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!

Penguins Penguins Penguins!

I feel like I've been working on this post for FOREVER, so I'm happy to post it today, finally!!!

Today I'm sharing all the fun we do with PENGUINS! The last 2 years I've done a mini penguin unit to end the time before winter vacation. It is the perfect segway to nonfiction when we return. Almost ALL the awesome activities, worksheets & more are from Amy Lemon's AMAZING penguin unit Waddle with Me... go check it out, it's worth EVERY penny!

We start off reading Tacky the Penguin (and other fictiontional penguin stories) and retelling them on this foldable/organizer...

Next we talked about what we already know and want to learn about penguins...

Then we made the transition to nonfiction. I read the National Geographics book on Penguins. Let me just say those books are FABULOUS.

I would read a couple sections then have them do a different organizer each day. We even compared most birds to penguins.

After reading the nonfiction text, we were ready for our first research experience!!!
I found this amazing site: penguin world that they used to research their penguin. They had A LOT of fun doing this! I am lucky enough to have 6 computers in my room. I also used my personal iPad and  my teammates iPads so that each pair had a device (I only have 17 kids, so 7 pairs and 1 3 group). I've been trying to raise money on Donors Choose so we can have 2 classroom iPads... we're about halfway there!

 

We did a "whip around" at the end of each of our 3 research sessions. A "whip around" is super easy... you just have each kid prepare for about a minute so they know EXACTLY what they will share when it comes to them and then you "whip around" the circle having everyone share. The kiddo who is next starts sharing as soon as the person in front of them is done. It takes a few times for them to get good at it, but they like it and it's a super fast and effective closure for really any lesson!

Now the kiddos are working on typing up their information. Some of them are writing the story as if they were the actual penguin telling about itself... too cute! Can't wait for them to finish up and share with each other.

We also did a few FUN penguin activities, also from Amy Lemon's penguin unit. Here's a peek at our penguin hats!...

I've loved how engaged my kiddos have been with this mini-unit. Do you do any really engaging mini-units in your class?

Five for Friday: Fall Fall Fall

Linking up with Doodlebugs for another Five for Friday

We are all about bats the past week and a half! Check out Tuesday's book talk here to see what we've been up to!

We went on a field trip around our town and to a farm last week. The kiddos had a fabulous time, especially in the one room school house! The questions were priceless... "how could all those grades fit in here?!" "how did the teacher know what to teach?" "why did the students have to use chalk?" Yes we have reached a generation where very few kiddos have been exposed to chalkboards in a classroom!!!

I've expanded my "teach your hand" to "teach your foot" while students are waiting for the rest of the class to finish writing something down during a whole group lesson. To learn more about teaching your hand and foot, check out this weeks Whole Brain Wednesday.

I've been dying for an excuse to use the magic curtain strategy I learned about in my grad class to build excitement and get students talking about a new unit. We are starting a unit on matter, so I decided to cover up solids, liquids & gases on the carpet to build excitement while my kiddos ate lunch (they eat in my room) wondering why I wouldn't tell them what was hiding under the table cloth!

You might have thought there was candy or critters underneath with how excited they were when I finally revealed what was underneath. After observing and discussing with their partner, they had to make a prediction about what we'd be learning about in science.

We made these awesome pumpkins last year and it took FOREVER... so this year I smartened up and had our 6th grade reading buddies help us out with the cutting. These are really cute and simple... 11 same size orange circles, fold 10 in half and make a slit about half way from the fold side. Slide the folds onto the 1 not-cut circle and spread them out to create the pumpkin look. Then glue on a green stem... easy peasy!


Have a lovely weekend!