Too much to tell: Strictly Photo Update

Smart Board Interactive Websites!

Okay so this is going to be a really short post, but I was very excited to share some news. All of the teachers at my school are getting smart boards! I am busy looking into great resources to use in my classroom with my smart board. I just wanted to share some of what I found and if you have any suggestions for more ideas feel free to post. BTW all of the sites are FREE!

I am very excited to use this as a classroom management system. Class Dojo is this awesome site that lets you create little icons for each of your students and during class you can give points to students to reward them for being helpful, participating, doing well with partners, etc. You can also take away points for negative behaviors. I LOVE that parents can also log on at any time to see how their child is doing. I'm planning on using it to reward students once they reach a certain amount of points.

I'm also looking at working on nouns, verbs, and adjectives soon and I found this game that I thought would be great to play as a class. It's called Noun Dunk. I think they kids would be excited about getting up to play the game. It's fun to check out if you have the time!

The last one that I think I'll have to try out is mainly for science. I've used it before hooked up through my Document Camera (through the computer), but being able to create the static electricity and do the different experiments by actually touching the balloons together on the screen would be a ton of fun! The main website has tons of science interactive demonstrations where the students need to move items to create reactions. The site is called Engineering Interact and I recommend it!

One more goodie that I want to share has to do with place value. It's like Pacman, but with place value! Looks like a super fun game that we could play together and then I could have them practice on their own on laptops! It's called Place Value Eaters!

I hope you enjoyed all of the goodies! I am very excited for a smart board and excited to let the kids use their hands with this technology for learning!

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!

Let's Get Busy!

Bling side!

I have been very busy lately! In addition to preparing to move to our new home in Shawnee, KS, I am trying to keep up with all my goals and planning for next school year! Here are some examples of what I've come up with so far.. 

Tame side :)

I recently acquired a bunch of plywood that I am going to have my dad saw in half so that I can make clipboards for my class next year-- pictures to come once I've made those too!


This may have been a bit early, but I figured I'll need some kind of cute container to store all of my new homemade clipboards in!


I didn't have many fun paint colors..... but I did have glitter!!


Science


This isn't totally done (I couldn't find any brads!), but I want to do more space science this year so I wanted to create a visual way for students to see that the Earth orbits the sun and the moon orbits the Earth. It also says the distance between on the white part in between. I'll attach brads when I get some and then it will be complete! All it took was some crayons, paper plates and brads :)

Things to come

I bought a bunch of really cute labels so I can label the books in my library--once I type up a format on word I'll share it so anyone else labeling books for their library can already have the template!

I'm planning on making more things tomorrow to post so this one may be a little short, but I'll have more things soon!

Resource Alert!!

There isn't a picture I can link to put it on pinterest, but this is a site with lots of BLANK school templates for newsletters, borders, school menus, lots of things! And FREE! Just click here

Planning for next year

As my bucket list (on the last post stated), part of my summer bucket list is to do summer planning so here I am! I will say that Mr. Kietzman and I will be moving this summer, but I will try to keep up with posts while I am packing and planning :)

Behavior Plans


I found this on pinterest, of course, and it really got me to thinking that maybe I'll try using this form as an alternative think sheet or more than likely, I may use this sheet to fill out with the student when we conference about a certain behavior. Hopefully it will help them and me understand their behavior. I really like that it starts with reasons for behavior, goes to a description of the behavior and then has the students reflect on the consequences (how they feel, how their actions affected others) and then a plan for improvement.

Here is a link to sheet if you'd like to use it: Cause/Effect of Behavior Sheet
I'd certainly like to credit Laura Candler for this freebie! Lots of good stuff!

Center Plans


I'm posting this so I can hold myself to this goal, but I found these ideas online too for reading/math centers that I want to make this week.

The reading one should be pretty simple. I'll need to do some laminating and creating through word, but once I make it I'll be able to use it again and again! I may even end up turning it into an interactive bulletin board, but I am certainly going to get started creating it this week.

This idea can be adapted for a lot of different subjects, but I think I will at least start with the number bottles. The way it works is that students turn the bottles around and add up the numbers as they see them. I would probably either use bigger numbers or change it to multiplication for 4th graders.

There are also a lot of science ideas for discovery bottle centers-- like a magnetic bottle, sink/float, tornado, etc. I would certainly check out the link below. It gave me a ton of ideas that I am going to start on this week!

She also created a recording sheet to go along with the science discovery bottles that you can access here.

There are more ideas and pictures at the Discovery Bottles website.

More later!

Math, Reading, and Science Goodies

As promised, I took some more pictures of my classroom and the things I've been working on so that parents could see what we've been working on, teachers could get some ideas for their classrooms, and my family and friends could see the work that I've been doing! So let's jump right to it-- these are mainly foldables, lapbooks, and bulletin boards.

Math

So these are lapbooks. They are all the rage now at my school. The way I've described them before it 3-D scrap books filled with information students are learning.

These are lapbooks our class made about angles.  The right side is a simple note-taking form that we filled out as a class where students filled in the blanks with the definition of the 3 types of angles as well as practiced drawing angles.

The left side was what I used as my formative assessment. Students had to come up to me putting the popsicles sticks together to form the correct angles- for blue they had to show a right angle, yellow an obtuse angle and red an acute angle. Then I hot glued them together after I checked their understanding and hot glued them to their lapbooks (where they then had to label the angles one more time).

One of the other teachers told me that she's thinking about creating a lapbook for next year that has something on the inside so that students could practice moving around the angles to make different shapes. That may even be my summer project this year so that students could practice that when they finish an activity early or something. I may even turn that into a learning center activity (since the file folders aren't the most durable!

Another lapbook that we made that does allow students to review and practice was for transformations.

We had already talked about the definitions so we filled out the left side as a class with the definitions for a translation, rotation and reflection.

Then we glued or taped graph paper to the other side of the folder.

Then the students were to cut out specific shapes out of construction paper. The pentagon was for a rotation (or turn), diamond was for reflection (or flip) and rectangle was for translation (or slide). To practice a rotation, I had the students poke a brad through the shape so they can practice turning it and seeing how the shape looks. To practice a flip, students taped one side of the diamond to the graph paper so they could flip it over and see how the shape looks. To practice a slide, the rectangle is paper clipped to the top of the folder so they can take off the rectangle and practice sliding it around the graph paper. Very easy and cool lapbook.

Reading

This was an Easter left over of a bulletin board I had in my room. For fourth grade, students have to know the prefixes: ex-, non-, anti-, dis-, and under-. They also have to know the suffixes: -less, -ness, -ment, -en, and -ful.

To help the students review the meaning of the different prefixes/suffixes, I created an interactive bulletin board and turned it into one of the the kids' learning centers.

There are notecards in the pocket below the big egg and to either side I have string set up for students to hang their "EGGxamples" (and yes, the kids do appreciate my corniness!).

So here are some samples of what the kids made. They also had to write the meaning of what their word meant (using the definition of that prefix or suffix in their definition).

This also gave me a good chance to see which prefixes/suffixes my students are comfortable with (-ful, -less, non-, anti-) and which ones they shy away from (-ment, -en, ex-, dis-).

Science

Here is an example of a foldable we just made in class. I used this same concept in 1st grade (I just had the definitions already typed up for the kids to cut out and paste) so for all you teachers out there, this can work for intermediate or primary.

The stem of the plant is a foldable about plant parts and includes a description of the job and a drawing for what that part looks like.

The top part of the plant is about plant needs. I used the acronym PLANTS. Place to grow, Light, Air, Nutrients, Temperature, and Soil.

Sorry this got to be so long! I just had so much to share! I'll be sure to add more next week :)