2nd Grade Happenings: Blogs about Teaching

Showing posts with label Blogs about Teaching. Show all posts

Monday, October 6, 2014

Illinois Reading Conference!

So, I have been VERY fortunate and my district sent me to the Illinois Reading Conference (IRC)!

It was a pretty awesome experience! To see so many big names in the world of literacy for teachers.. all in one spot, it was a blast!

I was able to compare Timothy Shanahan and Richard Allington on their views of reading in the classroom with student learning, as well as complex texts! It's interesting to see their points of view, as well as compare it to my setting and what we are doing at our school. Shanahan is completely against teaching children at their instructional level, that all students need to be taught at grade level and must be challenged. Allington things that students should receive instruction at their grade level by a very well trained teacher! Wouldn't I love to see these two in a room together and watch them go at it!

I was also able to see Linda Dorn and her views on Text complexity as well as Vocabulary!
Maria Walthers great such great advice and motivation for transforming literacy instruction for the common core! The examples and ideas she brought to the table were wonderful!

These were just a few among MANY!

However, I would have to say that one of my favorites was watching and meeting the author and illustrator Steven Kellogg! His presentation was AMAZING! To sit and watch him work through his story telling thoughts, plus illustrating it right before our eyes, it was magical and inspirational. The passion you could tell he had was great too! He really enjoys what he does. He even read student letters that were written to him, HILARIOUS! This really wrapped up the whole conference and made my week!

So in honor of him! I am sharing my Jimmy's Boa activity pack too!!!!

Come back soon because I have some wonderful events coming up! (cough cough, BLOG HOP! yay)

Come back and check this event out!!! See you soon!

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

September Already?

I hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday weekend! So sad that it is considered the last official weekend of summer... even though here in Chicago the 80+ degree weather is telling us otherwise. But now it seems everyone is back in school and back to routine!

With that being said, as every school year begins, come an open house of some sort! So I am sharing with you today the All about me puzzle that I created for Open House! My open house was Thursday August 28th, and let me tell you, it was one heck of a day! I had about 70% of my class show up which isn't too bad! It is always fun to meet the parents and actually get to talk to them face to face rather then through notes or those sometimes stressful conferences. Plus it's a great way to get parents in to see where their children are spending most of the day and meet the person their spending most of the time with!

So of course you always have student work up, an all about me for the students of some sort. I know that in second grade, the students love to do ones where the parents have to guess which one is theres. they always find it so funny when they're parents try to figure it out. There are plenty of these out there, but I wanted something a little different so I am up with this all about me puzzle!

The students write on the puzzle pieces different facts that make them unique! We then take a picture and put it behind the puzzle pieces. The parent then have to "put the pieces together" meaning try to figure out which puzzle pieces add up to their student. The enjoyed it. My whole second grade team actually used this activity and it went really well. Here are some pictures from my teacher example!

You can get this in my store here!

All in all, as the year progresses and I get to know my students more and more, I am really excited for what this year has in store! I am lucky to have such a great group of kids!

Hope this sparks some ideas for your open house!

Enjoy the Short week! Be Back Soon!

Monday, May 12, 2014

Crazy May-ness!

As many of you teachers out there know.. MAY is such a crazy month. The students start to get antsy, the teachers start to get antsy.. and Summer fever hits hard. ESPECIALLY when next thursday was SUPPOSE to be your last day…. until the polar vortex decided otherwise this winter. But we are toughing through it!

The last week of school, I always try to make to make it fun, hands on, but still keep as much content as possible! So I do a travel unit with the students. Our mornings are our literacy block, so we will read a read aloud about it, some informational text, fill out some story maps, and even work with vocabulary. In the afternoons for math, I introduce a little multiplication work, then of course review review review from the school year! And of course writing is included! Writing about their trip, about where they visited, and even making their own stories. Since our last week is usually 3-4 days with field day and assemblies, I plan 3 days of travel.

So of course they get their own "passports"

And we load a "plane".

After we get off the plane we go through "customs" and they get their stamp from the country.

Then we start the day with fun activities from that country!

In Egypt, we read about Egypt and the pyramids. In guided reading groups I will pull non-fiction books about Egypt and work with the students on them. Then we will read the informational text provided and solve the mystery words using the facts we learned to find out even more!

There are even fun hieroglyphic writing activities.

For math we work with Egyptian "multiplication" where students work with arrays and writing both multiplication problems and repeated addition problems.

In Australia there is a lot of fun to be had as well! Learn about kangaroos with Marsupial Sue! (can be found on Tumble books! With great comprehension activities included. Also read informational text and answer questions. For math there is a year in review with place value, addition/subtraction problem, basic 2nd grade fractions, telling time, and more! The of course a post card to write home with!

Then for my last day we finish it off with Big Anthony in Italy! Read Big Anthony, His Story by Tomie DePaola! (not included) work on comprehension as well as work on new Italian Vocabulary from the book! Read informational text about Italy! And for math, play BINGO with place value and addition/subtraction facts!