Showing posts with label anchor charts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anchor charts. Show all posts
Traditionally, in first grade, I've taught animal classification and the human body for our state science standards.  But with the introduction of the Next Gen Science Standards, life science has shifted to organism structures and heredity.  So, I've developed a new unit to align better with these newer standards.  And I'm SUPER pumped about how we are learning our new big idea: "Organisms have tools for survival!"

Here's an overview of what's covered in our organisms unit.
{Affiliate links are included in this blog post to support this website and my chocolate addiction! :)}

Week 1: What Are Organisms?

The first week of the unit we learn a lot of vocabulary needed for this unit.  We learn what the difference is between living and non-living things through this sort (a digital interactive version is available too!) and this fun organism song.

Then, we start charting what plants and animals can do, have, and need to survive.  We finish this week by comparing plants and animals to gain a deeper understanding of these two categories of organisms.

Week 2: How Are Offspring Like Their Parents? How Do Offspring Learn To Survive?

During the first part of the second week, we learn how babies are like their parents.  We read about and chart names for different animal babies and how they learn to survive.  And we play find your partner with baby animals and their parents.

Then, we research our own traits that we get from our parents.  We send home a family traits survey (with several options for atypical families with adopted or fostered children, etc...).

After the family traits survey homework is returned, we do a carousel activity to tally our trait data for everyone in our class by observing our inherited traits.

And during our math time, we graph our inherited traits!

Week 3: What Do Organisms Use To Survive?

This week we start off by learning about plant parts.  But our focus is to go deeper and learn their jobs for helping the plant survive.  We make a plant parts jobs flip book with this adorable craft option!


Then, we shift to animals and read about adaptations that animals have made to survive.

We set up adaptation stations around the room for kids to rotate through and explore and experience 8 different adaptations animals make.  You can read more about this in depth in this blog post (coming soon!)

One of my favorite activities during these stations is matching animal adaptations to ways humans mimic those adaptations.  It's a great way to build up that background knowledge for the upcoming STEM project later in the week!

STEM Challenge: Copy Cat

During the end of week 3, we work on our STEM challenge!  This one is called copy cat because students are mimicking an organism adaptation to build something to solve a human problem.  This challenge come straight from the Next Gen Standards.

I'm going to be honest here, ya'll.  When I first saw this engineering standard, I was like, "What the heck????"

No lie.  #realtalk

But once I got into creating this unit, I actually really, TRULY love this challenge now.  I feel like we have set up our first graders with enough background knowledge, examples, and experiences with adaptations to help them be successful with this challenge.

Want to see how this challenge works exactly?  And how to make it attainable for littles?  Read this blog post for more detail! (coming soon!)  Here's a sneak peak...

Organism Trade Book List

Want links to the trade books I use in this unit?

Find all of the affiliate links here!
What's Alive
Animal Babies
Animal Babies On the Farm
All In The Family - heredity
How Animal Babies Stay Safe
Born in the Wild
Raising Babies: What Animal Parents Do
Are You My Mother?
The Ugly Duckling
Experiment with Parts of a Plant
The Tiny Seed
What If You Had Animal Feet?
What Do You Do With A Tail Like This?

Snag this unit or grab this bundle of all Next Gen Science Standard Units for First Grade and save!
   


Have you been muddling through the Next Gen Science Standards this year?  I'm not going to lie: they can be a little difficult to understand...but I love a lot of the new content for first grade!  My favorite addition is sun, moon and stars!  This content meshes perfectly with my integrated science unit on weather and has made this already popular unit an even better 6 week unit!  Here's a look at some of the activities from this Sun + Moon + Stars Mini Unit.


Anchor Charts

Anchor charts are a HUGE part of learning new content for young learners.  My firsties use our anchor charts all. the. time.  I especially love finding ways to make each anchor chart unique by using coordinating colors or shapes so that it's easy to remember and easy to find in our room.

Each anchor chart can be printed and posted around the room...

Or you can fill it out on your Smart Board if you're short on space!

Sun Science

One of my favorite science experiments in first grade is our shadow experiment.  You can read about it in detail here, but the look on my firsties' faces when they see their shadow change is priceless every single year!


Moon Science

Brand new to the weather unit this year is phases of the moon!  After charting our learning about the moon, we sequence the phases of the moon using the interactive powerpoint from the mini-unit...

Then, we work at stations to sequence moon phases using the sequencing cards.

And later we work independently to sequence the cycle of the moon!


Stars Science

The last part of this mini-unit is all about stars!  I love tying in some literacy by reading Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star with this study.  It's a simple nursery rhyme, but perfect for deepening our discussion on stars with questions like, Why does the author say stars are like diamonds in the sky?

Then, during our science time we research facts about stars and chart our learning on stars in a can-have-are chart.

The next day, we use the slideshow from the unit (seen in the youtube video earlier) to talk about 5 famous constellations, what they look like and how they got their constellation.  Then, for a STEM connection, we work in productive groups to build our own constellations with marshmallows and toothpicks.  The groups name their constellations and tell the story of how it landed in the sky!

This STEM challenge can be found separately here. or with the rest of the activities and plans in this Sun + Moon + Stars Mini Unit!
With the high ESL population at our school, language skills like verb tense is a real issue.  And, unfortunately, it's not as noticeable when we do informative or opinion writing because we use so many sentence frames to help them write.  But narrative is more of a "free form" style and so language errors happen A LOT!

The first thing we have to master is verb tense.  Even my English kiddos struggle with some of the irregular verbs, so these lessons are perfect for all of my firsties.

So, last week, we spent the week focusing on verbs.  The first day, we talked about the difference between past and present tense.  We discussed the common past ending -ed and how they indicates something already happened.  Then, we charted an example of a common past verb and several "weirdos," or verbs that don't follow the -ed rule.

After we discussed and practice past and present tense whole group, they worked in their table groups to sort past tense verbs used correctly and incorrectly.   {I also have a laminated copy in a literacy station this week}


And one group just had to make theirs into a book, so how could I not take a picture of that cuteness?!?!

The next day, we introduced future verbs and they did another sort with past, present, and future tense.  Of course, I ran a fever that day for like the first time in FOR. EVER. so my intern took over and I didn't get any pics!

We spent the rest of the week modeling verb tense in our model writes during writers workshop and using our "check yourself" language rubric to grade ourselves on our verb tense!  Check out my Verb Tense Sort and other language ideas for our sweet ELL babies in my TPT store!

And find TONS more language and grammar anchor chart templates HERE.


It's November and it's STILL 61 degrees down here in Arkansas!  I'm definitely ready to wear hoodies and boots, but I grateful our leaves have turned colors more slowly...because that gave Cooper and I more time to explore our fall leaves!  Read to find out about our mini, at home unit about leaves in the Fall.

Leaf Collection

First, we collected leaves from several trees and with many different colors.  I let Cooper choose ones he was drawn to and then I picked a few more that I knew we would need for our project (varying colors, shapes and sizes!)

Observe & Sort

Once we got back home, I spread the leaves out on some craft paper and let Cooper study the leaves.

Then we sorted the leaves by similarities.  This was a challenge for my 4 year old.  But I love pushing him because it means he's learning! :)  We charted ways to sort our leaves as we sorted.

He easily thought of sorting them by color...and notice the "green and red" leaves in between the red and green category!  That was his solution for the leaves having both colors.  I love the mind of preschoolers!!

Then we sorted by their what tree they came from.  Yes, I know the two green leaves came from different trees, but I couldn't convince my stubborn 4 year old of that.  So I just chose to let it go and not fight that battle.  #keepinitreal #hegetsithonest

Finally, we sorted our leaves by size.

I love how our anchor chart turned out!!  Craft paper makes some pretty awesome anchor chart paper, doesn't it?!?!

Fall Painting

After we were inspired by all of the beautiful colors of fall, we spent our next learning day reading Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert.

Then, we talked about the colors of leaves.  I added paint colors to his palette as we listed the colors and then he did a q-tip painting!

Cooper LOVED painting with q-tips and I loved that it was an easy cleanup! :)

Leaf Art

Our last project was to read Leaf Man, by Lois Ehlert.  I love the creativity this book inspires!

When we finished reading, Cooper used some of the leaves from our collection to make his own leaf man! I'm hoping we will have more time later this week to let him make other things out of his leaves...that would make an *adorable* creation station to explore leaves, create leaf art and then write about it!

Grab all of these activities and more in my Fall Leaf Collection Mini-Packet!
Sometimes building your class community can feel more like laying down the law the first few weeks of school!  And while laying down the law definitely has its place in my classroom, it has to be balanced with growing relationships with the little people in our classroom.

The first school I taught at was an International Baccalaureate (IB) school.  And even though I don't teach at an IB school anymore, I've taken a few of my favorite elements from that philosophy with me!  The IB attitudes and learner profile were some of my favorite of that curriculum.  I love spending time at the beginning of each year talking about what kind of attitudes we should show and what kind of learners we are expected to be in our classroom.  Not only does it help me learn my students better, but it also helps me "lay down the law" in a more positive way!

Each day we read a book (find the list of books here) and discuss the attitude the character did or didn't show in the story.  We chart our ideas...(grab these anchor charts templates to help!)

Add the book covers only to the templates or add notes from your attitude word discussion too!



And these templates even work great as Brag Boards!  Hang the anchor charts up in your room blank and add student names to an attitude chart when they show that attitude!  ...work that positive reinforcement to your advantage! :)

If you like these awesome attitudes posters, download the FREEBIE sample!

The other thing I love from the IB curriculum was the learner profile.

I love that these words give kids purpose at school.  With awesome attitudes, I am teaching little people how to be awesome adults.  With the learner profile, I'm training little people to become life-long learners.

We have a similar routine with the learner profile words as we do with Awesome Attitudes....

We read and brainstorm ways to demonstrate our focus learner word...


I love attaching each learner profile word with a part of our body because the learner profile is who we are!

Then, we add our focus word in our "I Am A Learner" booklet and illustrate the meaning of the word.

This packet even includes writing prompt papers and more anchor chart and poster options for these words!

Download a FREEBIE sample of the learner profile packet too! :)  Let's make this a *great* start to our school year!
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