Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King

This year, we learned a lot about Dr. Martin Luther King. We read books about his life and we watched videos to learn about all the important things that he did to help our world become a better place. In the United States we celebrate his birthday on January 20th, which is Martin Luther King Day. One of the things we did to celebrate the day was to share our dreams for the future. Here are some of the dreams we shared: I can Dream Like Dr. king. My dream is... "No more smoking because it is not healthy." "To have no hungry children any where." "No more drunk drivers."

This is a song we sang all week about Dr. Martin Luther King. We sang it every morning during our morning meeting.

MLK song from Valerie Ruckes on Vimeo.

We learned a lot about Dr. Martin Luther king. Happy Birthday Dr. King! What did your class do to celebrate Dr. King's dream? We would love to know. Please leave us a comment.

Poetry and Fluency

Each week we learn a new poem to help us with our fluency. This week, we learned a poem called Four Red Apples. Mrs. Ruckes introduced the poem on Monday. We read (or sing) the poem together, each day, during our morning meeting and our reading becomes more fluent. On Friday's we illustrate our poems and place them in our Poetry Notebooks. We hope you enjoy our slide show below:

Four Red Apples 
(Sung to:  This Old Man)

Four red apples on the tree,
Two for you and Two for me,
So-o shake that tree and watch them fall.
1, 2, 3, 4-
That is all!

Four Red Cherries...
Four Read Leaves...

Digital slideshow customized with Smilebox What do you think of our singing?  That's B.T. in the background, reminding everyone what to sing next.

Four Red Apples from Valerie Ruckes on Vimeo.


What are some of the ways you work on fluency in your classroom?

The Snowman Song

We love to sing songs during our morning meeting time in first grade. How do we sound? Click on "Untitled" below.
Untitled from Valerie Ruckes on Vimeo.