TGIF! :)

Happy Friday! :) What a week it has been!

I am really looking forward to enjoying the weekend and getting some needed R&R. I wanted to share with you a reading response chart that I found and recreated to go along with my reading workshop. I was finding that a lot of my students reading responses or letters about their books were of poor quality and a lack of a rubric for them to refer to was partly to blame. This rubric has helped them to get a better idea of what an excellent reading response or letter looks like. I also plan on copying a few fantastic student examples and then posting them in the classroom for my kiddos as well. I have found that the more student examples I share; the better quality of work my students are handing in. Who doesn't want their teacher to read aloud their work to the class?! Here's a pic of the rubric:

Earth Day!

Hey there,

I found a ton of freebies for Earth day to use in my classroom from various blogs. We didn't have much time to do them all so I made sure to stash them away in a file for next year. We did end up completing a few word sorts with Earth Day related words that I grabbed from SunnyDaysinsecondgrade's blog. I also found these adorable little owls..(please help me with this blogger's name so I can give them credit!) We usually have extra time on Friday's so I am finding that is when I am saving crafts for. My kids ate this cute little craft right up! Before the craft we watched a quick brainpop video on how to reduce, reuse, and recycle and then began by sharing our pledges to the Earth. Here are some pics of them hanging up:

More Poetry and More Shape Stuff! :)

Hello!

We just wrapped up our unit on poetry and my students learned so much! I told them that they are official poets with how beautifully written their poems were. Check out my previous posts to see some pictures of some. Overall, we learned and wrote about autobiography, haiku, conversation, and cinquain poems. There are tons more that I wanted to get into but there is just not enough time! I chose a few favorites and then I will introduce some more next year in third grade. Here is a picture of our outside bulletin board, these are their cinquain poems focused on words related to the spring season:

Next up, we have been working on shapes and patterns and will be concluding this week. My kids absolutely had a blast creating their shape monsters from AmyLemon's Shapin' Up! unit. They really got into it and started giving their monsters mustaches, claws, the works! They had to present their shape monster to the class by describing each body part's shape, side, and vertices. Here is a pic of them hanging up:

To review repeating patterns, I had my students create a flap book of different repeating patterns. They wrote the type of pattern that I called out on the front flap. Then inside wrote the type of pattern two different ways. Here is a picture of one:

Have a great night! :)

What's The Main Idea?!

This week we have been focusing on identifying the main idea in our stories.

The first activity we did was a main idea cloud based off of our story of the week "Bad Dog, Dodger!" from our Reading Street curriculum. I first had the students buddy read the story and then work together to find five supporting details to help them prove what they believed the main idea to be. I then called them back together to review what each pair of students found. I had them draw five columns on a sheet of colored construction paper to write in each of the supporting details. They wrote the main idea of the story in the center of the cloud. They finished by cutting out each supporting detail column and gluing the ends to the bottom of the cloud.
Very simple; yet very effective to review main idea!

Another main idea activity we completed today was one that I found from Mrs.McKnown on Pinterest. The idea of the activity is to have students pretend that a bag your holding is a story their reading and that the items in the bag are the supporting details that can be found in a story. The goal is for them to identify the main idea of the bag based on the related items. I began by holding up a set of measuring spoons and asking students what the know about that item. I then held up a large mixing spoon and told them that the item is related to the first item and asked if they have an idea of what the main idea of the bag could be so far. They had great ideas..stuff to mix dinner, supplies to cook. I then told them that their not done reading the story yet and that good readers read the whole story before quickly stating the main idea. With that said, I held up another item which was an oven mitt..this really got them excited and they were just sure that the main idea was things needed to bake a cake! I loved their faces when I held up the next item which was a cupcake/muffin pan. It was interesting to see who thought the main idea was baking cupcakes as opposed to baking muffins. To sum it all up..I showed them the final item which was a box of muffin mix. Their faces were priceless as they all shouted baking muffins! in unison. :) We discussed the fact that all of the items were supporting details in the story however the best supporting detail that was related to the all of the items was the muffin mix. However that didn't appear until the end of the story! I think it really clicked with my students that good readers read the whole story and identify supporting details before deciding on the main idea! Tomorrow we will repeat the lesson but with a main idea bag for Going to the beach!
Check out some pictures below :)

Economics, Shapes, and Poems! In That Order :)

Hope everyone is having a great week so far!

Wanted to share a few things that we have been working on this week:

In social studies we have been working on everything economics! At first I was a little nervous that the vocabulary introduced in this unit would be over my student's heads but they are really getting it! Brainpopjr has a few great videos to help reinforce the concept of needs/wants and goods/services. We have been using a lot of the activities from OneExtraDegree's Economics101 packet.
Here are a few pics:

Needs and Wants sort

Wanting makeup already! ha

My students had to produce a 'good' out of playdoh to sell to the consumers (classmates). This pic is a health seeker which tells you how healthy you are!

Ad that went along with her good

This student produced outfits from the girls store Justice!

Outfits are expensive these days!

After sharing about their goods, we lined them all up on the table for display. Before leaving for the day, each student was able to come up and purchase one good from another classmate. Here we have a human shrinking machine, robot dog, and diesel train!

Legos, chocolate chip cookies, dog, and dolphin!

dolphin, monkey butler, cup of lemonade, and owl faced blanket

cup of lemonade, owl faced blanket, and health seeker!

In math we have been working on geometry and getting hands on with 2d and 3d shapes. I purchased  AmyLemons Shapinup! unit and can't wait to have my kids start some of those activities. It seriously is jam packed with fun stuff! I created my math bulletin board that I snagged from AmyLemons blog to display all the shapes we have been learning about so far. Here is a picture:

Last but not least, in writing we have been working on Poetry! So far we have learned about and written an autobiography poem and a cinquain poem. I tried to take pics of their autobiography poems but couldn't seem to not get their first and last names in the photo! (It begins with their first name and ends with their last!) I did however snap a few pics of their cinquain poems. I love the fact that poetry is free choice but also follows a format (if that makes sense). Gives my kids a window to be creative but also a structure that they crave! ha Here are some pics:

Hey there!

Last week we learned about Matter and the kids really got into it! I found some poems about each state of matter on Pinterest and just had to recreate them. We talked about how matter is anything and everything that takes up space and then I had them go on a matter hunt throughout the classroom. I also assigned a person to be  a solid (stood like a statue), a person to be liquid (did the wave), and a person to be a gas (floated around the classroom). While each matter role was being acted out we recited the poems aloud as a class. Everyone was begging to be picked as a 'gas' next! The anchor charts are posted below. I also want to share some more anchor charts from our capacity/weight unit that we just finished up. 

Enjoy! :)

Character Traits & Capacity/Weight :)

Hi Everyone,

This has been a super busy week and I am so tired exhausted! I know I am not the only one after reading through some of your recent blog posts! ha I enjoyed my first spring break as a new teacher..very relaxing! Tried on wedding dresses that were absolutely gorgeous but ended up not buying any..so hard to choose!

Anyway this week was filled with meetings, class picture day, my second formal observation (went well!) by my assistant principal, and then we end with a fundraising walk a thon tomorrow! The bright side is tomorrow is Friday which means there is 2 more days left until we take our engagement photos..super exciting! :)

We studied Character Traits this week and I used some of the awesome activities from OneExtraDegree's character trait unit. It is a fantastic unit and my students really enjoyed identifying inside and outside traits about their characters!

We also have been working on capacity and weight in our math series which are filled with tons of both new and familiar vocabulary and conversions. With that said, my anchor charts that I created for each lesson so far have been a huge help. Especially with my ELL students.

I took some pictures of some of the character traits charts and activities and math anchor charts. Take a peek! :)

Thinking Stems for Inferring Character Traits

Each of my students response cards based on a character from their book

Student's index card completed during independent reading

The difference between inside traits and outside traits

We can identify Character Traits!

Close up of Bulletin Board

Character we practiced whole group!

Student's picture of Brad on the outside cover

When opened, there are the Inside and Outside traits about Brad's character

Response activity during independent reading

Love this! Great reference for the students to use when identifying character traits

Groups of three had to fill in a chart like this based on their given character

Grams and Kilograms as ways to measure

Milliliters and Liters as ways to measure

Capacity!

The odd ball that refuses to rotate! lol Anyways..pounds and ounces as ways to measure