Writing and More Writing!

We've been writing a lot lately.  I made these fun little story journals to change up our morning work routine.

 

Everyone picks a different journal every day, and each child writes at least five sentences about the topic on the front of the journal.  Afterward, each child goes over his/her work and checks for uppercase letters and punctuation.  It's Day 2, and so far things have gone impressively well.  We'll add more topics from time to time, but right now students can choose from food, animals, vacations, snow, family, movies, sports, and the ouch! journal.  First graders have loads of interesting injury stories, so that one is pretty popular! 

We've also been learning about adjectives in writing.  Last week, we made adjective wheels. 

 We discussed that adjectives come before nouns in English.  Miss Berbert has also been using adjectives in Spanish class, and one of the first graders astutely observed that adjectives come after the nouns in that language.  It's always amazing how much you can learn about your own language by learning another one...

After the wheels were done, it was time to write.  I asked the class to make up a story about the pet shop on the wheel, using the same animals if desired.  They needed to use at least three adjectives in the story, and they could not be the same as the adjectives given on wheel.  

We just started a new chapter in math about number relationships and patterns.  I am going to put lots of place value activities in our work stations, because even though we've finished that chapter, I don't feel like kids can ever get enough exposure to place value!