The Big Blue Ox and more Reading Center Pics

Our reading story this week is The Big Blue Ox. I had never heard of this story until I started teaching with Scott Foresman Reading Street, so if you don't use this series, you might not be familiar with it either. It's about an ox that acts like a human and helps Mom and Pop go to town. Can you tell that our sound skill is short 'o' this week ??? :) Here's our Big Blue Oxen (sidenote: do not go into the plural form of 'ox'...wayyyy tooo difficult for a first grader to understand! :D)

I also did a new center today called Silly Pens Center. I found four pens at the Dollar Tree that had different color balls on the end and we used these to write spelling words at our word work center. I usually don't let my kids use pens, but I thought this would be a good motivator to write spelling words nice and neatly and it worked like a charm. I had some of the best handwriting today. Go figure! :)

Our comprehension skill this week is setting. My kids get that this is where and when the story takes place, but I'm having a hard time getting them to tell me where specifically. All of their answers are either outside or inside, so we created a helper chart (this is what I call anchor charts in my classroom) to help with this. It helped a ton at the reading center when they had to name the setting.