Back-to-School Read Alouds for Bilingual 1st Graders

Hey everyone!  We are getting to that time:  where we don't want to let go of those last moments of summer, but that Target Dollar Spot has us thinking about back-to-school.

I have some tried and true back-to-school read alouds that I read to my students every year and I thought that I would share a few of my favorites for our primary bilingual students.  To start with this three-part series, I wanted to share some of my top read alouds for first grade bilinguals (click on any picture or link to purchase the book).

Un beso en mi mano by Audrey Penn is a favorite (and a tear-jerker) of one of my good friends who teaches in a first grade bilingual classroom.  It talks about going to school and missing your family, but knowing that they are always in your heart.

Cristantemo by Kevin Henkes is another first week favorite!  Cristantemo is in love with her name until she goes to school and the kids make fun of her name.  This story is great about being proud of who you are!

David va al colegio by David Shannon is a great book for teaching the rules for the first week of school!  It is great to talk about what we do and don't do at school.  There are so many extension activities that lead to a natural discussion of school expectations from this book.

¿Cómo van a escuela los dinosaurios? by Jane Yolen is another book that is great for discussing the rules and expectations of school.  I like how it starts with non-examples of school behaviors and then goes into how we should behave at school.  It sets up perfectly for a t-chart of school expectations.

Clifford va a la escuela by Norman Bridwell is a great book for the first week of school because it gets the kids excited about a book series.  The students will probably read a lot of Clifford books in first grade and how great is it to introduce this beloved character the first week of school?

Froggy va a la escuela by Jonathan London introduces another beloved character that your first graders will read about all year.  It is fun to compare Froggy's school life and the students' school life (do we eat flies at lunch?)

Así vamos a la escuela by Edith Baer is a great book for discussing school and education as a global concept.  This book is perfect for comparing and contrasting different cultures while still staying on level for first grade.

Finally, Junie B. en primer grado (¡por fin!) by Barbara Park is a great first month of school read aloud.  First graders are excited about chapter books and they immediately relate with Junie B.  

As bilingual and dual language teachers we know how hard it is to find great books in Spanish; I would love to know what books you read to your kiddos for back-to-school!  Comment below if you read any of these books with your firsties or if you have any other favorites that you would add to this list!

Come back tomorrow for more selections for back-to-school read alouds in a bilingual 2nd grade classroom!

4th of July Bilingual Blog Hop

Happy 4th of July everyone!

I have to say, this is my most favoritest of holidays.  I am not sure exactly why, but I love the grilling out, picnics, and most of all:  the fireworks (yes, I am just a 8-year-old child)!  This year Hubby, Gracie, and I will be going to my sister's for some grilling and family time.  Then we will be joining some friends at the park to watch the fireworks!  I can't wait!

             

                                             
I am also so excited about being a part of the Bilingual Bloggers' 4th of July Blog Hop.  I can't wait to see what everyone has in store!

My freebie that I am offering is part of a bigger bundle in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, Gracieface Learning.  These packs are my baby because I have been working on it for the last month and just uploaded it yesterday!  A little background before I reveal it...

Ask anyone around my school what one of my passion projects this year was and they will tell you: interactive notebooks.  I am a huge fan of them!  I even got to present district-wide last year on interactive notebooks in the classroom:

{Insert awkward PD selfie.}

My good friend wanted to do interactive notebooks with her kindergarten bilingual kiddos this year and we played around with many different styles.  After all of the trial and error, I think I finally found the perfect product!

Mis libritos interactivos del abecedario - Set 1

Mis libritos interactivos del abecedario - Set 2

Libritos interactivos del abecedario - Set 3

Libritos interactivos del abecedario - Set 4

Mis libros interactivos del abecedario are different than any regular alphabet book out there.  It seems that companies are always trying to push a translated version of their product on us!  And we know better!  Our students don't learn their alphabet letter by letter, but rather syllable by syllable (sound by sound)!  That's what I love about these books!  There are a couple of pages where the students will work on letras mayúsculas and letras minúsculas (capital and lower-case letters), but the rest is all about syllable reading.  I think these will be great in a kindergarten classroom or as intervention in a first grade classroom!

I put together a sample for everyone today in honor of our blog hop.  And it's not just a 'sample' it is the whole first book!  I think a majority of us start with letter m, so I wanted to give you a sample that you could use in your classrooms right away!

Mis libritos interactivos del abecedario - FREEBIE - Book M

Click on the link to download the sample book!

I hope everyone has a great 4th of July!  Now head over to Tabitha at Flapjack Education to continue on your bloggy hop way!

Teacher Appreciation Gift Card Giveaway!

What would you do if you had an extra $25 to spend for your classroom?  Me, I would easily spend it in the "dollar" spot at Target (why even bother calling it the dollar spot... I never just spend a dollar.)

Well, in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week, the collaborative blog that I am a part of, iTeach Second, is hosting a $100 gift card giveaway!

You can win one of the four $25 gift cards to Target, Starbucks, Amazon, or Teachers Pay Teachers! Starting today, you can head over to the blog and enter for your chance to win!  Click on any of the pictures and they will take you over to iTeach Second!  Good luck!

Animal Classification

Hey everyone!  In second grade we have launched our animals and environments unit with a blast!  This 6-week unit is always fun to start right after winter break: the kids are so engaged with this whole unit.

As many of you know our one-way dual language program at our school is made up of thematic units (K-3).  These units can be anywhere from 3 weeks to 6 weeks long.  So this animals and environments unit will look like:

Week 1 - Animal Classifications
Week 2 - Desert
Week 3 - Forest and Rainforest
Week 4 - Arctic
Week 5 - Ocean and Pond
Week 6 - Dioramas

The first week of this unit we concentrated on the seven types of animals (these are the ones that we concentrate on in second grade) so when we went into each environment, we could talk about all of the groups within the habitat.  As you all know I could sit and tell the students that mammals have this and that and fish have this...  but my teammate and I wanted to come up with an exploration for the kiddos to learn about each group.  Enter animal flipbooks...

For the research time I set up bins of books around the room: each bin was a different group of animals.  The students traveled around the room with their supply boxes, learning buddies, and flipbooks.  I used a timer and gave them five minutes at each station - we did this for three days; the majority of the students got their books done in that time, but I had to keep the book bins off to the side for a few days for my stragglers.

Sentence prompts are huge in dual language methods, so of course I gave them a sentence prompt for what they were to write inside of their flipbooks; even with sentence prompts the kids had many different answers... I love it!

I was very proud of their work -- they were, too!  Now that we have ventured into the desert, forest, and rainforest they are experts in the animals in each environment.  Even though these are in Spanish, they got to share these with their second grade buddies from another monolingual class, and it was cool to see their language transfer in the same subject!

November Bilingual Blog Hop

It's November... That means my birthday is near (November 7th!), pumpkin pie, and soon... and the 30 days of thankfulness on social media will be starting.

I haven't ever participated in one of those 30 days things, but when I read them they do make me take a second and think about all that I am thankful for.

Well, the theme of this Bilingual Blog Hop is things that we are thankful for, so...

My top 3...

1.  My awesome family...  I couldn't imagine life without them... actually, I could... it would really stink.  So... I am very thankful that I have them.

2.  My awesome students and their families.  I am smack dab in the middle of parent-teacher conference week and I can't rave enough about the group of kids and families that I have... I am already dreading the end of the year!  I love them so much!!

3.  My blogging buddies and the TpT world.  So much has changed and I have learned a lot since I encountered Teachers Pay Teachers a couple of years ago.  I just wanted to stop and think about that for a minute... Being a bilingual teacher can feel like you're on an island, but just through these outlets I have found so many other bilingual, dual language, ESL teachers and it has been so awesome to connect, share resources, and talk to people with the same problems, interests, etc.  It's pretty cool!

Well, quickly before you leave, I wanted to offer a freebie... Not Thanksgiving themed, but definitely something that I am thankful for.  We have working our little bottoms off in Room 109A on 10 less and 10 more... and I am proud to say my students get it!!  I have heard the stress of other teachers trying to teach this concept using a hundreds grid so I hope this freebie can help you out!

Click here to download this freebie!

Now on to the next blog on the hop...School en casa

Midwest Blogger Meet-Up

Phew!  Finally sitting down at a computer, avoiding the report cards that I need to be working on, and blogging about an awesome blogger meet up I went to a couple of weekends ago!

So October 18th was the first ever Midwest Bloggers Meet-Up hosted by Jameson at Lessons with Coffee and Lindsey at Thriving in Third...  and I have to say, it was by far the best blogger meet up I have ever attended!

I will let the pictures show off the awesome time that we had...

I was nervous when I showed up at Lakeshore Learning Store in Palentine, IL... because through out all of this blogging/TpT journey I have found out that I am more of an introvert and meeting new people at the beginning freaks me out.  Well, that being said, I ended up sitting  at a table with the most awesome group of women!  I got to meet Cretia, Nicole (Beginnings with Baer), Tasia (Great Minds Teach Alike), Michelle (Teaching Ideas for Those Who Love Teaching) and Kristin (Teaching in a Nutshell).  A special shout out to Cretia for the selfie... she teaches in the same district as I do... how cool is that?!

We got to make a name plate for our classrooms using a cute little glyph that Jameson and Lindsey came up with.  It was so nice having an ice breaker... and how cute is my pencil!  Love!

Thank you Jessica (from Mrs. Plemon's Kindergarten) for helping me out with some of the pics that I didn't get!  The picture above shows how much swag we got... I am in awe of the generosity of Lakeshore Learning and Creative Teaching Press; they gave us so many things for our classrooms.  My students definitely loved the new games for our English centers!

This was such an awesome afternoon. I made some new bloggy friends and had a great time! Even though we are semi-local, hubby and I ended up making it a night away and had an awesome night afterwards!  Next year the meet-up is going to be in St. Paul, MN and I cannot wait!  Hubby and I have already decided to make it a family vacation and we are finally going to visit Mall of America, too!  

 

Backpack Night 2014

So we officially did day 6 today in second grade, but I wanted to do a little throwback to last week when we did Backpack Night at our School.

Two days before school starts the parents and students are invited to meet their teachers and drop off their supplies.  I was so excited to meet all of my families... out of 25 families I have 13 repeat families and that is so awesome to me!  I try to build close relationships with all of my families so when I get to have them again, I get so excited!

So the students started off with a treat on their desks.  The bubbles had a tag attached that said, "¡Hola!  !He estado burbujeando con emoción para conocerte!  I totally borrowed this idea from Krista from Second Grade Super Kids...  but once I read about it on her blog, I knew I had to have it for my nautical themed classroom!  ** Thank you Krista! **

I made sure I had extra bubbles on hand for the little siblings...  That was a must!

At the end of the night this was the scene... 23 out of 25 families showed up and my classroom was packed with crayons, pencils, tissues, and plastic bags.

Overall I would say it was a success...  I love Backpack Night: it always gets me excited for school.  It is the sign that the first day of school is just around the corner!