Summer is cruising, isn't it? I have loads of stuff to get organized and created for next year but I've barely made a dent in the pile of stuff I brought home from my classroom. Yes, I know I should've known better. The pile is sitting in my FRONT ROOM of all places. I think it's staring at me right now calling out, " Please, please organize me or I'll start haunting you in your teacher dreams" (insert maniacal laugh). The one thing I have almost completed is a digital version of my Writer's Eye board. All I have to do is package all the files together and then put it up on Teachers Pay Teachers. Hooray! My goal is to have it all finished by Saturday. Anyway, instead of tackling the teacher pile,with all my "extra" time, I've developed a bit of an obsession... blog crushing err stalking. Yeah, I've got a major crush on a few teacher blogs. One of the blogs I love, love, love is First Grader at Last by the talented Mrs. Sarah Cooley. She has so many amazing ideas and I love to peek into her classroom via the blog. Her enthusiasm inspires me to be a better teacher. Well, I took one of her activities and did it with my first graders this past May. It was her Bossy E idea. Well, my first grade team and I decided we'd have the whole first grade make wanted posters and display them all over the school so we could catch the rascally bossy e and bring him to "first grade justice". The kids were so into this activity. They took the bossy e concept to lengths that we couldn't have crafted. We'd be walking in the school and one of the kids would point out that they just spotted bossy e on one of the student council posters, the second grade bulletin board, etc. I even asked the other grade level teachers to pop in to our classrooms and say things like,"I wanted to let you know I just saw bossy e. That rascal took my plan and turned it into a plane". Our awesome ELL teacher, who turns out to be quite the actress, told the kids that she had a cute ring on her finger and then bossy e left the word cute and turned the cute ring into a cut! She really did have a big cut and a giant band-aid on her finger so the kids were enthralled. My fellow teacher and myself then cut out a giant lowercase Styrofoam e, painted it read, and dubbed it the infamous bossy e. The grand finale of the whole bossy e showdown was that a police officer, an awesome parent, found bossy e and brought him to our classroom and told us he was taking bossy e down to the station for kicking other vowels in the pants and being too bossy. It was pure learning awesome-ness! Thank you Mrs. Cooley for the idea and inspiration.
P.S If you're wondering what the underline and v-e marking means it's part of the Wilson Fundations program my district implements. It stands for vowel-consonant-e. ;)
Here is the Styrofoam bossy e we made. I brought him home for the summer to do some embellishing. I'm imagining some Sesame Street style eyes, black eyebrows, and more.
AHHH!!! I absolutely LOVE what y'all did with Bossy E!!! Stop. It. Right. Now!!! The posters turned out SO CUTE too!!!! Thanks so much for sharing this with me! You have totally just inspired me to make a styrofoam e too! What an awesome idea!!
ReplyDeleteYou rock, Starr!!!
Sarah