Lima Beans!

The kids loved learning about life cycles.  One very simple activity we did involved watching lima bean seeds germinate in the window. All that was required were lima beans from the grocery store, plastic bags, and wet paper towels. After soaking the paper towel and placing it in a plastic bag, we used staples to create a ledge for the beans to rest on.  Within a matter of two weeks, several of our lima beans were growing shoots and roots. 

Guided Reading

Recognizing our lack of materials and structure for Language Arts, my school recently purchased an amazing guided reading program through Scholastic that I am very excited to implement. The Scholastic Guided Reading (See here!) program uses the Fountas & Pinnell leveling system and includes real literature at all levels. I was pleased that we purchased the Nonfiction Focus because it covers many interesting topics while still including an abundance of classic and contemporary fiction.

The beginning of a long Sunday afternoon opening 26+ boxes of leveled books...by myself!

Each level comes with about ten titles and each title has six copies to use for groups. The teaching guide for each book offers great ideas for comprehension activities and phonics focuses.

LOTS of books!

Our school isn't able to house these books in a central location, but our third grade teacher graciously offered shelf space!

Math Rotations and Partner Work

My school uses Math in Focus for our Math curriculum. The program uses the Singapore approach and is aligned to the Common Core State Standards for Math.  So far we have covered topics ranging from three-digit addition and subtraction, simple multiplication/division, money, fractions, and measurement. After covering a chapter/topic, I have continued to spiral in additional practice to make sure that the majority of the kids master the material. At the beginning of the year, a large portion of my Math block was direct instruction with a lot of teacher direction. Starting this semester, I've began to introduce more partner work through rotations and I am seeing great results!  I ranked students by assessment scores and created pairs of students of different ability levels. I paired the #1 student with #15, #2 with #16, #3 with #17, and so forth and so on until all students were paired.  I created a bunch of simple "games" to review money, fractions, measurement, etc... and rotated students through stations every 5-7 minutes.  It was amazing to see how independent they were! Below are some pictures of our stations.

Room Arrangement

New room arrangement! Post-Winter Break.

Life Cycles: Butterflies

I took a long hiatus from posting, but I want to get back in a routine finally! We just completed a unit on life cycles in Science. I've posted some pictures below of our class project, butterflies, and the release! It as so much fun and the information has really stuck with the kids.

Tuning Into Interesting Words!

One of the CAFE strategies under Expanding Vocabulary is Tune Into Interesting Words, and my students love it! The first month of school, I had nothing on my word wall. I kept forgetting to incorporate it into my daily routine. These past two weeks, I really made a push to use the Word Wall everyday, and it is really enhancing the reading we are doing as a class. 

Each week, there will be new sight words in purple that we practice each day. On a whim, I began color coding the words we put on the Word Wall by nouns, adjectives, verbs, etc... Our amazing adjectives are in green, our vigorous verbs are in yellow, and Social Studies words are in blue. We are reading Charlotte's Web, and the book is full of descriptive language and interesting words for the kids to explore.  We currently love the words dismayed and devoured!

Restart

After a tough three weeks, I finally feel like I have some of my energy back. This weekend I felt much more optimistic and eager to make some necessary changes in the classroom.

The signs below will be the individual tracking system for our "Strong Minds and Big Hearts" theme. Students will receive stickers to place on the numbers when they show one of the characteristics of someone with a "strong mind" or "big heart." Once they reach 10 stickers, they will get a certificate and a special "surprise" - aka I need to figure something out :) I think the kids will be excited to see the next bulletin board tomorrow!

Language Arts Makeover!

Below are our Reading and Writing Goal Binders. Each student has an assigned number to keep them organized. More info later on the contents inside!

I finally created my "Writing Center" to use during Daily Five and Work on Writing!  Below the writing center are our Words Their Way sort bins. Students have a word study notebook and materials for their word sorts for the week.

Some of the paper options for "Work on Writing." During Daily 5, students have a choice of what they can write about. In Writer's Workshop we focus on a specific writing skills and types of writing. We just started our Personal Narrative Unit.

I have five different word study groups based on students' spelling development stage. I am using Words Their Way to differentiate instruction for my kids!  So far I really like the program and it fits seamlessly into the Daily 5 routine.

I've been a little bit of a control freak with materials this year, so the kids will be excited to get their own pink erasers Monday. They will also have to be responsible for this mini-sharpener as a group. Always trying to minimize 2nd grade messes :)