So... Just like Lory, I have been working on my classroom.  I will be posting some freebies through out the summer too.  Here are some Non-Fiction and Fiction Anchor charts I made for my classroom. Click here to grab these anchor charts!
This cute clip art is from Nikki at Melonheadz Illustrating.

Have a super weekend!

Web of Understanding..

Since we have been practicing activating our schema, I decided it might be fun to use a book about SPidErs, being October and all...So we thought hard about what we already knew about them. We knew lots of stuff already. Such as they have 8 legs, they are hairy, they have long legs, and they are poisonous. My favorite, they are scary and creepy crawly... (which I think they totally are) After we activated our schema, we read a book about spiders. We learned lots of neat information about these fun animals. After we were done, we made a web of understanding. Each first grader had to say something they learned when they got the ball of string, then throw it to someone else.Presenting our web of understanding.

Hiking boots at a WeDDinG?

So I wanted to teach schema to my students I was kinda bored with my same old lesson, and there are such great things out there for like everything imaginable, so I decided to google it. I came across this site.

http://teacherweb.com/fl/mcdonaldelementary/mrscervone/schemaunitofstudy.pdf

I read through the lesson and thought it would be perfect to help my little firsties schema. I totally wish someone was watching as I did my lesson. It was perfect. It went the way you always want your lesson to go. I did the part with the shoes, and we made an anchor chart. It was a lot of fun. I had the kids rolling with laughter as we talked about my stinky, smelly, hiking boots going to a wedding or my high heels huffing through the forest.

We also made the T-chart with a place that the students were familiar with and a place they were not. I chose our aquatic center, because I knew most of them had been there. I had my students do a think pair share. They were so excited talking about their favorite part, what they like to do, ect. Then we wrote their thoughts on the T chart. Next I wrote Yellowstone on the other side of the T chart and had them think pair share. They were so quiet... when I asked about their thoughts, all I got was stones and yellow. We then talked about why they were so quiet and how important schema is for helping us understand the story.

They were so curious about what Yellowstone was, I found a short book on it and read it to them. Then we watched Old Faithful on youtube. They loved it.... I can't wait to try some of the other ideas in this lesson.