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 :)

End of the Year

So in case you were wondering, there are 8 days of school left!

Here's an idea that I got from pinterest-- when there are about 10-15 days left of school you hang up that number of balloons.  I changed it a bit to work with my classroom. In each balloon, I have a slip of paper with an activity or privilege that the students will get to do the next day.  For my kiddos who are a bit of a handful now that the end of the year is upon us, I've worked it into my classroom management. I have my students sitting in "teams" (with a few islands) that have cups on their desks for beads. After each instructional time (math, math groups, reading, reading groups, and science/social studies), they can earn beads for their team. Usually the class is working toward having lunch outside for the entire class, but now we're working towards popping those balloons at the end of the day.

And the balloons are filled with really simple ideas like: 5 extra minutes of recess time, Mrs. Kietzman brings a snack, dance party time, 10 minutes of free time on computers, reading lesson outside, etc. If you need ideas you can comment and I'll send you my full list.

Another thing we're working on now that it's the end of the year is our memory books. Not all of my students will be getting yearbooks and even for those who are, this is a fun way for them to record their favorite parts about 4th grade, their best friend, their favorite school event, etc.

It's a really cute booklet and it has a chance for students to do a lot of writing and drawing about their favorites for the year.

Here's a link to the website:  School Memories Book

All you need to do is sign up for the website, but it's free and this packet is free as well as a lot of other resources on the site.

One more thing I'd like to share is a good search engine for kids to use called Kid Rex What I like about it is that it's created by Google, but makes searching Google sites appropriate for kids. Right now I have students researching countries for our upcoming cultural fair and this site helps take away the worry that comes with having students use the computer for research.

That's all for now! I'm hoping the next post will be a lot about my upcoming plans for classroom organization. I am very inspired right now and will probably be working on creating some of those things this week! Get ready for more pictures and info!