Sentences

Writing sentences is one of those things that second graders can't seem to get enough practice at.  So I threw some activities together for some fun practice.  

I made a scoot in which students can walk around and identify what type of sentence they read.  

These are some of the cards I made for the scoot activity:

This is the front of the recording sheet.

We did the scoot last week.  I have never had a student lose interest when we're doing a scoot.  They love moving around when they can.

I also made a fun foldable - a prism on which students can write each type of sentence.  

I think we'll create the prisms this week.

If you are looking for some extra sentence practice for your students, you can snatch this up at my TPT store.  Just click on the picture below.

Do you Daily 5?

Now I know a lot of teachers are jumping on the Daily 5 bandwagon and I'm here to say, if you haven't yet, what is the hold up?  Amy Lemons from Step Into 2nd Grade with Mrs. Lemons was discussing this on her Facebook page the other day and it inspired me to do this blog post.  

Let me start with the source:

When I first started, I had only read this.  It has everything you need to get started.

Next, I read this:

Until I read this I was a little like a fish out of water when it came to conferences and planning what to do with my small groups.

I very much recommend both of these books.  I'm not one to purchase books - I prefer borrowing - but these are worth the money.

To sum up the whole kit and caboodle, The Daily 5 is a way to format the way your day looks.  You do mini-lessons followed by your students doing one of these 5 choices: read to self, read to someone, work on writing, word work, or listen to reading.    

This format, how you give children choice and build stamina and interest in becoming a better reader or writer, is amazing.  I totally believe in it and I feel like it's the best thing that has ever happened to my ELA teaching.  Here are a few pictures of my kids hard at work.

Read to Self (I let my kids sit wherever during their choice.)

Read to Someone

Word Work with Play-Do

(They can either write in it.)

(Or they can create the letters.  We focus on Fry Words.  A lot of my 2nd graders are practicing 3rd grade Fry words on account of mastering 2nd grade words.)

 Writing in shaving cream - they LOVE this.  I actually had to restrict it to one person doing it at a time because it's all anyone ever wanted to do.

Listening to Reading - Tumblebooks (which my building subscribes to) is my best friend when it comes to listening to reading.

No work on writing pictures for some reason.  

But isn't it so cute?  And not only are they so cute at work, but they are truly into it!  

This is a picture from an earlier post on how my classroom looks.

This is how I set up my Daily 5 anchor charts and Cafe Menu.  If you do the Cafe and are looking for a menu, check out my freebie menu at my TPT store.

Do you do the Daily 5?

Biographies

I'm really embarassed about how long it's been since last I blogged, but oh, well.  What are you gonna do?  

Anywho. . . 

Last year I did a week long project where we wrote biographies of each other in our class, to practice writing expositories for our last district common assessment.  One of the major benefits of being a teacher of the same grade year after year is that I can make better what I've done before.  I tweaked what we did last year with biographies and am in the middle of doing this project again, even better than before.  

Here's my revamped version if you want to check it out at TPT.  Just click on the picture below: 

Last year I gave students a list of questions on a small piece of paper for them to interview each other with.  This year I revamped it into a set of questions that they could cut out as little cards to interview with.  I think it helped them have a bit more room to record each other's answers on and it felt more fun than a typical "worksheet".  

Another difference from last year to this year is that last year we wrote the biographies as a long paragraph and this year I'm letting them either write a long paragraph or a multi-paragraph essay, for those kiddos that are ready for that next step.  Since I teach second, I really focus on writing complete sentences and using them in 5-sentence paragraphs but some of my kids just have so much more to say in their writing than the standard 5 sentences.  So to differentiate, I am doing both.  I actually modeled planning both versions to everyone and let them choose which version to use.  I even let them change their mind if they got into their planning and realized that they had too much or too little for the planning they started with.

One other change is that I'm going to let them choose to either write their biography on traditional lined paper, with a spot for a picture of their subject OR they can write it as a little booklet.  I wonder how many will choose what.  I'm betting a lot will want to do the booklets but we'll see.

I don't know how you go through writing projects like this but I've modeled each step of the way with my own biography about our interim principal.  I had him come in to be interviewed while my students listened.  I am really lucky to have a document camera, Smartboard and projector, so I showed how I took quick notes under the document camera.  If you don't have a document camera, you should hit your boss up for real.  

The next day I took my interview notes and my planning page (basically a web) and showed how to pick out details to plan my paragraph.  I also demonstrated how to plan for a multi-paragraph piece using another graphic organizer.

The next day I used my iPad to take a picture of each planning page and put that picture in a Smart Notebook document so I could have it right on the screen while I wrote my rough draft.  I modeled writing my single paragraph writing for the whole class but for this part, I only showed the people who had planned for a multi-paragraph how to take their planning and turn it into their rough draft with the multiple paragraphs.

So far, so good.  I'm really excited to see how these rough drafts turn into their final pieces.  If I can be a good little blogger, I'll take pictures and post them on a later post but I make no promises.  

Do you ever write biographies with your kids?  What other expository writing do you do with your class?

Native Americans! Plus, coming up next - Earth Science!

 

Last week we had . . . kind of a mad rush to finish up my Native American unit.  You know, it’s always better to test before a long break than to wait.  It worked out well, though, because it coincided perfectly with Thanksgiving celebrations.  You’d think we did that on purpose or something.  ;)

Here are a few things we did for Thanksgiving/Native Americans.

We made booklets about Woodlands and Plains Indians (from my TPT Native American unit that you can get {HERE} if interested) plus Amy Lemons’ uber cute Native American craft to go with it.  I cannot, for the life of me, find a link to this freebie, but you should definitely check out her blog {HERE}.  It’s my favorite!

I really dug on a few faces the boys drew.  They cracked me up.

We also read The Littlest Pilgrim and made pilgrim hats out of chocolate wafers, icing and a peanut butter cup.  Super easy and delish!

Also, I had my kiddos write from the viewpoint of a turkey telling people why we should eat something besides turkey.  My favorite one was this one.

He really struggles with writing – especially conventions (I’ve got my eye on him) but his voice just cracked me up in this.

Here’s a translation if you can’t decipher it all:

Save a turkey.  Eat more duck.  We turkey are tired of being eaten.  Stop eating us and eat duck.  Please help us by eating duck.  Ducks are good.  We turkey are disgusting.  Do not eat us.  Eat duck.  From the turkey.

You should see my blog post {HERE} if you want that writing prompt as well as another plus a cute turkey craft for free!

So after all that Native American/Thanksgiving fun, we’re moving on to Earth Science.  I feel like it’s hard to find a lot of good resources for this unit, so I put some together myself.  If you want to check it out, click {HERE} or on one of the pictures below, which are a few things included in my unit. 

 Oh, and btw, if you haven’t heard, there’s a ha-uge sale at TPT starting tomorrow.  It’s a Cyber Monday and Bonus Tuesday sale.  I’m giving 20% off and TPT is giving an additional 10% off for a combined total of 28% off! 

 

Thanks for the button, School Supply Addict! 

 I have a really cute Winter packet if you want to snatch that up while it's on sale.  You can click {HERE} or on the picture if you want to check it out.

Here are a couple of things I’ve got my eye on for myself.  What are you lusting after?

 

Turkey Day and a Freebie

 

Turkey day is coming up.  What are you thankful for?  It’s really fun to help kids remember to think of all they have to be thankful for.  That’s what I did with these cute little turkeys.  Click {HERE} if you want to download this turkey for FREE!

Here are some of my kids' examples:

 

First, I had kids list 7 things they were thankful for.  Next, they circled the thing they were most thankful for and plan a paragraph about it.  They wrote a rough draft, then the final draft on the writing paper.

This week I think I’ll let them write to the prompt “Save a turkey, eat more. . ."

You can click on the picture below to get all of this for free.

While you’re at it, you can check out my Wonderful Winter Fun activities by clicking on the picture below.

Here are a few things that are included:

Spiders + Native Americans = Fun!

There is something to be said about getting the scissors and creating things when you’re talking about 8 year olds.  The engagement level goes right up.  Today we made a few things that I was pretty excited about.

First I did one of Amy Lemon’s (Step into 2nd Grade) super cute and, as a bonus, free, activities.  We created spiders and wrote poems about them. This was perfect because we’ve been learning parts of speech, well, all year, it seems and these poems involve using verbs and adjectives.  Here are a few examples of my students’ work:

If you want to snatch this up, head to Amy’s TPT store {HERE}.

The thing we did later in the day wasn’t quite as cute but it was fun for my kids.  I whipped up a flipbook Venn diagram for Woodland and Plains Indians to go along with our Native American unit.  We’ve watched a few United Streaming videos about the Woodland Indians and the Plains Indians, created an anchor chart (I gotta say, that anchor chart is ugly as sin.) and discussed the characteristics at length, so I thought I’d see what the kids could do as far as comparisons. 

If you do a unit over Native Americans my unit on TPT might be helpful to you.  You can check it out {HERE}.  

If any of you want the Venn diagram flipbook for free, please just leave a comment and I’ll link it to this blog post so you can download it.