Reading Between the Lines and a new unit!

Hello Everyone!!
My firsties spend a lot of time with their hands on books.  A huge part of our day is spent simply reading.  Research tells us that the more time kids have interacting with books, the better readers they will become.  I do not take that term "interacting" lightly.  Today we interacted with one of my favorite Valentine books, "The Biggest Valentine Ever" with a focus on inferring. Learning how to infer is a vital component in teaching kids the intricacies of literature, and diving deeper into comprehension.  With all of that in mind, I decided I needed to help that deep dive by incorporating some fun.  Inferring is like "reading between the lines" of the words the author gives us. 
I had to grab some of those funky lined glasses to use for this lesson!! Of Course! So, our anchor reminder chart includes that little visual.

 And the kids had a ball with them as well!

As we were reading, kids took notes on some of the tings they were thinking about or inferring.

sorry this pic got flipped!

Great job kids.  And yes, we will save the glasses for another time!!

And now I'd like to share my newest little unit.  We have begun studying about habitats, interdependence of living things, and the environments around us.  We have decided to start observing fish(guppies) in a fun little fishbowl. Of course I needed to connect learning with literature, so alas, "Memoirs of a Goldfish" by Devin Scillian came to the rescue!  This unit revolves around the themes included in this book. It is a unit that will take about three weeks or so to complete.  It includes poetry, literature response, science (of course), a couple of craft connections, and a ton of math tub and whole group activities. Here are a few pics.

Have kids write a poem, list, observations, whatever you are working on!

Skip counting starting at random numbers game

A take off from "I have, Who has?" game

Multiples of 10 plus single digit numbers game

Memoirs of a First Grader book for kids to write and make

Spatial organization on a number line game

poetry
For your free 100 page unit, swim on over and click here!

If I have already shared this with you, please re-download as I have added a few more games!! :)

Thanks for taking time out of your busy day to enjoy the peek into the life of a first grade classroom!

As always, thanks for your support and encouragement!  My hope is that you can glean even just a tiny spark of an idea from my sharings. Please let me know if this post was helpful to you  at all!!  

Joyfully!

Nancy