March Odds and Ends

Picture tour of the last few weeks.

Geometry Salad to complete our Envisions math assignment.

Using Keynote to write expert books 

Squeezing in Dr. Seuss! 

Freebie Lorax activity from Mel D at Seusstastic Classroom!

Middle of the year mClass math testing. We've been practicing like crazy! (Look for a blog post explaining more!!) 

Another snow day! In March!!!!

Creating Geometry portfolios to help us through this unit! (The worksheets are from Amy Lemons "Show What You Know" math packet. I used them as a pretext/post test.) 

Working hard to publish put expert writing projects (using Keynote!) 

Introduced new informational reading material to help with our expert writing. 

We have had so many snow days that we now have extended days through the month of March and most of April. Here are some of the extended learning activities we have worked on in that extra hour each day! I've been trying to keep all of the activities fun and engaging!! 

This ice cream and popcorn activity come from Bright Concepts 4 Teachers in her "Mastering Main Idea and Details" packet! Love it! 

MClass Math Assessments

We use mClass math assessments in our district, much the same as we use DIBELS assessments for reading. We test at the beginning, middle, and end of the year. There are five assessments for 2nd grade: Number Facts, Missing Number, Computation, Concepts, and Quantity Discrimination. Although we have used these assessments for maybe 5 years or so, it really hit me last year that I needed to do something differently to raise these scores. I didn't think my scores were horrible, but I wanted them higher (of course!) I didn't feel like our math series that we have adopted and are required to use was quite cutting it for preparing students for these tests, so I decided I needed to take it upon myself to add something more. Not just extra flashcards practice here and there, but a real, consistent plan for this year.

I created this resource for my classroom and for our whole second grade to use this year, as a sort of test to see if we could raise our scores. Good news, so far, we have!!! 

This is my beloved binder of mclass resources!!! The plan includes daily morning work practice and daily homework.  

These are the sheets we use for homework. I send home Number Facts on Monday night, Missing Number Tuesday night, Quantity Discrimination Wednesday night, Computation Thursday night, and Comcepts Friday night. There are 5 different versions of each, so after five weeks, they see the same ones over again, but guess what??? Nobody notices!!! 

Here are the morning work sheets that I use every morning. Students always have one waiting on their desk. It haves them daily practice of the skills, plus warms them up every morning. 

Now, you could choose to use these sheets in any way you choose, maybe you'd rather do the mixed practice for homework and the single skill sheets for morning work. I'm sharing how I've used it for the first half do the year, religiously, and now I'll share my results. The left hand data is the beginning of the year (before students used my practice packet), the right side is a picture of the middle of year data after the daily practice.

As you can see, even though the target goals increased at the middle of the year, my students' data increased significantly!! Practice makes perfect!!! At the beginning of the year, my data was almost completely yellow. At the middle of the year, I only have traces of red and a lot more green!!! (Green is benchmark!) 

I'm so proud of my kids, but I'm also proud of myself for staying consistent and keeping up with the daily practice. It has totally paid off!!!!

If you are interested in my mega packet, which even includes some hands on centers to practice the skills, please visit my store and check it out! 

 

 

 

Persuasive Writing

Back in February, I was able to write for the first time on the Who's Who and Who's New blog! Here is the activity that I shared!


Hello! I'm Allison from Stuckey in Second.

I teach second grade in Indiana. I'm so excited to be part of this collaborative blog and today I'm going to share a recent persuasive writing unit that we worked on in my classroom. It was my first time teaching it and it turned out to be a lot of fun for the kids. It was one of those units/lessons that just kind of emerged as we went. I had a "plan" of teaching them how to write persuasively, but it turned out much better and more fun than I had planned!

To start out, I had found this concept of using OREO to teaching opinion/persuasive writing and I found a free graphic organizer already created on Teachers Pay Teachers. (Score!) Thank you Michelle Thom! The organizer works by having students list their opinion first, then three "re"asons, then the opinion again at the end.

This graphic organizer really helped me plan what I wanted to look for (and what I wanted to tune my students into looking for) in the persuasive read alouds that I shared with my students.

We read a few read alouds together that had been suggested to me for good persuasion examples. I'd suggest these as well!

After reading Dear Mrs. LaRue, we worked together to complete an anchor chart that listed all of the ways that Ike persuaded Mrs. LaRue into bringing him home from obedience school. This was a pretty basic activity, recalling events from the story, but we were still working on recognizing persuasion when we read it.

 

After reading I Wanna Iguana, we created a similar anchor chart and wrote down both sides for wanting/not wanting an iguana. (Note that my anchor charts are pretty authentic and the kids do help me create them. They are a work in progress before reading, during reading, and after reading.)

 

Not only did the kids love the books, but they led me into a good idea for their own persuasive writing.

We decided to first try to persuade the teacher to let us have a pet in our classroom as a shared writing. (Yes, I'm the teacher, but I worked with them as a shared writing, so I was more like one of them!) Then, after we pretended the teacher said YES, I had them write persuasive letters on their own that persuaded the rest of their class which kind of pet they should get in their classroom. We had so much fun!!!

Let me lay this out in more of a step by step manner. I'm going to label it in parts, which could be separate days for you, depending on how long you spend on writing in your classroom.

Part 1: Read aloud and discuss I Wanna Iguana. Create an anchor chart that lays out how the character persuaded his mother into adopting the iguana. 



Part 2: Complete OREO planning sheet to persuade the teacher into letting the class have a class pet.  (Again, very authentic, show the kids your thinking, work together and do this as a shared piece, let them know that it's okay to make mistakes, and go back and proofread and edit together! True planning!)

Part 3: Use the OREO planning sheet to assist in writing a letter to the teacher with all of the key points that you want to make.



Part 4: Explain that now that they have persuaded the teacher into letting them have a class pet (she said YES!), now they have to persuade a different audience! They now need to plan how to persuade their classmates into which type of pet they should get for their classroom. Here is where it can get really fun. Some of them had some funny reasons and some really funny ideas for pets!

             

Part 5: Let the students use the planning sheets that they have completed to write letters to persuade their classmates on which pet they should get. Here are some examples from my room. Honestly, we have trouble with writing sometimes and this was a very engaging lesson! The kids took the audience they were writing to so seriously and were so "into" the writing that I was hoping they didn't REALLY think we were going to get any of these class pets. (Komodo Dragon!?!?!)

Part 6: Create final product.

It's been wonderful sharing with all of you today! I hope that this can help you out in your classroom, regardless of the grade level! I always love when I find a lesson that is so much fun to teach. 

If you are more interested in what I do in my own classroom, please visit my store. I have created a lot of literacy and math centers and games for my students. I also have a lot of freebies in my store that may be helpful in your classroom!

Click below to go straight to my TpT Store!

 

Expert Writing Projects

I'm featured this morning on the Who's Who and Who's New Blog! Here is the post that is featured!



We have been working on informational/expert writing this month. The kids are loving it. My basis for this writing is that the students write about something they already know a lot about (hence expert writing). The students aren't necessarily researching the topics they choose, they are just practicing informational writing about something they already know about. That way, they are focusing more on actually how to write information at this point and not necessarily worrying on researching. I did have a few kids that wanted to look up more about their topic and of course, I did not deny them that opportunity, but it wasn't. required. I told them they could read more to become an expert on their topic.

We started by creating a shared anchor chart with a list of possible topics that we are experts on. Then, each student created their own personal lists in their writing journals. After narrowing down a topic to start with, students started writing everything they knew about that topic. They saved the lists because the goal of this writing unit is to write multiple expert books.

We are lucky enough to have iPads in our classroom. We have one iPad per two students. I decided to publish the students' pieces by using Keynote on the iPads. This app is very easy for my students and is basically the same as PowerPoint. So, if you don't have iPads, but do have access to PowerPoint, that would be fun for the kids too! They love it!!

To get students ready for creating their Keynotes, I created slides on paper that they could fill in as their rough draft. Students picked which slides would go well in their projects, wrote their information, and created a small book. I didn't require them to write about an animal, but I noticed that a lot were, so I made many of the slides with titles to go along with their popular topics of animals.


Good news, here are the templates I used for them. FREE in my store!

After I conferenced with them to proofread and edit, they were able to start their Keynote. In the end, I was able to print their keynote as a PDF and make into little booklets.

My students love, love, love this and I definitely plan to do this unit every year now!

Here are some pictures to show you the steps we took and our finished, published projects on display! 

 

Join me for a Spring Blogger Meet-Up!

Mrs. Ehle's Kindergarten Connections: Join me for a Spring Blogger Meet-Up at the French...: Hey bloggers (and blog stalkers!)... looking for a weekend of fun?   The French Lick Resort and Casino in French Lick, Indiana, has graciously offered to host us for this meet up! Check out the link above for more information!

Sweet Second Grade Savings

Happy weekend everyone!  Your favorite second grade bloggers are back, this time with sweet savings for you.  We have gotten together to form a dollar sale linky party!  Each blogger will be adding 2-4 products to the link up below that will be on sale for ONE DOLLAR now through Sunday night.  Come Monday morning, all of the products will go back to their regular price, so make sure to grab them while you can!

At the end of this post, you will find previews and links for all of the items on sale for one dollar.  Click on the links below and you will be taken directly to the TpT store where the products can be found to add to your cart.  We hope you can find everything you need for the upcoming month(s).  Happy shopping!