Classroom Adjustments and Extras

As it always goes, once the school year starts we teachers realize that we want to tweak our plans for our classroom.

Level Library

I have made it my goal to expand my leveled library so that I can provide books for students that are at their level each week in their "book bag" at their desk. I introduced that book boxes to the kids today and they were so excited about them!

I pick out two books at their level from my library and let them choose two other books that they are interested in. I can't get them to put it down! So that a wonderful thing!

I have also written each student's name on their bag in the color of their reading group-- to help me when I'm choosing books at their level. Super excited that I could have "book bags" again!

I got lots of books from Savers yesterday (Buy 4 get 1 free) so I am sure that in not time I will have much fuller baskets in my library! I also appreciated that families that donated books to my classroom. The students and I are very grateful!

Literacy Centers

After trying to use the smartboard to project the stations, I decided that it was too confusing for students. I want them to be able to move quickly without interrupting the guided reading time to ask where they are going. This is why I've started using the group baskets!

It says their rotations and has their book from guided reading time so that if they finish early, they could be rereading those books.

I have a basket for all four of my groups. Each day someone is designated to carry the basket to the rotations and be the leader-- pointing other students to their next spot if they forget.

The entire class is really enjoying word work activities and game goo!

Author's Purpose

I've done some work with the P.I.E. (Persuade, Inform, Entertain) idea before, but now I've expanded it into an interactive bulletin board! While students have done their silent reading, they decide which "piece of the PIE" the book their reading is.

I'm planning on getting some more persuasive texts from the library this week so students can see the difference. I think they've really taken off with it and it'll be a piece of cake in no time :)

 Classroom Community

Our class is truly coming together and will continue to build on our relationships using the morning meeting model. 

This was an activity we did our first week of school-- an all about me pennant. I've hung them all together to show that we are a community. The students haven't seen what I've done with them yet, but I think they'll be excited :)

First full week of school

We are wrapping up our first full week of school. We've spent a lot of time on placement tests and getting things organized and routines in place, but I'm also happy to share some of the fun things we've gotten to do!

Reading Centers

We've practiced the Daily 5 rotations which are: Silent reading, Reading to someone (partner reading), Listening to reading, Writing (which is actually done in our writer's workshop after centers) and word work.

The students have gotten very good at moving through the centers and had a lot of fun today working on the different word work stations.  The word work stations put a focus on phonics, sight words, and sentence construction AND they're always very hands-on so they are always a crowd pleaser. I'm hoping to create more this year too!

Math

We started math with a math about me project to display for meet the teacher night. This was my first time doing this project, but I was very pleased with how they turned out.

We also started the new Math Envision curriculum. I've been very pleased with it so far and the students love the workmats that come with each lesson, interactive videos, and center activities.

Science

We studied nutrition and the food pyramid as well as building well-balanced meals. We put this into our science journals-- we also saw a very good explanation of the new food pyramid, but it was through United Streaming so I can't share that link.

Very soon we will kick off our research unit on insects!

Social Studies

We just started looking at communities and will start looking at urban, suburban, and rural communities and then we will move into leaders.

Behavior

 

As shown in the previous post, I am using a clip up system for individual monitoring. I like that it's more positively focused and it gives students the chance to turn their days around (not "stuck"on red). I don't have a picture of the exact same calendar I've been using as a recording sheet, but here is an example one.

Many students got the chance to "cash in" their 5 good days today (green or better). Some of the things they can earn are: a hat day, no shoes, positive note home, prize box, bring in a stuffed animal, show and tell and if they save up for 10 days they can do lunch with me-- I usually go outside if the weather is nice :) They seemed very excited about "cashing in" today!

I hope this has been an insightful update!

1st week of school

So ideally I would've posted some pictures from the first week of school at the end of the first week (instead of the end of the second week), but since I'm still getting back into school mode, blogging hasn't been my first priority right now! Anyway here are some pictures of some of the activities we did the first week and I'll recap for what we've started this week as well.

Reading

One of the things we really hit the first week of school was how to ask for help and when it is okay to talk.  A book that really goes along with this idea is My Mouth is a Volcano! It's a very cute story about a boy named Louis who can't help but blurt out when an idea comes to his head. After we read the book, we did some brainstorming about what we can do when we think we might "erupt." We used some of the ideas from the book and also had some ideas of our own for dealing with those overwhelming ideas that want to erupt out!

I had all of the volcanos up for Back to School night and I think I'll keep them up for at least another week or so. It works as a nice reminder to just be able to point if someone is having a problem erupting that day :)

Writing

We have already done our first writing project. We did a word inventory the first week so that we could see how many words they could think of in 10 minutes and we also did a self-portrait.  I do this three times a year because I think it's very exciting to see the growth happening academically and developmentally. I will be sure to share these with parents at conferences.

Also, we wrote our first story about our summer. Those will be added to a portfolio so that students and parents can see how much they improve throughout the year.

In addition to practice writing, we are working on practicing using the right language when responding to questions.  Right now for our read aloud book, we are reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid (by popular demand!) and we are working on using academic language when responding. I will add to this list throughout the year (I just didn't want to overwhelm anyone right now!)

Math/Notebooking/Science

I don't have any exciting pictures to post yet. Right now in math we're mainly reviewing a lot of concepts like using a number line, hundreds chart, skip counting, and representing numbers.  

I will say that we are notebooking in reading, math, and science this year. What I like about notebooking is that students have a chance to look back at their practice work (like graphic organizers and worksheets) to study for tests. In math, it's a good place for them to see how to work out certain problems and reflect on focus questions.

In reading, our notebooking is more about vocabulary, phonics and comprehension skills (like summarizing, retelling, main idea).

In science, our notebooking is used to organize important vocabulary and ideas to prepare for tests and for reflecting later.  I will post resource links for students to use the National Geographic curriculum on this website as soon as I get access codes! The National Geographic Curriculum is great!

For parents:  This will also explain why you won't be getting a lot of worksheets coming home. Usually we will go over the answers together (so students can make corrections) and then they'll glue it into their notebooks. I will however start sending home some weekly homework on Mondays that should be sent back on Fridays. (My thinking is that it is less likely that the students will lose a stapled packet--individual sheets of homework sent home on random nights can be hard for them to remember). I hope we can work together to keep helping these 2nd graders :)

Upcoming dates:

Tomorrow, August 24- Reading logs due, Spelling test (words should be written in their planner)

Tuesday, August 28- I will be testing students' reading level all day. Please make sure they don't miss!

Friday, August 31-Reading logs due, Reading test (over the unit) and spelling test

Monday, September 3- No School!