BIG NEWS...

Hello all!! WOOOOOOOOOWWW it has been far to long. I have to apologize for neglecting my little blog. I have truly missed connecting with my fellow bloggers but my mind has been else where! My husband and I have big news.....
we are EXPECTING!!

We found out in July but of course made it official (at least facebook official) in August! I am currently almost 16weeks and due at the end of March! We are thrilled as this is our first little one and I have to say that being pregnant is a lot harder than it looks! One word sums it up so far, exhausted!

I promise to update you this week on everything that we are doing in our class! Until then, happy teaching!

AW and AU Phonics Unit (Awesome Automobiles)

Zoom, Zoom... Make way for the newest little mini unit that I have put together! This week we are teaching the phonics skill for aw and au and in order to make it a fun lesson for the kids I came up with the a fun automobile theme! My boys will love this because I am envisioning toy cars and traffic signs and road maps (since we are teaching mapping skills as well, yippee) ! I will update you with pictures from the lesson at the end of the week but for now go ahead and click on the picture below to grab your copy! Enjoy your week and let me know how you teach this skill in your classroom! Blessings to you!

 

 

Kelly Thigpen

First ever weather unit give-away!

Happy Monday all!
I hope that you have had a chance to enjoy some of this gorgeous weather that we have been having (at least here in the sunshine state of Florida)! I have FINALLY finished my newest unit called Reading the Weather and I'm totally new at this free give-away business, so here goes! If you are anything like me FREE ='s AMAZING..... The first 3 people to comment below will receive this entire unit for FREE! Don't you love the sound of that?

Enjoy the remaining part of your week and comment away!

Graphing Galore

Lately we have been doing lots of fun things with graphing! I LOVED this week because the students get so focused in on what we are doing! To introduce this lesson, I taught students what a graph was and the various types of graphs. Then we went around the room and graphed our favorite type of weather!

Of course with it being Dr. Suess' birthday, we graphed our favorite Dr. Seuss book!

 

We have also been learning about non-fiction books in reading (I'll be sharing ll of those ideas soon).. I love that this graphing lesson was totally common core!!

 

After the students had a week to practice graphs all together, I then gave them a chance to create a graph of their own. They had to figure out a subject and then walk around the classroom to conduct a survey. After that they had to use their data and turn it into a graph to share with the class. They LOVED this activity and still spend a good part of the day trying to figure out a way to make up a new survey!

Aren't they having a BLAST!

We have also been working on contractions. We began our learning by making the contractions alligator. (Not sure who to give credit to for this, but thank you! It was adorable)

The next day we turned into surgeons for one of my favorite activities of all times. CONTRACTION DOCTOR! I gave each student a card with two words on it and it was there job to take their scapula's (scissors) and cut out the bad parts of the words out and then bandage them back together with a band-aid (which is their apostrophe!) Thank you First Grade Parade for this fun idea!

 

We have also been learning the -or and -ore sounds, which if you haven't noticed, there are hardly any resources on this skill. So, I created my own! Click on the image below for your copy!

 

 

Hope that you are enjoying your week! Only 3 days till spring break for us! Whoop whoop!

Rookie Teacher of the Year for the Number 1 district in Florida!

Hello from "Cloud 9"..haha.... I am so excited because just a few weeks ago, I was honored with being titled, St. Johns County "Rookie Teacher of the Year!"hip-hip-hooray! Just to give you a bit of detail, every school in our district (38 of us) selects 1 TOY and ROY for the year. Once those are selected we interview with the district to then possible be selected as the county wide TOY and ROY which is announced at an annual banquet put on by our amazing Education Foundation. The banquet was beautiful and I was joined by my wonderful administration, team, husband and in-laws. Being surrounded by such an amazing support group that night was so precious and humbling. I could not have asked for a better group of people to spend my life with. If you are like me and stay at school all hours of the day, your team becomes your family. It feels great to be able to represent our school and  to make them each so proud! I think that every teacher hopes to win a title such as this, but when I walked into the banquet room and saw teachers that were fellow classmates at Flagler College and peers who were selects for various job interviews after graduation, I knew that there would be no way that I would win.  Despite every one's advice about taking a job at a title one school, my heart had been called to these students since the first day that I volunteered. Back to the evening, our superintendent began reading off the bio of the winner and it didn't even register that I fit all of the pieces to what he was saying. Realization hit when I heard my name called and my table stood up in an uproar of cheering and celebration. After being nudged by my husband to get up, my knee trembling self made it up to the front of the room, somehow! I can say that I should have listened to every ones advice when they told me to have something prepared to say to everyone just in case. Of course I didn't prepare and lucky enough for me, my wonderful husband recorded it for me to see later! Who knew that those few minutes could be such a blur afterwards? 

Check out the video below!

 Video of Rookie Teacher Announcement
Flagler College Article

Here are some pictures from the night!

After shock!

Thank you sweet Sam for all of your love, support and continually listening to me talk about school! Those of you with non-teacher husbands know what I mean! :)

My wonderful administration for giving me a job and chance as a "rookie" teacher!

This team is a blessing. Love them!

I will forever remember that moment because I knew that I had made my school, team and family proud! As if the night of the banquet wasn't enough, I was showered with beautiful flowers, cards, balloons and my very own parking spot at the school!

Needless to say, all of this excitement has been so much fun and a huge honor. To God be the glory for the great things that He has done! Please remember that the Lord can do immeasurably more than you can ever ask or hope for if you just seek after His will and plan for your life!

Blessings to you all,

Kelly Thigpen

 

Monday Brain...

Hello again, I guess you can blame my forgetfulness throughout the day on my "Monday Brain". I know that I am not the only one feeling it, haha...
I totally forgot to mention my star struck moment that I had at the Sean Covey, Leader in Me Conference that I attended a few weeks ago. Sean Covey's father is the 7 Habits author and an inspirational speaker from around the world. It was so refreshing to walk into schools and her testimonies of students taking ownership and leading in the classroom. I have a long road ahead of me but it was a huge sigh of relief to get away with some AMAZING ladies from my school. Here we are with Sean Covey himself:

 

 

The day after returning home from this conference was the 100th day of school and I think that I actually felt 100 years old after that day. To celebrate the day, we challenged our little ones to dress as if they were 100 years old and to bring in 100 pieced of their favorite snack. It was nice to take the morning and relax and read, as old people do I guess. For writing that day, we read a sweet book about grandparents and then brainstormed a list of things that 100 years old can and cant do. Here are some of the things that they came up with...

These kids think of the craziest things don't they! We also took some time out to mix our favortie things together, since one of my students claimed that old people cant even taste their food anymore, and spent some time talking about measurements! Just when we thought that we had enough, one of my sweet blessings of a practicum student came in and gave each of my students one of these pintrest inspired treats! I don't know about you but college aged future teachers are a huge blessing in our classroom and we are so fortunate to have a college right down the road from us that is full of eager student teachers!

 

 

Here is a picture of my team getting our 100 year old lady on!

 

On another note, we have been preparing for our upcoming "Living Museum" where each student has a significant symbol or person to research and become. In preparations for that we watched a brain pop video on what American symbols were and did an informational writing piece on facts that we learned. I wish I had a picture to show you but I guess I didn't get one of those. I did get one of the Statue of Liberty lesson that we did! This is always on of my favorite lessons because we involve more than one subject, I guess you could say common core... haha..... But we started out by watching a video about the Statue of Liberty and then read an informational piece to give us some more facts. For writing, we wrote some similes for the statue such as "The Statue of Liberty is a green as_______."  "The Statue of Liberty is a tall as_____" and "The Statue of Liberty use to be as shiny as______." After writing and a directed drawing, we did the penny experiment to see if we could turn the penny green. After a few days it worked and my kids were floored! I never seen them so engaged! So good....

 

Forgot to mention that the week before, we studied constellations and the students were so mesmerized that I let them create their own constellation and write a fiction story about it!

 

Also, one last thing I promise, I have been trying to come up with some fun ways for my students to practice spelling, please let me know if you have any advice. I feel like they are bored to death with the ways that I have out for them so any fresh ideas would be amazing!

Here is one of their favorites though....