Has it REALLY been that long?

Oh man! I didn't realize how long it'd been since I last posted! For the sake of being OVERWHELMED with all I have to say I'm linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching to make me stick to FIVE things on this lovely Friday!

Shadow day is always a hit! We ventured out on a breeze day in April to measure our shadows every hour-hour and a half. It is such a fun but crazy interrupted day! We love seeing how our shadows move and shrink throughout the day. One of my grade level partner's kiddos said "my shadow shrunk like my underwear does in the dryer!" Out of the mouths of babes!

We just started our shape unit last week and have been using tons of foldables from Blair Turner's Interactive Notebook!

We also played some guessing games, asking questions to guess our shape. The questions were: how many sides does the shape have? How many vertices does the shape have? How many corners/angles does my shape have? Are any of the sides equal length? Are the sides parallel?

We worked hard through April and are just now wrapping up our Fairy Tale unit. Some of my high flyers used this 3-way comparison chart to compare 3 different versions of Cinderella. They did such a nice job showing the very specific similarities and differences!

 

If you haven't heard of any of the I Read to You, You Read to Me books you definitely have to check them out! We LOVED the fairy tale version to get us started on fairy tales and they are WONDERFUL for fluency AND point of view... so many uses! 

My kiddos were obsessed for nearly a month, asking to do more activities with them! Definitely check them out if you haven't! There are also a Mother Goose, Scary Tales and Fables versions too!

Finally, I'm hoping to do a full post on having a student teacher, but here's a peak at my student teacher playing a Mystery Place Value game!


WOW it felt awesome to post again on here :) Thanks to those of you tuning in!

5 for Friday... Saturday Edition

Hey all, I'm linking up with Doodlebugs Teaching for another Five for Friday, on Saturday!

If you live in CT or MA you know that this week was all sorts of wacky with the "blizzard"... we had an early dismissal, 2 snow days and 2 delays... crazy, crazy! The pup enjoyed the snow!

 About 2 weeks ago my Donor's Choose project was funded to get 2 iPads for my classroom, we were SUPER excited and since they came in and FINALLY have apps on them, we've been using them during Daily 5 for word work! Can't wait to use them for other fun projects in the classroom.

If you're looking for a few fun and FREE apps for word work, I downloaded:
Sand Draw, Art of Glow, Kidsdoodle and Draw Stars

I've had this game (I don't even know the name of it) that someone gave me and it has these awesome buzzers that all make really silly sounds. I've been dying to use them and haven't been able to come up with a great way to use 4 buzzers... Then one of my grade-level partners bought buzzers just like mine (without the game) and I decided I needed to find a way to use them...

We learned how to check our subtraction problems using addition. So I paired my kiddos and put 2 pairs and a buzzer at each table. One partner solved a subtraction problem that I put on the board. When that partner solved the problem, the second partner checked the answer using addition. When they were done and their answers matched, the partnership rang in with the buzzer at their table. I would stop the class and we'd decide if the pair was correct. If the pair was correct, I put a new problem up and the partners switched roles. It was a lot of fun and everyone at least got to finish the subtraction problem each round (I very purposely paired my kiddos in hopes that this would happen). I'm pretty sure using the buzzers is a new favorite activity for my kiddos!

One of the other things we managed to squeeze in during this very bizarre-no full days of school- week was Topic & Detail cups! Unfortunately, I only have a picture of my example, but what the kiddos did was read a nonfiction article with a partner, highlighting important words. Using what they read and highlighted, the kiddos decided what the topic was and at least 3 details. The topic went on the outside of the cup and the details went inside the cup.

I mentioned the last time I liked up here that as a second grade team we are partnering up with one of our reading consultants and one of the special education teachers to do fluency groups. Unfortunately this weather has been a disaster for our fluency schedule, but we have been able to meet a few times over the past couple weeks.

The kiddos seem to be enjoying being with students from the other 2 classes and hopefully I wil be reporting back soon that we are seeing improved fluency!

Hello New Year!

Well I haven't blogged since before our winter break... but I'm back! Anddd linking up a day late to Doodlebugs Teaching for Five for Friday!

New Year's Resolution time... My teaching resolution is to work even harder to get Whole Brain Teaching techniques into every lesson and into our day more often. This means... more gestures, more use of the scoreboard, more references to our rules & more consistent use of the Super Improver Wall. If you want to know about any of those wonderful WBT goodies, check out my WBT tab & hop into a WBT Wednesday (which I PROMISE I will get back into!!! especially now that I "met" fellow WBTer Heidi over at Droppin' Knowledge who also does a WBT Wednesday.

I'm so excited to be working with one of our amazing reading consultants & my fabulous teammates & one of our special education teachers to start a new fluency block during our week. We sorted our second graders into types of readers and are each taking a group of 10 or less kiddos and teaching fluency geared at the types of reader we have.

Our reading consultant introduced this awesome fluency book that is really guiding us through this process. Right now we are meeting 2x a week for 15 minutes and will reassess in 6 weeks to see how much our students' fluency has improved.

I've had the somewhat bad habit of coming up with math games on the fly lately... but this one was a hit for working with double digit subtraction WITHOUT regrouping. Grab it for free...

To play, just have your kiddos roll a dice 3 times (I had them roll a double dice and a 12 sided dice - 10, 11, 12 kiddos picked any number). They fill in the boxes with the numbers they rolled, being sure they create a larger number on top.

I also created this one this week to practice counting back by 10's before we delved too deeply into double digit subtraction. It was a nice little refresher on Monday to get back into school mode.

This was a little less "last minute" and even has directions right on the top of the page for ya ;)

We've been working hard on nonfiction text features. The kiddos loved this super simple activity this week. We had a shortened amount of time due to our new fluency rotations so I gave each partnership a nonfiction book about animals (National Geographics for Kids series) and 4 pieces of highlighting tape. Their job was to try to find a heading, a caption, a map and a label and they only had 5 minutes to do it. They did SUCH a great job. Every group whose book had all 4 of these features found them. A few of the books didn't have maps, but those groups found the other 3 without a problem :)

 

And finally, I just can't help but share the AWESOME gift my students' families got for me... talk about the coolest teacher chair ever!!! I am so lucky for the group of families I have this year!


I hope you all had a great holiday and are starting the New Year off right!

Happy Thanksgiving!

With my belly full and feeling a little sleepy from turkey, I'm excited to share how my kiddos spent their Thanksgiving week (Monday & Tuesday) in my classroom. We had a lot of families traveling so I had a tiny class, but we still had a lot of fun!

#1 One of my amazing families made me a Thanksgiving pumpkin bread. So thoughtful!

#2 We ended our morning meeting with a fluency partner day. We read the acrostic poem Thanksgiving on Monday, so the kiddos read it in partners, giving compliments using P.E.A.R.

#3 We talked about what it meant to be thankful and what we were thankful for and then my kiddos took to their writer's notebook to write a few things they were thankful about. They then copied it over in their best handwriting to be hung up on the wall.

#4 I read Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving and we talked about the characters, setting, problem and solution. Then we decided what the most important events from the beginning, middle and end of the story were.

The kiddos put these beginning, middle, end events in their own words, then created a BME turkey hat. I got this fabulous freebie from Hollie Griffith on TPT. Get yours here.

My kiddos kept saying "look there's a turkey and it's dressed up like [insert kiddos name]. It was too cute and they were just so adorable we had to take a picture of all my turkeys!

 

#5  I found this fabulous Thanksgiving freebie, with all different "How To" prompts. The kiddos had the choice of doing a few different ones, and some of them did more than one, but the pumpkin pie prompts were my favorite!

#6 We spent the afternoon watching Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving while the kiddos could choose between different turkey math activities which I didn't take pictures of for whatever reason. It was a fantastic kick off to my Thanksgiving mini-vacation!



I hope you all were able to spend time with your family on this Thanksgiving and thought about those things for which you are thankful.

Before I sign off, here are a few things for which I'm thankful for this year...

I'm thankful for my little family of my hubby and puppy...

I'm thankful for my second graders who keep my life interesting every day!

I'm thankful for my parents & sister who I miss seeing every day but am happy to only live about a half hour away from.

I'm thankful for my friends who are always there for me.

And I'm happy for all the other little blessings in life that God brings into my life every day.