Back To School Bilingual Blog Hop!

Writing is a big challenge in first grade.  We want all of our students to be proficient writers by the end of the school year.  How do we achieve that?  It's called writing fluency!!  We have to make sure our students write every single day!  NO EXCUSES!!  

In our class, we start out by writing narratives (not personal)!  We look at a picture and have a conversation on what is happening in the picture.  We then take those ideas and write a wonderful story.  At the same time, we are also building vocabulary for our second language learners in Spanish.

Last year we started with a basic and an easy journal because I had 20 kids new to dual immersion!!!  

This is what it looked like.

   

This year we started with a new type of journal.  My students were in dual language last year so they came in ready to write in Spanish.  We wrote ideas inside the circle map and then wrote a complete story using those same ideas.  Some students copied and others made up their own story, which were super cool to read!!  

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Building Stamina in 1st Grade

Building stamina is first grade wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  It actually took my fourth graders longer than my first graders to build stamina in writing and reading.  My first graders were able to stay in one spot and continuously read and write for 20 minutes.  I actually stopped the timer because I saw some of my students massaging their little hands.    We have two more tasks to go; listening to reading and word work.  I have to admit that I am a bit scared when my students get the chance to pick their activity.  Will there be chaos?  We will soon see!!  

Vocabulary Cards in Spanish

I've always wanted to create these vocabulary cards so that students can learn new vocabulary that I don't have time to teach.  I made these cards to use either during word work or for writing.  

I  printed and laminated a set of 6 for each topic and then taped them onto a file folder.  They are now placed in a bin ready to be used by my kiddos!!!  They are excited to use them as well.  They saw when my volunteer was putting them together.