Grumpy Cat, writing activities and a quote

This week was another whirlwind and I hardly got a chance to post anything!  I wanted to take a moment and share a couple things we've been doing this week.


BUT first, my younger cousin came to visit our classroom yesterday.  She volunteered for one week during our summer school program so about half of my students already knew her.  Which means she's become famous in my classroom.  When my students came in and saw her there, all of my students began whispering..."Jackie, it's Jackie"...if you watched the show Lost it was sort of like when they would whisper "the others", it was really cute.  So needless to say they were thrilled that she came to visit again.


The cutest moment was when one of my students asked her where she was staying, and she responds, with Mrs. Castro...they looked at each other like, they couldn't believe it...his next question was the cutest though..."do you know Max and Ellie?!", he asked in a whisper.  When she responded that yes she knew them and in fact they pestered her all night, she moved up into the super hero category for some of my students...


I told you Max and Ellie are famous in my classroom.

Here are our Grumpy Cat writing projects.  I got this idea on anther blog, as usual.  We found it at Mrs. T's First Grade Class...  Looking back at her blog, hers are amazingly well done...ours are a bit more...interpretive, or avant-garde.  We buddied up with the bilingual 1st graders to do this.  The kids love buddying up!  Second graders feel like big kids for beings so knowledgeable, and the first graders are excited to work with the bigger kids.  They all loved the Grumpy Cat story and could make great connections...we all have grumpy moment, right?!

This was a good experience for me too, because I got the chance to get to know the kids who are coming up to me next year.  It's a big group, and a bit infamous.  But getting a chance to work with them made me less intimidated by this group.  

We also spent a some time doing the super cute St. Patrick's day freebie you can find at The Teacher Wife. The kids really enjoyed this project and I needed something to make my room at least slightly in tune with the season.  They turned out very nice.

Also, I switched out a bulletin board.  I'm not a big bulletin board changer-upper, so this is kind of a big deal.  I originally made this a soccer bulletin board, painted the field on the paper and everything!  (Very proud of myself!)  BUT I've run out of room on my classroom walls and bulletin boards so I had to use this one outside of my classroom to display more student work.

Original board:

New bulletin board displaying a writing project that took us forever to get finish.  Sometimes I struggle to work up the fortitude needed to finish these larger writing projects.  But we finally got to it.

The students wrote about what they want to be when they grow up and why.  They then created collages representing what they wanted to be.  This was my first collage experience and HOLY MOLY was it stressful.  Students didn't really have strategy for spelling out their selected vocation....which means they'd look through an entire magazine for a "P" and then start all over to look for an "O"...

Note to self, next time teach collage strategies before doing this!!!!

They did turn out quite cute.  Her are a couple examples:

Chef

 Police Officer

Mesero  - Waiter...this is one of my kids who isn't ready to begin writing in English.  

That's it for today.  I want to post soon about the spelling program I've been using - Words Their Way.  I'm so happy with this program and how it provides automatic differentiation and a deeper understanding of where my students lie in terms of English development.

Quote of the day:

Is that the movie with whats-her-name?  Yes.

The one who's in whatch-ma-call-it?  Yes.

My sister speaks my language.

Cheers,Mrs. Castro