for a scavenger hunt.
I really love this book.
I do, last April for National Poetry Month I used it with my 3rd graders. Because April is such a short month for us, we didn’t get very far with it. I love Jack Prelutsky in general, and I decided to give this one a shot with my 1st graders this year (my 3rd graders are still reading Hugo Cabret, so we kind of skipped poetry month to make sure we finish by June). For some reason after beefing up my Prelutsky collection this year I neglected to get Scranimals, which would have been a great companion with this. Next year.
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