For the Love of First Grade: What Friday: B2S with Blog Hoppin'

There are SO many fun things you can do with 6 and 7 year olds. That's why I LOVE teaching 1st grade!

Here are two of my favorite things to teach throughout the year.

Sitting down during writing conferences I always notice an influx of "and" being used in my students writing once they become familiar with expanding their sentences.

AND it drives me crazy

AND when I finally decide to address it, it goes like this.

Last year I asked one student if she would allow me to model a lesson using her paper.

She agreed so I read it aloud to the class putting major emphasis on the word AND when I read it in her story.

When I read it they laughed {and laughed and laughed and laughed}!

They thought I was crazy for using the word AND so many times

Their response "That's a lot of and's Mrs. Griffith".

I modeled to them what can be done with the word AND.

We crossed out the word AND then added a period in its place.

They are always surprised when I tell them that --they-- were actually the ones who were consumed by this disease! I have them go back and edit their papers for the "and disease", capitalization and punctuation.

We came up with a solution: When we reread our stories and find that we have the "and disease", we will erase the word and add a period in its place.

Here is a template I created for my kiddos to use to check their writing before turning it in.

I teach them how to use each box at the bottom to check for errors.