A Little Bloggy Catch Up

This past week was a tad crazy... so I kind of neglected my blog! However, there was so much going on that I HAD to do a Funday Sunday post to share all the great fun we had learning this week!

I am so proud of my kiddos! We are up to 15 minutes of stamina for Read to Self & Word Work as well as 12 minutes of stamina in Work on Writing and 8 minutes in Read to Someone.

I chose to introduce each choice (except listen to reading) within the first 2 weeks and work on building the stamina of each. Once Work on Writing is up to 15 the kiddos will get to choose between the 2 of them. They won't have full choice until all 5 choices are up to 15 minutes though.

In reading, we worked all week on asking questions while reading. We read The Dot & The Wednesday Surprise, stopping & jotting questions on sticky notes.  Kiddos' exit ticket was picking their "best question" and sticking it to our anchor chart. We then went back the next day to talk about which questions were answered "right there" in the book, could be answered with inferences & which couldn't be answered. We also tried applying this strategy during read to self... all definitely still a work in progress :)

We did a mix of fun activities during math this week... We did a lot of hands on manipulative work, specifically in figuring out if a number was even or odd at the end of last week and beginning of this week.

We played our first I have, who has? game - this was a free place value game I found.

We attempted "interactive journals" for the first time! (My first time too & I'm enjoying creating foldables for this coming week & our next unit too which I plan to share!) 

We launched Social Studies this week with a fun craftivity. We made these last year too and the kiddos enjoyed it just as much this year too. The "levels" are Me, My Town, My State, My Country, My Continent, My World. Will post this craft as a freebie soon!

I hope your week was as fun filled with learning as ours was!

Five for Friday - Back to School

I'm linking up with Doodlebugs to share my first week back to school!

If you didn't check out this week's Whole Brain Wednesday, be sure to click here to learn about WBT Scoreboard & for 2 WBT freebies!

I also created this fun sign for outside of my room... click it for a copy!

We've been working hard to introduce Daily 5 this week! It will take us about 3 or 4 weeks to be fully launched, but that time will be SO worth it when the rest of our year is smooth sailing. We increased our stamina to 4 and a half minutes on day 2! I was so impressed.

I'm loving how our Looking Back on Summer Sunglasses came out! It's not too late to do this kind of activity... want to make sunglasses next week, grab it in my TPT store here.

We are making our Reaching New Heights Giraffes from A Cupcake for the Teacher today so I'll share them next week for sure!

I love "Find Someone Who" type activities. I think I've used a different one each year. My kiddos had fun with one from Jessica Tobin, you can grab it here.

Loving our tables! The one year of desks taught me that desks are just not for me. We're using our book bins as folder-holders too so their book bin is ALL they ever need to carry around the room. I've also made sure supplies are available for just about every possible work area so kiddos don't even need to carry around supplies. I'm going to try for all our supplies to be shared. I asked families to use any "fun" supplies they bought for the year to be used at home on homework to prevent any arguments over pencils, erasers, etc. I had enough of the "That's MY pencil!" arguments the past 2 years... we'll see how it goes!

Have a fabulous weekend!

Friday!

Our first full week is over and I survived, horray!

I've had both a few reminders why I LOVE teaching and a few reminders why teaching is a REALLY DIFFICULT JOB!!!

As long as it's worth it at the end of the week, then I say it's the right place for me!

Anywho, I'm linking up with Five for Friday on Doodle Bugs Teaching this week...

Here are my 5 (random) things from this week...

#1 REAL Silent Reading... on Tuesday we had our first day with actual SILENT reading... aka I didn't have to stop them 36-hundred times and ask what silent reading should look like, hooray!

They're so cute with the giant pillows and reading buddies and they are still in love with my new lovely purple carpet!

#2 Number line patterns! The kiddos had to decide on a pattern and have their partner figure out what it was. A few students went nuts with this... counting by 1000s, counting by 10s but starting on a random number, etc. I was very impressed!

#3 They all finally finished their hopes and dreams rocket and they are decorating our back wall on what was a very boring bulletin board before! Some of their hopes and dreams were simply adorable :)

 

#4 Communities with a focus on our town and rural vs. urban is a second grade SS strand, so today we discussed what communities we belong to and made this cute craftivity! Will be posting a copy soon on TPT so check back soon.

 

#5 Finally, we have kicked off writer's workshop. Here are some of the strategies we came up with a class for when we don't know what we should write about!

 

Ready to re-coop this weekend, get some sleep and enjoy my fiancee and puppy!

Week 2, check!

I can't believe how quickly the past 2 weeks have gone by! I'm actually looking forward to a full 5 days in a row with the kiddos, I love to be in a routine almost as much as the kiddos benefit from being in one. A 3 day week followed by a 4 day week leaves me feeling a little unorganized, however, the past 2 weeks have been pretty great!

First of all, I want to share the fabulous "Looking Back on Summer" craftivity and self portrait activities we did during week 1 while we were getting to know each other...

Loved how these Looking Back on Summer Sunglasses craftivities came out!!! The did such a good job and a lot of my kiddos really impressed me with their writing! I wished I had used the worksheets without sentence frames for some of my kiddos but it was too soon in the year to be familiar with their writing abilities. Get your copy by clicking the picture above!

I combined this craftivity with my favorite beginning of the year activity from last year... hands and feet self portrait. I have the kiddos trace their hands and feet and then draw their body in between. Some of the portraits came out fabulously!

 

 I combined their sunglasses craftivity and self portraits for a really fun and bright hallway display that I'm hoping my kiddos parents will love on back to school night!

As for week 2, the 2nd grade team dove into the curriculum. I loved having my promethean board to help in math! I was able to save a flipchart to use as tens and ones base ten blocks. The kiddos can come up to the board and move the tens and ones blocks to create given numbers. Not super skillful with the board yet, but I was proud of that achievement!

I also signed my kiddos up for Xtramath which one of my wonderful collegues introduced me to last year. If you've never heard of it, check it out... free for teachers and the kiddos can use it at home. It's math fact practice that is adaptable based on how the kids do. They can even see a chart of how they're doing on each math fact. Teachers also get reports each week sharing each students' progress.

If you are a 1st through 5th grade teacher this is a fabulous FREE resource to use in your classroom. Not only does this program have addition and subtraction facts but also multiplication and division.

Now a little on writing...my new district's writing curriculum is all about WRITER'S WORKSHOP... and ironically I am taking "The Writing Process" class as the first class of my grad program on reading and language. We haven't actually started the real meat of writer's workshop, our first unit mostly introduces writer's workshop with mentor texts and anchor charts but I am SO excited (and a little overwhelmed) to begin writer's workshop. For those of you who are starting writer's workshop or are interested in writer's workshop I'd HIGHLY recommend reading Writing Workshop The Essential Guide by Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi. It is helping me to have a better idea of how writer's workshop will look in my class.

Finally, a little WBT... I learned on Thursday that I am not the only whole brainer in my building! One of the 5th grade teachers is starting to use WBT this year and I am SO excited to pow wow with her soon! My kiddos are getting really good at everything that is WBT, especially "Teach, Okay" they quickly turn to their partner and discuss the question, etc. The only thing we need to work on more is the volume level when they turn to teach. They tend to get pretty excited and are VERY loud with that excitement. I'm not worried though with it only being week 2 :)

Alrighty, can't wait to catch in next week. Might not be until the weekend again though because with the new curriculum (for me) and grad school oh and the wedding 5 weeks away!!!... life is very crazy right now :)

Until next time...