Accordion Foldables!

Hey everyone, I wanted to quickly post all about how I use paper accordion foldables to show sequence in my classroom. I meant to do it ages ago and totally forgot! Foldables are a great way to pull away from traditional worksheets and create new and engaging opportunities for students to show their understanding. We use them often in my classroom to show sequence in both Social Studies or Language Arts. Below you can see how by simply taking a single piece of construction paper, you can fold it into a booklet that when pulled reveals so much more!

This example below is from my Farm to Table unit on TPT. Students read about how eggs travel from from the farm to the table! They then sort the different events in the process in order from beginning to end! I provide each student with a 9x12 construction paper that I've sliced in half and folded into sixths. They then overlap and glue two of the sections together to create a little booklet.

In this unit, students glue the different steps in the process to the booklet and number them from beginning to end. Sometimes, I use it as a way for students to explore text. They highlight the different steps in the passage and then can refer back to the passage when working on their foldable. Other times, I use it as the end assessment to see if students have understood our week long study on eggs! Below you can see what a finished product might look like! For students who struggle with the foldable or when I run out of time as all teachers do, I will also sequence stories or content like the example in the bottom of the picture! Students can still enjoy the process of sorting the steps in sequence in a way in a way that allows for them to see the finished process in front of them. 

I love how foldables can make the material come alive in a very hands on way!

Flat Second Graders

This year, our Diocese has been focusing on utilizing anchor texts to drive our Language Arts instruction. We've been attempting to dig deep, expand our students' comprehension, and make stronger connections between varying levels and genres of text.

My Teacher Model

One of the anchor texts that second grade focused on this year was "Flat Stanley's Original Adventure" by Jeff Brown. Now there are many people who absolutely love this book! I am not typically one of them. I, overall, find the themes in it to be a tad boring and lacking in depth. However, I still read it every single year. What it lacks in depth, it makes up for in its ability to inspire struggling readers to pick up a brand new series with confidence.

Student example

This was the first year however, that I did not read the story in passing, but rather delved deeper into it. We compared Stanley's experience of being shipped to that of the title characher, May, in the book, "Mailing May" by Michael O. Tunnel. We looked at how our world is geographically laid out. We practiced understanding and creating maps of our own, while reading, "Me on a Map" by Joan Sweeney and "Mapping Penny's World" by Loreen Leedy. Also, we reflected on Stanley's kindness to those around him, and discussed how everyone in the world deserves to be teated with such kindness, regardless of their differences. We then used it as opportunity to think about some of the other places in the world Stanley might visit througout the remaining books in the series.

It was remarkable to me that when a simple story was paired properly with other texts, it suddenly became exceptionally more meaningfully. You can see what I mean by looking at the projects below.

We ended our text set by applying what we'd learned and had been working on into a summative project. As you probably noticed, my Flat Stanley project is a bit different than the typical Flat Stanley project that you might have seen on Pinterest. We didn't send anything in the mail, nor did we connect with other classrooms around the country.

Instead, students went to the school library and picked out a nonfiction book in their reading range about a place of their choosing. They used nonfiction text features to explore the book, and they read to find the main idea in each paragraph. Finally, they wrote a postcard, pretending that their flat-selves were visiting that particular location. The students compiled an image they drew of their flat-selves, interesting facts, and the front and back of postcards into a fun collage that they later presented to the class.

We called it the Flat Second Grader Project! I love how they turned out! I definitely enjoyed my first experience with anchor texts!