Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter!! I hope that you are having a wonderful day celebrating with your family. I know that I am extremely happy and blessed to be back in California celebrating with mine.

Check out the pictures from the Sedar Meal my students and I celebrated this past Thursday during Holy Week! We had to slightly modify the meal but I think my students really enjoyed getting to see what meal Jesus would have been eating at the actual Last Super!

Flat Stanley

So my students have been voraciously reading the Flat Stanley series during their Daily 5 block of free reading. As a result, the art teacher created these adorable Flat Stanley projects with the kids. They're sooo cute! She's having them send them all over the country to different relatives. I can't wait to see if they come back to us!

I think that until they do, we're also going to write our own creative stories about them during our free writing block. Check out how cute they are though!

Check out Flat Ms. Crowley!!!

Making Connections Lesson

So this week... we had our seasonal principal observations as a staff. I was observed during a literacy lesson on making connections. I thought that I'd post my write up. Its a pretty good indicator of a typical literacy lesson in my classroom. (Although the write up is definitely more in depth. I normally shorten my write ups by abbreviating a lot of what I do)

Also if you scroll down to the bottom, you can download the graphic organizer I used for the independent practice portion of the lesson. 

Long-Term Target:

·      I can use reading strategies to help me understand what I’m reading.

Today’s Supporting Target

·      I can make connections when I read.

Today’s Target Assessment  

·       I can record a connection I made while reading onto a graphic organizer.  

Some things I am thinking about: Lately we’ve been working on using different reading strategies to help us comprehend better. This week we learned about how making connections helps us understand. This lesson is going to be a quick review of what we’ve been working on and a chance for my students to prove to me that they know how to make connections. We are going to read the book, “Butter Battle.” Then students will make connections to themselves, to other texts and to the world.

My Plan:
Introduction and Hook	TW introduce the learning target. TW break down the target together. TW remind student of their hand signal for making connections.
Mini Lesson	TW have students reflect back on their learning. They will look over their anchor chart and discuss the reasons its important to make connections, especially how it helps us understand. TW then have students reflect back on the 3 books they read that week to help them make Text to Self, Text to Text and Text to World.
Guided Work	TW then pull out the Sneetches book… She will have students reflect back on that story and together as a class.. TW model making a connection to the story. Then SW help the teacher make Text to Self, Text to Text, and Text to World connections for that book. TW then explain how today they are going to be responsible for making new connections for a new book. TW read, “The Butter Battle”
Independent Work	TW quickly model how to use the graphic organizer, despite them having used it before… TW give students time to work on the independent work… then SW turn in their independent work and assess themselves on the target.
Share and Debrief	TW have students meet her on the carpet. SW share some of the connections they made in “The Butter Battle.” TW ask for volunteers to share why they chose to place their magnet where they did on the assessment target. TW share next steps with the kids….

Next Steps: During our afternoon literacy block, students are going to make connections to the books they choose to read on their own. Furthermore I used and analyzed their independent work to group them for the afternoon differentiated lessons during our Daily 5 Block.

Over the next few days... we’re going to spend a few days reading different mentor texts and making connections. Finally we’re going to transition from making connections to being able to give an example of a time when making a connection personally helped us understand as a reader better.

Butter Battle... Making Connections PDf

Hope you enjoyed a look at direct instruction lesson in my classroom! 

We have a new Pope!!

So exciting to be able to experience such an amazing moment with my students today. We had such a great time cheering and learning everything we could about Pope Francis. This photo just makes me so happy. Look how excited they are!!! They joined the crowds at the Vatican in chanting "Viva il Papa!"

This will definitely be a moment I remember for the rest of my life! What a great way to spend a Wednesday! I love being a teacher!

Raider has a new look

Check out Raider's new look. One of my student's grandmas created this Broncos outfit. All he needs now is a motorcycle! 

Multiplication

We've been doing so much in Second Grade lately that I have so many posts to write! Below are the Multiplication Stories we wrote when we finished learning our 2's times tables. We spent a lot of time discussing the language of multiplication and learning how to answer and illustrate multiplication word problems. Therefore, when we finished learning our 2's, we worked on the project below. It was a quick project and only took us a day to complete. 

I got the idea over a year ago on Pinterest. Unfortunately I didn't actually pin the idea, so thank you so much to whoever pinned this idea originally. It was a great way to solidify the concept of groups in Multiplication and give them a sense of ownership in their learning.   

Book Report

Hey Everyone!

Today was such a wonderful day at school! Not only were my kids super well behaved, but they also presented their Book Flap projects!


We've been spending a lot of time lately on sequencing stories after we read them, and then giving our personal opinions about the stories. We learned about transition words and using evidence to better explain our opinion. We also worked on giving our opinions in a respectful way and making sure that we include all the important aspects of a book in a sequencing piece.




This project as a result was not only a way for me to assess the success of their learning over the past few weeks, but also give them a chance to share their favorite books in class.


Each student picked one of their favorite books and created a "Book Flap." They drew or traced the cover of their book and then gave their personal opinion backed by evidence on the inside cover and a carefully written sequencing piece on the back cover. They used the writing process to create high quality writing and received both peer and teacher help with editing. They then practiced presenting their projects, making sure to use a loud and clear voice and answer questions from their friends with respect.

It took us an extremely long time, but they're done! And... they turned out awesome!

I used the above rubric to assess my students. If you're interested, let me know and I'd be happy to send it your way.