Animals

As part of our recent Expedition, students learned about the various characteristics that determine whether an animal is a mammal, reptile, amphibian, bird or fish. By the end they were able to not only list each group's characteristics but also organize given animals into the various categories. 

Students were then introduced to Shel Silverstein's poem, "The Toad and the Kangaroo." After reading and analyzing the poem as a class, students were encouraged to create their own made up animals by combining two animals from the same animal group. They were then asked to write a paragraph discussing the characteristics of this new imagined animal. 

Some of the animals they created are adorable! Check them out below! 

Meet Raider

Hey everyone! Hope the new year is going well. I've only been back to school a week and we've already done so much! I have so much to post over the next month and I can't wait for the big unveiling towards the end of the month of our Humans and Nature Project. 

It's going to be awesome! I'll have to post little sneak peaks here and there. :)

But for now... I wanted to introduce you to my classroom bear! This here is Raider. As you can see he's dressed in my school's uniform and sitting on a little yellow chair. Raider spends everyday learning with us. My students absolutely adore him. 

Given as a gift from my mom, he's modeled after a bear named Simon from when I was in first grade. 

My students alternate taking him home on weeknights and weekends. He travels in a little gray backpack with his own change of p.j's and his very own toothbrush. He has a little journal that travels everywhere with him too. My students record their adventures with him in the journal. They draw pictures of him at dinner with their families, watching movies, playing games. He's even been to a few amusement parks and one time he went on a skiing trip. He is a very well traveled bear. 

In class he reads with them during Read to Self and Read to Someone time. Sometimes he helps out with group work or comforts a kid when he or she is having a sad day. Sometimes he even goes to Recess, but most of the time he sits in his little chair reading or listening to what's going on in class. He's a very good little bear. Though... he has gotten in trouble a few times from the principal for being out of dress code. Sometimes Raider forgets to tuck in his shirt.

Raider is a perfect way to have a classroom pet with out the extra cost or maintenance. He's also a wonderful way to spark excitement and desire for writing and learning in class.  Every early elementary classroom needs a Raider. 

Elves everywhere!

One of my favorite projects to work on with my second graders near christmas time is our Elf Project! 

In October my students create Halloween characters and write third person narratives about them, but in December my students write first person narratives about what its like to be an elf living at the North Pole with Santa! We start by brainstorming what we believe the North Pole might be like. We then read the book, "The little Christmas Elf." We map out the story on the board, and compare Nina's story with our brainstorm of the North Pole. 

The Little Christmas Elf

The next day we watch a youtube clip showing the funniest moments from Will Ferrel's movie, Elf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zhy_5aD7ks This helps us imagine what its like for an Elf in our world and wonder what it would be like for us to be elves too. 

We then discuss first person perspective. We learn that this means writing in a character's voice and not in our own voice as an author. I show them examples of books that we've read as a class that are from a first person character perspective and we compare them to books from the an author's perspective. We then do a simple assessment. I put my students in groups and hand each group 6 index cards that have a 3 to 4 sentence passage on them. Students group the index cards as either first person character perspective or third person author perspective. Its a quick and effective way to gauge immediately who is beginning to understand the concept.  

The next day... I then surprise them by showing them the Elf Yourself videos that I created! I make each and every one of my students into an elf that dances!  Every Christmas Office Max joins with Jib Jab to make it easy to send Elf dancing videos.

My students love it! It helps them truly imagine what it would be like to be an elf and gets their brain thinking from an elf's perspective.  We then do some ART! The one below is my teacher model. The students' elves were sooo cute. But how could they not be? 

Its hard not to be adorable when wearing elf clothes!!

Then we spend a full week using the Writing Process to create our stories. My students pick an Elf job and write a story about a time when they were doing that job. Each and every one of them turn out unique and creative. 

We hang their stories in our hallway and have their elf art hang next to the stories. 

I love doing this project! My students are always highly engaged and write a ton. 

Elf Names

Next year we're going to figure out our elf names too! I wish I had found this sooner! 

Christmas Ornaments

Merry Christmas!!!

Here is the tree I created in my classroom with my second graders! By overlapping numerous green pieces of paper, I was able to create this adorable tree for one of our bulletin boards. We then added the ornaments that my students made for their parents. 

Each ornament is a salt dough bell that was baked and then painted. Students were given green, red and white acrylic paint. After they dried, we glued their school picture on and used embroidery floss to hang them. These are the exact same style ornaments that I made as a second grader! My own mom still hangs mine on the christmas tree every year! They last a really long time. 

Here is the Salt Dough Recipe that I used. I baked the ornaments at home and then brought them into school for the kids to paint. Hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday! 

Christmas is coming!

I have so many little things to post about what we're working on for Christmas, but those will have to wait! I thought instead that I would post the scripts for the Readers Theater shows that my students are currently working on. I adapted them from various online plot summaries and links about each story. Readers Theater is such a valuable way to work on Fluency and accuracy. I can't wait to see their performances!

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Twas the Night before Christmas

The Grinch who stole Christmas

Clara and the Nutcracker

I will post the elf writing activity and Christmas ornaments that we're working on soon!

Hope you're having a wonderful Christmas season so far!

Teaching the Ten Commandments

As a second grade teacher, teaching at a Catholic school, I am in charge of preparing my students and all the other elementary students who have yet to receive for the Sacraments of Reconciliation and First Communion. I have found that it is surprisingly difficult at times to find materials to teach the Ten Commandments. Explaining what Adultery and coveting a neighbor's wife or goods to seven and eight year olds has its moments of extreme confusion!

I can't even begin to express the amount of times, my students have looked at me with those confused eyes or just thrown up their hands, yelling, "I don't get it!"  After looking into it for awhile and asking others for advice, I concluded that the only way to truly explain the ten commandments to such a young crowd is to put into a second grade meaning.

However, this second grade understanding can be hard to phrase correctly. As a result I thought that I would share the translations a former teacher at my school left me with.

I have inputed them into the following graphic organizers.

My second graders spend a week learning two commandments a day. We look at the actual commandment and attempt to understand what it means to us by using the second grade translation. We then use the graphic organizer to create a classroom set. We illustrate each commandment with an image that represents our understanding of it. I hang them on the wall next to  index cards where the students each write "why they think that its important to follow the commandments."

I attached the link below. I hope this resource can help second grade teachers in other places too!

Ten Commandments Graphic Organizer

All About Me

Sorry everyone for the lack of posts these last few weeks. My house had a little set back with Internet and its been a little difficult getting everything done at Starbucks. But I'm back! and I'm posting about an amazing activity my second graders did at the beginning of the school year.

This past August I had a whole group of brand new kids enter both my class and the school. They hadn't been part of the 1st grade community and as a result my class had some difficulty getting along at first. What better way to learn about each other than to start with a writing project?! I seriously wish I had done this last year. They turned out so cute! and they really helped build a new and stronger classroom community.

My All about Me project had students write all about themselves and then present their work to their class. I used it as our introductory unit to both each other and to the Writing Process. I also used it as a way to work on following directions.

We started the project by learning to divide a pre-made head and shoulders, up using lines to create the symmetry of a face. I instructed them on where and how to draw cartoon looking eyes and where a nose, eyebrows and mouth would appear when dividing a face. This gave them structure to their drawings, while at the same time allowing for creativity as to exactly how they chose to color and draw each facial feature. Approaching the art this way offered me a great way to immediately assess who struggled with following simple directions.

The students were taught about what it means to brainstorm. We brainstormed all about what others might want to learn about ourselves. We then worked on Pre-writing, Revising, Rewriting and Publishing. It took us over a week to create their writings, but they turned out really good for a beginning of the year project.

After writing we held a classroom gallery walk and then the students presented their work to their classmates during our weekly class meeting.

Following the presentations, students were grouped in fours to play a game. With a timer and a simple four square foldable, groups had to write as much as they could remember from the presentations about about the individuals from a different group within 5 minutes. We played the game a few times, switching groups. My students loved it! They learned so much about each other. (and I learned so much about them too!)

Here are some of the finished pieces. I had a super hard time choosing which ones to post. I loved them all!