Cursive Monsters!

There is something about the end of the year that always gets me so behind with blogging! I think its the First Communion preparation, end of the year testing and constant events that keeps me buzzing around! I'm definitely going to have to do some catch up posts this summer!

 

But for now... check out these silly cursive monsters that we created during our end off the year rotations last week! As you can see, students used cursive and symmetry to create unique monsters! It's a great way to practice writing your name but can be used for any word! In the past we've made Cursive Vocabulary Monsters and had our monsters shouting out the definitions of our words! No matter what form, my kids just love them! In case you want to try them, I've listed the steps below.

Step 1: Fold one piece of computer paper "hot dog" style in half.

Step 2: Use a pencil to write your name as big as you can above the folded line in cursive.

Step 3: Sharpie your name and refold the paper.

Step 4: Take folded paper to the window and use a pencil to trace your cursive word on the back.

Step 5: Sharpie this new side, so that you have two symmetrical sides!

Step 6: Open it up, color it and add some fun eyes and/or embellishments!

There you have it! A cursive monster! Super easy and they all turn out so different. You can see the yellow monster below was written on the wrong side and still looks awesome! They're just a fun way to practice those handwriting skills, and keep the creative juices flowing as the year winds down! :)

An Introduction to Multiplication

Each year around Christmas time, my little Second graders begin begging me to learn multiplication!

It's funny to me... but Multiplication to them is seen as this big scary topic that makes you a Third grader. Because they're so excited to learn and challenge themselves, I love giving them an introduction to multiplication. It likewise allows me to continue challenging my higher performing students throughout the year in small groups, while giving my other students who are still struggling with 3 digit addition and subtraction a little taste of third grade confidence.

I always start my very first day with multiplication by using m&m's. Using Candy as a manipulative for Math makes the lesson seem more exciting! And because I rarely use food in the classroom, it makes it special too!



This year because I have five students who are allergic to nuts, I also used skittles!

Students use the m&m's and skittles to create "groups of". They write down the mutliplication problems that coincide with the candy they created. We slowly learn that multiplication is equal groups and that there is a relationship between multiplication facts with the same numbers. For example, 3 groups of 5 and 5 groups of 3 equal the same amount of candy pieces. Here you can see a picture of one of my student's work stations.

Students tend to catch on extremely quickly when multiplication is presented this way. I lead them through about 6 or 7 problems together and then let them play around with the candy, making their own math problems! The discovery aspect helps solidify their learning. They write the ones they find on the white board in front of the classroom and we clap for all the awesome work they've discovered at the end of class.

The next day, we use colorful beads and our fun whiteboards to continue discovering multiplication. I found these amazing ping pong boards in the "dollar spot" at Target one day and used them for fun paddle white boards. Again I lead them through a few problems, making sure to introduce them to the multiplication rules of 0 and 1. I then again let them explore.

 

By using fun manipulatives and materials and by making multiplication into a discovery, it becomes fun and manageable. Students can immediately feel successful and excited to keep learning. It also gets them excited to start learning Division! 

I love how this student used his white board to beg me to keep learning! Gotta love 2nd grade spelling too! ;)

Merry Christmas!

As I sit curled up on the couch with my family,  I wanted to send out a short post wishing everyone out there in the blog world, a very Merry Christmas! I hope that everyone is enjoying a wonderful and relaxing Holiday!

Here you can see the adorable Christmas plates that my students created for their parent gifts! We used cheap plates from the dollar store and my collection of colored sharpies. I created a simple directed drawing for them to follow and my aide and I baked them in the oven for 30 minutes at 450 degrees! I hope that my students' parents enjoyed unwrapping them this morning, as much as we enjoyed creating them!

Now to sneak a Christmas cookie and read a little of my brand new, Ron Clark's "Move your Bus!" book before getting dressed for Christmas dinner!

Nonfiction with Native Americans

Every year during November, my class studies nonfiction. I've found some incredible resources for teaching nonfiction and I love using all of them, BUT one of my favorite ways to START teaching nonfiction is to simply let them explore and discover it on their own!

I do this by splitting my students into research groups. I lay out numbered folders on a table and let each group choose a folder! I ahead of time prepare the folders to contain a set of questions, pictures, a project rubric, a map of the US and a nonfiction book about a Native American tribe. It may sound complicated but I've been compiling stuff for a few years and just have it saved as a pdf on my computer to print and throw in the folders now. It makes it way easier! lol

The questions directly relate to the nonfiction book each group has in their folder. If you haven't discovered "True Books!" yet, then boy have you been missing out! I first found them at my local public library, but have since slowly been purchasing them used on Amazon.

Each group's goal is to find the answers to their questions somewhere within their nonfiction book and to then create a presentation and a poster about what they've learned! I explain that they don't need to fully read the entire book but that they need to do their best to fully understand each aspect that they are looking for in order to present effectively to their classmates. We go over the rubric and I encourage them to start by familiarizing themselves with the questions, but I offer no other guidance then that. I then just sit back and watch them work. I love watching their brains start working!

Typically, almost every single group begins by reading the book line by line. It's time consuming and can be pretty boring at first. Eventually, as all second graders do, they get squirmy. They start flipping through the book and suddenly see a picture of corn or clothes or something that could answer one of their questions. They start noticing the captions, diagrams, images, the table of contents and even the index!

I love when the first group discovers the index or the glossary! They usually lean over to another group and share what they learned! By searching for the answers within their books, my students don't only begin to discover the elements of nonfiction on their own but they also discover its use and importance! It becomes far more meaningful for them and they can likewise apply it much quicker to new and more difficult material later.

At the end of the first day, we gather as a whole class and discuss what we learned and how we used our resources. Then begins my direct instruction. We talk about each element that we discovered and add it to a running list of parts of a nonfiction book that help a reader learn and understand. Each day during the project, we reference this list and add to it. After the first day, I walk around the classroom, helping the groups refer back to the list, so as to continue to find their answers!

They then use their answers and what they've learned to write a script for their presentation and to create a poster to show their classmates. In year's past, we've then video taped their presentation on the iPad or have used the app, "Videolicious" to record their scripts and to display their posters.

This year however, I decided to give my students even more choice and ownership over their project! I let them choose the apps or technology they wanted to use from a list of all the apps, we'd used so far this year.

Most groups started with the most recent app we've been using, "Canvastic" to illustrate something they learned about their tribe. They then used various apps other apps to create a video or poster to go along with their presentation. Here are some of the short videos they created below!  :)

Halloween Recap!

Hey everyone! I can't believe how fast the year is going! I blinked and October just flew! I probably should have been posting as it went, but with parent teacher conferences, progress reports, field trips, and school scheduled functions, I got a little behind. But I'm back and ready to do an October recap. Here are my top 5 favorite things we did last month! :)

#1: Reading Comprehension and Story Development: Below you can see my second graders holding up their Jack O'lanterns in front of one of my favorite October projects, "Our Halloween characters!"

How are cute are they!? I just love this picture! 

During October, we worked a lot on the development of character. We read fun October stories, analyzed how characters are described, and how they can change as a story progresses. 

Students created Halloween characters using paper, scissors, and glue. (no drawing or pencils allowed! Just cutting!) Then, they have to describe their character using proper organization and structure. We share them as a class and hang them on our Second grade writing wall! They each turn out so unique and different! 

 We then read the book, "Too Many Pumpkins" by Linda White and discuss the character of Rebecca Estelle. We talked about how her feelings towards pumpkins changed over the course of the story and we mapped out the evidence from the story that shows this change. We also wrote about what we would do with too many pumpkins and create Jack o'lanterns, just like Rebecca Estelle, to hang in the classroom windows for our Halloween Carnival.

#2: Math Manipulatives: This month we also used tons of fun manipulatives from the Dollar Store and Party City to make Math and 3 digit addition more exciting! 3 digit numbers are written on eyeballs, witch fingers, and gravestone cards to create engaging ways to compare, order, and add 3 digit numbers. 

                 

Here you can see the kids using the eyeballs and grooves in our school benches to order the eyeballs from least to greatest. You can also see the kids using the witch fingers to add together on whiteboards and the gravestone addition problems in a fun Halloween cup to solve 3 digit addition with no regrouping. 

Manipulatives make strengthening concepts that much easier! They are naturally more engaging and fun. There is so much you can do with them! Here are some other ways we used them this month! 

• We used the cards to play a scoot game to review 3 digit addition with no regrouping.
• We used the eyeballs to practice greater than and less than symbols. 
• We used the witch fingers to practice adding more than two addends.
• We hid the eyeballs around the classroom and went on a scavenger hunt to create Math problems. 
• We even combined the app, Doceri, to create instructional videos using our manipulatives to explain how to solve 3 digit addition problems.

Here you can see the eyeballs being used to compare and order numbers at a Math station!

#3. Quotation Marks with Candy Corn: What is one of the most exciting parts about Halloween? Well... the candy of course. In October as part of our study on characters, we learn about dialogue and use candy corn to learn about quotation marks! 

Students pick a scary Halloween character to say something. We write our sentences on strips and glue the candy down. We then create silly stories about visiting a Haunted House. In the story, Halloween characters talk to the author. We focus on the importance of differentiating what words we use, so as to make our story more interesting. You can find this activity here if you want to try it next year with your kiddos! 

#4 Halloween Technology: As a Blended Learning teacher, I am constantly trying to use technology in the classroom with my kiddos to help transform their learning, build deeper connections, and apply their understanding.  

During October, we used Doodle Buddy Stamps to help solve Halloween Word Problems. Below is a video I took of two of my students solving a repeated addition problem about spiders and their webs. You can see how they used the stamps to create a visualization of their thought process. They then created their own word problems! 

Here is an example of one of the problems they created! 

We also used the app, Chatterpix, to create Monster stories that outline what a Monster likes to do on Halloween. Students used clay to create silly monsters. They then wrote a script from their monster's perspective and used chatterpix to make them talk. 

We likewise used another app called Pic Collage, to create collages that show some of the fun Halloween stuff we did in class in October! 

#5 Dress up: Ok, so the last and final favorite for the month isn't so much a classroom activity but I loved it anyways! My primary staff dressed up as Jurassic Park for Halloween! Some of us dressed as escaped dinosaurs, while others dressed as the tourists being chased! I just love Halloween! We had such an awesome time! 

Group Maps!

Have you ever had one of those days, where your lesson plans fail majorly and then you wing it and end up with something crazier and way better then you ever imagined!!!?

I both LOVE and HATE when that happens.

These past few weeks, my students have been studying Maps in Social Studies. Now each year, I like to mix up my activities and projects just a little, so as to keep my instruction fun and to meet the needs of the current class I have. But at the same time I don't recreate the wheel, I DO of course stick to some of those trusty lessons that always work. 

Unfortunately this past week, one of my trusty lessons didn't work as well as I expected it to. My students blew through the material and I suddenly had 27 pairs of eyes staring at me with over 45 minutes of now what next!? 

Since we were studying the characteristics and parts of a Map, I thought ok well they can create maps in groups for the next 45 minutes. I gave them paper and modeled how to draw roads, symbols, a map key, a map scale and a compass. My intention was for them to finish up within those 45 minutes but they LOVED it. 

They took it to a whole new level and designed towns with themes. They planned out what they wanted in their towns and discussed whether or not it was ok to have more than one ice cream store or football stadium. They took out rulers and analyzed how long they would want to drive to get from one location on their map to another to help determine their map scale. I even overheard one group discussing where to put their own house on the map, finally determining that it should be on the north side of the map because its closer for Santa to reach at Christmas. It was incredible thinking skills!

A 45 minute map activity, turned into a 3 day project, one where they were digging into the material and thinking more critically than I had ever intended. We even added that Tech Twist by presenting our projects through the use of one of my favorite apps, "Shadow puppet!" You can see two of their presentations below. 

I loved that this group added me to their map! 

They worked so hard and I was so proud of their finished projects!

Obviously I'm going to keep planning out my lessons. I'm way too OCD to wing it everyday but its definitely nice to remind myself that sometimes a great lesson can come from a last minute thought! :) 

Color Splash

Happy Tech Tuesday! I thought I would share this super cool app that one of the parents in class introduced to me recently. Color Splash! Use the app to take and make black and white photos with pops of color! How totally fun and awesome is that!!?

After completing our unit on Farm to Table and attending our field trip to an Apple Orchard, this amazing mom in my class came in and used her iPhone to take a picture of each and everyone of my students holding a red apple! She then used the app to highlight only the apple. She mounted them on black card stock and we sent them home as a fun fall keepsake for each parent to keep! 

Here you can see the picture she took of me.  I wish you could see how adorable the ones of my students turned out! They looked so cute with their little apples! The contrast the color creates with the black and white is such a fun and exciting effect. After watching her use it, I tried it out myself and found it extremely easy to use! The wheels in my head are already spinning for how I can use this app in class this year! So many ideas! Can't wait to try them all out! :)