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! :) 

Shapes

Over the last few weeks, we've been working with shapes! Now I'll admit, teaching 2D and 3D shapes was one of those concepts that used to be somewhat tricky for me. I felt like I was one of those beginning  teachers, that unfortunately didn't know what else to do except encourage my students to memorize the different shapes. I'd hold up a shape and say, "So this is a triangle. Got it?" and hope to God that they did get it. 

I didn't have any manipulatives or games, direct instruction or even activities that made learning shapes easier or more enjoyable. I just hoped that my students would catch on eventually. 

Now I still don't have a wealth of knowledge when it comes to shapes, but I'm definitely doing better! I've found some incredible resources and have blog stalked many amazing teachers out there in the world and have borrowed some great ideas from them and come up with a few on my own. 

Here are some of the things I use now!

1. Geoboards: Who doesn't love rubber bands and little peg boards? My kids love love love the geoboards. I use them a lot in center work. I pair them with index cards that guide my students as to what shapes they need to create, so as to keep them focused and on task. 

2. Kinesthetic shape making: We go out to the grassy ground next to the playground and create different shapes using our bodies. We work in groups to create sides and angles. We take pictures by climbing to the top of the playground and using our iPad to snap aerial views. We then use doodle buddy or a drawing app on the iPad to label the sides, angles and vertices of the shapes we made in our pictures. 

3. Shape manipulatives: I printed these amazing pattern block templates from Jessica's Corner of Cyberspace and paired them with my shape blocks for a fun center. I created a name that shape graphic organizer to record their work. 

 

http://raebear.net/goodies/patternblocks/

4. The Greedy Triangle: We read the book, "The Greedy Triangle" and use Step into Second grade's awesome shape shifter activity found here. We paired the project she created with the fun app, "Chatterpix" and made the awesome videos below. 

Chatterpix

4. Captain Invincible and the Space Shapes: We also read the book, "Captain Invincible and the Space Shapes." We took notes in our math journals and practiced identifying the difference between a vertex, edge and face of a 3D shape.

 

5. Pic Collage: Then we used the app, "Pic Collage" to create picture collages of our 3D classroom shapes. I love how they turned out! There are some student examples below.

Pic Collage

I'm so glad that I've learned a few tricks. Not only do my students enjoy shapes more, but I definitely enjoy teaching them more too! What are some ways that you teach shapes? 

Creating Laws

Below I wanted to share some of the amazing Haiku Deck presentations that my students created.
We've been leaning about different laws and why laws are important for citizens. They then worked on a persuasive advertisement campaign to convince the class to vote for their own laws. Students worked in groups to create the below presentation. They are presenting them this week in class, and we will have a class vote for the one most convincing. In a month we will "present" the winning class law to a city council member when we tour city hall. I can't wait to see the council member's reaction. You can clearly tell each and every one of the laws below was created by an eight year old. :)

 

Martin Luther King visits Second Grade

It's almost a 3 day weekend!! Although we just got back from Christmas break, I can't believe how excited I am for the 3 day weekend. To get ready for Martin Luther King Day we embarked on a two week study on peace and Martin Luther King. 

Part of our study included an in-depth look at Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech. We analyzed it like we might a nonfiction article, pulling the main idea out of each section. We then discussed its overall message and purpose. We used garage band to record their voices, reading the speech. We then used iMovie to pair our voice recording with pictures the kids drew of Martin Luther King. Our finished version is below! Hope you enjoy it. 

While we were recording the speech, the students had to be extra extra quiet so as to not be heard in the background. Therefore as a reward for being so awesome, as well as a chance to express themselves, they created these peace collages with watercolors. I pre-cut out a dove from contact paper and my student's stuck attached it to the watercolor paper. They then filled the entire paper with color. We let it dry and then messily glued down tissue paper for added texture. Finally they unpeeled the contact paper so, the white dove would be extra dramatic and bright. They outlined it in sharpie and added flourishes such as crosses, peace signs, stars and hearts and the word, Peace. Each one turned out unique and special. I can't wait to hang them in our classroom windows! 

The dove art idea came from an art blog located here. I slightly changed it, so as to work better with Second Grade, but they still turned out really nicely! 

Finally, we created a simple projects from a template I purchased on teacherspayteachers. We brainstormed as a class different dreams we have for the world today and the kids created these awesome little MLK's. They wrote their own dreams down and we shared them on our Social Studies bulletin board. The rest of them are currently being displayed in our school library. 

Overall, it was an awesome two weeks. Hopefully after this study, they have a somewhat deeper understanding of the Civil Right Movement. I also hope that they have a stronger appreciation for the safe and loving community that their parents and school provide them. Maybe they even have a small memory to help them someday fight for their dreams, and for what is right.

A look into my Reading Rotations

Below is a lesson that I submitted for a class I'm currently taking. It explains one teacher led rotation. It's a little formal, but I thought that it might be an interesting insight into how I use Reading Rotations and Ipads in my class this year with Blended Learning! Enjoy! 

______________________________________________________________________________________

(Once a day, my students participate in what we call Reading Rotations. Students rotate through 3 stations for 20 minutes each. In one station, students meet with a teacher. Monday through Wednesday the teacher runs guided reading groups with leveled readers. Thursdays and Fridays the teacher leads students in learning new apps on the iPad or in utilizing alternating reading apps including but not limited to “Endless ABC,” “Educreations,” and “Storykit.”

In another station, students are asked to complete what is called the Paper Station. The Paper station likewise alternates throughout the week. Mondays and Tuesdays are worksheets that are designed to assess students’ understanding of a phonics skill. Wednesdays asses parts of speech and and/or sentence structure and Thursdays and Fridays are left for word making manipulatives and Free Choice or prompted Journal Writing.

The Final Station that students participate in each day during this rotation time is the IPad Station. In this station, students are given a choice of taking Accelerated Reading Quizzes, working on RAZ kids or taking pre-determined quizzes on Scootpad. Occasionally I mix it up and require they use a discussion board app like Lino.)

The Lesson below comes from one part of my Teacher station. It shows how I might use the apps “story kit” and “flash cards” to work with my students on reading and writing the past tense of irregularly spelled verbs.

Content Area:  English Language Arts

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.2.1d Form and use the past tense of frequently occurring irregular verbs (e.g., sat, hid, told).

Objective:

• SWBAT identify the past tense of frequently occurring irregular verbs.
• SWBAT rewrite present tense verbs in the past tense within their own writing.

Procedure:

The learning center I have created utilizes the app Story kit and the app Flash cards. Students will work with a teacher in a small group during Reading Rotations. Focus for the small group instruction lends itself from an earlier whole class led instruction time and attempts to meet students in that group’s needs. This lesson will start with the teacher playing a short game with the students on her teacher iPad using the app, “Flashcards”. The teacher will show the present tense form of a verb. Students will as a group determine the past tense. When they have decided on an answer they will press the app and watch the card flip over to see if they are correct. After playing the game for 4 minutes, students will open the app, “Story kit.” They will create a new book, and title it, “Today and yesterday.”  The teacher will give them a present tense verb. They will create a sentence following the format on page 1, “Today I (present tense verb).“ They will then flip to page 2, and create a new sentence following the format, “Yesterday I (past tense of the verb.) They will complete a total of 8 pages for 4 verbs. They will be given a choice during their Ipad station the following day to illustrate their pages. (To differentiate further within group… teacher will assign different verbs to different students for the story kit portion of the center)

Materials Needed:

• 1 iPad per student in group (about 4 to 5)
• One teacher iPad
• Story kit app on student iPads
• Flashcards app on Teacher iPads

Assessment/ Review

Teacher will observe the discussion during the flashcards activity, identifying which students in the group quickly come to the answer and which need more time or practice with determining the past tense of irregularly formed verbs. She will record her observations.

Teacher will also observe the students’ created verb books.

Teacher will encourage during a share time for students to swap iPads with others, review and read each other’s “Today and Yesterday” books. 

A New Page: My Second Graders

As part of the Blended Learning Initiative at my new school, me and my amazing partner teacher, Lisa, are teaching our Second Graders about technology through the creation of a class blog. Students are writing and planning the posts that we update on a weekly basis about our classroom. They write about things that they're learning or projects they're working on. It's an amazing way to document what we've done throughout the year, and increase the communication channel with parents. It also acts an effective way to utilize technology in an effort to teach students how to ethically and responsibly approach technology and the internet.

Some of the topics we are using the blog to teach about are....

• Online protection, and privacy (never posting pictures of faces, or using real names)
• The importance of making sure one thinks, and rationally evaluates before sending email, posting on Facebook or using any other mode of technology
• Cyber bullying (how not to act towards others)
• How to use technology to research for legitimate resources. 
• How to plan out writing, and edit it before making it public
• and many others.

Anyways, the blog is officially updated and students have begun to post. Below is a picture of the main page. The link is in the bar above, as well as below the picture. Please enjoy the new second grade blog! Let me know what you think.

http://holyspiritschool2mc.blogspot.com

Religion Website

Often times it's hard to make sure that prayer is a priority in your life. It's even harder to make sure that you're growing in your faith together as a family. As a Catholic school, my school is always working and encouraging their teachers and families to work together in developing a strong sense of faith in our community. Check out the website I created below for our upcoming Religion Night.

Families will be creating Family Faith Covenants together. The website will hopefully act as a resource for families at St. Rose in developing a stronger and more deliberate faith life in their own homes.

www.religionatrose.weebly.com

All About Snow

Denver's weather is all over the place. It can't seem to decide if it wants to be really warm and sunny or really cold and snowy. Last Tuesday we had a snow day! But by Wednesday it was completely gone and the sun was out. Then yesterday it snowed almost a foot! It can't seem to make up it's mind!

Thanks to the snow though, I made a shocking discovery! 2/3 of my students had no idea that snow was made of water!! They've lived their whole lives here in Denver and yet they've never even thought about what its made of.

As a result, I decided to do a little Science and Language Arts integration day all about snow.
We started by discussing everything we know about snow. We made a giant anchor chart of our prior knowledge. We then read a 3rd grade leveled nonfiction piece pulled from the Scholastic Comprehension book here. We as a class took notes (annotating the piece on the Smartboard) and discussed the main idea, purpose and learning in the piece. We then talked about all the facts that we learned about snowflakes, making a giant list on the board.

One of the things my students found the most interesting was the many different types of snowflakes and the different kinds of snow they made. We pulled up the following photograph to see what Wilson Bentley would have seen when taking photographs of snowflakes.

drawnassociation.net

We then talked about the two most common types of snow that we might experience in Denver. We talked about the light powdery snow that is good for skiing and sledding and the thick heavy snow that is good for snowballs and snowmen. We used our classroom smart board to research snow on the websites that I included below. Together as a class... we made a graph depicting our hypotheses about what kind of snow fell last night when we were sleeping. 

We then took our journals outside to experience the snow. They took observations on the snow, noting its look. They then were allowed to touch it and see if it would make good snowballs or fall apart in our hand and be soft for sledding. 

Lucky for them it was Snowman snow!!

We made a snowman as a class! 

Check it out below. 

He's one cool looking snowman.

After making our snowman, we came back to class and wrote paragraphs all about what we learned about snow that day! We still need to work on editing for spelling and grammar but my kids did an excellent job for the most part of remembering to use the writing process and include an introduction and conclusion sentence. 

And... they gave great quality feedback to their friends when we shared them! Three examples of some of the their first pages are posted below. 

I can't wait until tomorrow for when we learn all about the states of matter and how this helps us understand snow, ice, steam and water. 

We're also going to read the amazing children's book "Snowflake Bentley" as suggested by my fellow teacher and cousin, Kristin. It ties in nicely with our study on autobiographies and biographies! I can't wait! I love when so much learning can be connected and made so meaningful! 

Below are some links to other amazing sites to help with learning about snowflakes.

http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blogland/2012/dec/18/snowflake-science/
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/class/class.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Snowflake-Bentley-Jacqueline-Briggs

School Promotional Video

The link below will send you to my school's promotional video. One of the middle school teachers did an excellent job at depicting our school and its mission. Take some time to watch the video and see what an amazing environment St. Rose is!

You can also check out some awesome scenes of my students fully engaged in our field work trip to the local park where we identified positive and negative signs of human influence in our own community.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcs2ELliaoc

Happy 100th day of school!

Happy 100th day of school! Can't believe its already been 100 days! 

Today my students were split into ten groups. Each group had to come up with ten things that they had learned so far in second grade! By the time that we were done... we had come up with over 100 things that they'd learned so far this year! We had to add a whole other paper! This was their idea to hold up the papers to form the number 100! We used my classroom iPad to create this image! 

Make a Promise. Make a Difference.

As part of our expedition on how humans influence nature, my students decided that they wanted to do something to help the various living creatures they learned about in Colorado. Despite being only seven and eight year olds, they thought that they could make a difference by pledging to promise to always be a positive influence and not a negative. They created the below video to spread the word and encourage others to be aware of the impact humans have on the environment. It's been shared by the US Fish and Wildlife Mountain Prairie Region and the National Black Footed Ferret Conservation Center Facebook Pages! 

The link to its location on youtube is below as well. Help my second graders spread the word by sharing the video with your friends and family!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC01Aq0xEQ8

All photos of the black footed ferret were taken fromhttp://www.blackfootedferret.org/.
Check out their amazing conservation efforts!

Photo Credit:
R. Haggerty/USFWS - BFF1
R. List - BFF2
M. Lockhart/USFWS - BFF3
KT (USFWS - BFF4
K. Tamkun/USFWS - Prairie Dog 1
M. Lockhart/USFWS - BFF5
M. Lockhart/USFWS - BFF6
R. Peters/USFWS - BFF7

All photos of Colorado were taken by B. Modak and M. Crowley.