Writing

So I've been looking for a way for students to understand the structure of a paragraph and thanks to our teacher leader I think I've found a way for them to be successful understanding AND writing their paragraphs.

Train writing

This foldable helped us create our paragraphs for Women's History month.  The green is for go which is why the TS (topic sentence) is the engine.  Yellow is for slowing down to tell more which is why it has R.F. (reasons or facts) and the paragraph has TS at the end to show that we need to restate our original statement using new words.

This is one student's completed train which she was able to successfully turn into a paragraph. She was so proud of her work and so was I! The entire class did very well with this organization tool. I plan to use it more in the future.

Anchor Charts

We had a Professional Day to meet with other 2nd grade teachers in the district to discuss techniques used with interactive read aloud.  This was a very handy anchor chart that another teacher brought that she adds to every time they read a fable. Fables are in the core standards and they are very tricky to students. I think this will be a great tool to use for them to understand a story as well as compare it to other fables.

Research display

My mom saw my blog and wanted to show off some of her great work in her junior high classroom too! She works with the highest group of MTSS and provides enrichment activities (on top of teaching science and coaching!). For Kansas Day, she assigned a several counties for groups to research and display on this flower.  She had set things the students needed to find out and displayed the projects for Kansas Day proudly. I think it turned out to be a great way to display a research project about Kansas!

Those are my updates! Lots of writing happening right now. Soon we will be MAP testing and I'll be wrapping up my F&P assessments. The running records are showing a lot of growth from the students so I can't wait to show their families how much they've improved :)