100th Day and then some!

Today was the 100th Day of school!! It's funny because last year it fell on Valentine's Day with all of our snow days. Not this year. 

 This is the 3rd year I had my students make 100th Day t-shirts. They love it. It's so much fun seeing what they come up with too!

 This is the second year I did pizza fractions. It's basically an all morning activity and the kids love it. This is how I manage it: 

1. I broke my class into 3 groups of 4. 

2. They sponge painted a large pizza pie cut from poster board. 

3. They put the pie aside to dry. 

4. The students had to figure out how many toppings each student in the group needed to color to equal 100. 

5. Each student colored 25 pizza toppings which can be downloaded here.

6. They cut out the toppings and then combined them in a bowl. 

7. They sorted the pizza toppings and created fractions on scrap paper.

8. They then had to add up the numerators to make sure they did indeed equal 100. This was a great exercise. 

9. After they checked their work they got sentence strips to write the fractions onto. 

10. After lunch the pies were dry and they glued their toppings on. 

11. We finished up the day by having a pizza party! SO much fun :)

Thick and thin questions!

January's Snazzy Snack! Yummm. So fun and easy. 

Non-fiction text features anchor chart. Each day we added something to the chart then they tried it out in their journal with a topic they chose. We're building up to our big planet research project in March.

Thank you to everyone who has purchased my Solar System Unit and left awesome feedback. My students are having a BLAST with it. I hope yours are too. 

This month we have been doing a lot with inferencing and this is my way of assessing them. If they make an inference while they are reading then they write it on a sticky note and stick it on our inferencing chart. This has helped me SO much with lesson planning because I'm really getting a feeling for who understands it and who doesn't and what I need to focus on. 

Whoooo that was a long post :) Happy Friday everyone. 

How to Make a PBJ Sandwich!

In January I focus on procedural writing. The best way to learn is by doing, I think, anyways :) Last week each student wrote a "how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich" guide, which can be found here. Today the students were given somebody elses guide and had to follow the directions to make the sandwich. Can I just say they LOVED this?! They also learned that it's important to be very precise when you are giving somebody directions!

I gave each student a dixie cup with peanut butter and jelly to make it easy.

Following the steps...

As the students were following the steps they made comments on ways the writer could have been more specific. What a great way to provide feedback!

And.... the best part... EATING it!

**Last Chance to Win Candy Heart Math**

Click here to enter! I will announce the winner at 4PM tomorrow. You can also purchase it here. Thank you so much for those of you who already have purchased it. It means more than you can imagine right now. I also had so much fun putting it together that I'm going to start on a St. Patrick Day activity file this weekend.

And... I thought I'd share this with you all. The kids are making Valentine cards for their parents this week so I made special paper for them to glue on the inside of the card. Please let me know if you can't view it because I've had so many issues with Google documents. Happy Monday :)

How to Blow a Bubble!

I first must say this was not my original idea; it was floating around Proteacher and I thought I'd give it a try. Prior to this assignment, I modeled "how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich" emphasizing "how to" words like first, next, then, finally. While I was modeling this, I was actually making the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, so when the kids told me to put the bread together, I put it together facing the wrong way at first and they learned that they need to give specific directions :) The next day I gave all my kiddos a piece of Double Bubble bubble gum. Then I had them draft a "how to blow a bubble" step by step guide. After I checked it over, I gave them fancy final draft paper. The kids made their heads using small paper plates and construction paper for hair. I then let them choose a balloon and I blew them up a little bit (too hard for the kids to do and exhausting for me!) then taped them onto their paper plates (a lot of tape). I'm hoping when I go back to school on Monday the taped held up :D 

P.S. I just realized that I have 2 white balloon near each other and I'm so OCD about things like that, so I'll have to move one of them on Monday. LOL

Welcome to Second Grade!

Clip chart

I use the clip chart management system in my class. I like that it is a positive reinforcer and encourages and rewards my students that are always on task, which then motivates the students who are not quite always on task. Instead of writing the student's name on the clothespin I assigned them each a number. I do this so there is some confidentiality. The students will memorize each other's numbers but outside visitors (parents, teachers, other students) won't necessarily know who's clothespin belongs to whom.The students keep the clip chart daily report sheet in their BEE binder.There is a spot for them to write homework, teacher to make comments, and parents to respond or write comments. 

Job chart

Since community helpers is a big 2nd grade social studies unit, I decided to model my job chart after that. I only made 7 community helpers but use them if you would like. I'll be creating more next year with a larger class. The heads are attached with velcro as we change jobs each week.

Organization

This is how I organize most of my math manipulatives. It is 4 shoe organizers stacked on top of each other. I think I originally got them at Walmart. The bins with the blue lids are word work bins labeled 1, 2, and 3. They all contain the same items and are used during Daily 5's word work choice. They contain: colored pencils, markers, alphabet stamps ($1.00 at Target in the back to school bins), magnetic letters, clothespin letters, and dry erase crayons. 

Author of the month

Each month I focus on a specific author. I write the author of the month on this laminated file. As we learn about more authors, we compare/contrast writing styles. The students LOVE finding out who the author is each month. By the end of the month the students are talking about the author like they're best friends. It's great! 

  CAFE board

I implemented Daily 5 and CAFE this year which is off to a great start!

Choices
To begin reading, the students sit on the carpet and we spend the first 5 minutes making our reading block choices. This sheet is laminated (you might have to edit/play with the text since the font I used is a downloaded font). I, of course, have guidelines regarding their choices. 

 Habitats

While learning about habitats, we created a fresh water habitat facts bulletin board. The students colored and created pond plants and animals and wrote facts on lily pads. 

  BEE binders

Here is a look inside the BEE binder. This is my first year using this organization system and I think next year I want to use a smaller binder (1inch) and only keep their reading journals in it. 

 My library area

Each bin has a designated number and the back of each book is numbered. Let me tell you, this has made my life so much easier. I rarely have books out of place now. You can't really see it, but on top of my mailboxes I have a "book doctor." This avoids the emergency interruptions during small group instruction to tell me a book has a rip. The students put a sticky note on the page that is ripped then they drop it into the "book doctor" bin. Ahhh love it!
The book shelves are plastic storage shelves but instead of doing them 4 tall, I made them 2 tall and got two sets out of them. Perfect and affordable! 

 Organization

My students' mailboxes are on the left (very small class this year). The middle section stores birthday pencils and certificates, birthday certificates, absentee forms, and CAFE materials. The section on the right houses a lot of my writing supplies: construction paper, white paper, lined paper, stationery, fancy paper, envelopes, and writing prompts and topics that I change out monthly. 

Calendar 

I made pattern calendar pieces for each month of the year with a variety of difficulties. My students love trying to guess what the pattern will be.

Math/calendar area

 The bags are for the hundred day count. Each day the students put a base ten block into the "ones" when they reach ten they transfer a base ten tens stick into the "tens" bag. When the "tens" bag reaches 100 then the students will transfer a base ten hundreds block into the "hundreds" bag. 

Money

I had several questions about my magnetic pig, so let me explain it in detail. First of all, this was a trial and error project and it's finally working out :) I bought a three piece cookie sheet set. I used the largest of the 3. The other 2 sheets along with a couple other sets are used in my word work station for magnetic letters. I'm not very artistic so normally my fiancé does anything requiring skill for me. He's in law school, so sometimes I'm just stuck doing things on my own... like the pig. That's when I rely on google. I printed this pig template, cut it out, and traced it in pencil on the cookie sheet. I painted the pig using pink acrylic paint. It will take 2-3 coats and you must let each coat dry completely before applying a new one. After the last coat dries you MUST spray it with acrylic spray (can be purchased at any craft store) or the magnets will peel the paint. I have 4 quarters, 10 dimes, 10 nickels, and 10 pennies on the magnet board. The first trial I used the magnetic strips with the sticky back, but the magnets were not heavy enough and the kids would constantly knock them off. I replaced those magnets with disc magnets which are in the school supply section of Walmart and are about 6.00 for a pack of 50, I think.. I couldn't find them online. I used hot glue to attach them to the magnet. I've had no problems since I changed magnets. To attach the heavy cookie sheet to the wall, or in my case the door, I used picture frame velcro grips. They're fantastic! And supposedly, they're supposed to remove easily from the wall, but there hasn't been a need for me to remove them. Lastly, I cut, laminated, and hot glued this tag  onto the magnet board. My school uses Saxon math, so I write the money problem of the day on it and my math leader puts the correct number of coins on the pink pig.  

Writing celebration

We created t-shirts to celebrate our first published writing piece. The kids decorated the front with their name and year. For the back, I scanned each student's published writing piece and printed onto iron transfers. This was A LOT of work.. I'm not going to lie, but worth it ;)