Owls and NYC!

Happy Sunday from New York City! I’m blogging from the airport, waiting to head back to Ohio for some sleep and school tomorrow morning!  I had a wonderful, FAST weekend in NYC with some of my teacher friends. We had so much fun! I’m going to share some highlights with you and then I can’t wait to share the owl reports that my kids have been working on this week!

I l-o-v-e Rockafeller Center!  It’s so fun to see the lights and watch the ice skating!

On Saturday, we visited The Empire State Building.  It was my first time to the 86th floor. The view was amazing!
My FAVORITE activity this weekend was seeing the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall for their Christmas Spectacular Show! I danced all the way through college, so seeing the Rockettes is always a huge treat! The show was incredible and put me into the Christmas spirit already. 🙂
On Sunday, we visited Bryant Park for the Winter Village Shops.  There were over 125 specialty shops with so many unique gifts and items.  Soo fun!
I loved the title of this shop! 😉
No NYC trip is complete without a stop in Little Italy for dinner and a homemade cannoli. YUM! 
Another highlight of our trip – a stop by the TpT office in Soho! It was Saturday so the office was not open, but I couldn’t make a trip to NYC without seeing where the magic happens. A super nice security man let me take a picture in front of the door. 
It was fun to see that our amazing online community has a spot “in real life” to call home!
Enough about my weekend – let’s talk about owls!
We studied owls for a couple of weeks in science and reading – it’s a favorite unit for my students! We even dissected owl pellets, but I’ll save that blog post for another day. 🙂
After we agreed that we knew A LOT about owls, it was time to integrate our learning into an informational paper. Check out our amazing writing!
My students were so excited to write about their owls. They took their time and asked me if they could finish them after lunch so that “their handwriting was THE best!”
Here are three samples for you to see.  You know I like to keep it real, so there is a sample from an advanced writer, an on-target writer, and a below average writer.  I won’t tell you which is which – but I think you’ll find that for November of first grade, they are all AMAZING! I was so proud of them!

Since they clearly have the basic format of an informational paper down pat, we started to work on making our topic sentences and conclusion sentences more interesting.  We made two anchor charts: one for topic sentences and one for conclusion sentences. The charts are not complete yet, but we will write interesting sentences on the charts for the remainder of the year.  Our “interesting topic and conclusion” sentence charts will grow and grow!
In Daily 5 last week, one little girl wrote about “first grade life.” Her topic sentence: I will give you different kinds of information about first grade. I thought that was a pretty great sentence for a seven year old! 🙂  As your students become comfortable with the basic format of writing, it makes it easier for them to be confident to take more risks. 

We are almost ready to board the plane back to Ohio, so I will wish you all a wonderful new school week!  I’ll be back on Wednesday for another Wordless Wednesday linky party! 

Thanks for stopping by! 🙂

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6 Comments

  1. Oooo! NYC! How I love it. And THIS year the daughters and I are going for a long weekend right before Christmas– YESSSSS. I didn't know about the shops in Bryant Park so thanks for the tip– yippee! Your post SO puts me in the mood. Thanks! Kathleen Kidpeople Classroom

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