Five for Friday!

What a crazy, busy, exhausting, rewarding, and fun week! Whew! I.am.exhausted. There's been a lot going on this week so I'm excited to share my Five for Friday from Doodle Bugs Teaching linky!

1. We created a class ABC book of collective nouns. It turned out absolutely adorable! This is the first year that I've taught collective nouns (it's new in the Common Core standards) and I think it's now one of my favorite parts of speech to teach. Who knew that a group of bees can be called an "erst of bees" or that a group of peacocks is an "ostentation of peacocks"?! My kiddos were cracking up hearing all these different collective noun names for groups of animals =)



 

 

2. I finally finished all of my paperwork to renew my teaching license! I'm not sure what it's like in your state, but here in Ohio it is quite a process. I'm sooo relieved to have it all completed and in the mail!

 

3. We've been working on 3-digit addition so we played Addition Scoot to practice! I'm going to be honest here and admit that I'd never played "Scoot" before and I had to look up the directions! My students really loved playing the game and it was a great way to get my "active" kiddos up and moving!

 

 

4. Over the past three weeks, my students have each been researching a famous person. I purchased  One Extra Degree's unit called Wax Museum Biographies and it is by far my favorite purchase ever! This week we started practicing our speeches and planning our costumes. It made for a VERY busy week but it all got done!

 

4. The Wax Museum!!! Today, my students "became" their famous person and pretended to be a statue in a wax museum. The entire second grade participated and we held the museum in the gym. Each student dressed up as their person and prepared a speech to give about them. When someone stepped on their "push" button, they came to life and gave their speech. It was absolutely precious! Listening to my students deliver their speeches made me so proud of all of their hard work. I had tears in my eyes listening to them deliver their speeches so confidently! Below is a pic of us in the gym when it was all said and done!

 

 

What a week! I hope you have a fabulous weekend!

Acting Out Adverbs!

In the new common core standards, second graders have to be able to use adverbs correctly in their writing. To be honest, I've never taught adverbs before and was a little worried until I found this little gem of a book:

If You Were An Adverb by Michael Dahl

Not only did this book explain adverbs in terms that my kiddos could understand, but it also had some fun follow-up activities at the end. After reading the book, my kids shared some of the adverbs that they heard in the book and we wrote them on a chart.

 

When the chart was finished, we tried out one of the activities in the back of the book. It was such a blast! The game is basically played like charades- one student goes in the hallway while you tell the rest of the class what the adverb is (example: gracefully). When the student comes back in, he/she calls on one volunteer at a time to act out a verb (the guesser gets to choose the verb they want the volunteer to act out). The volunteer acts out the verb but has to do it using the "mystery" adverb. So for example, if they call on a friend and tell them to dance, the volunteer has to dance gracefully. The guesser has to try and guess which adverb is being acted out. My kids had such a great time playing this game- they BEGGED me to play it the next day during our morning meeting time. It was a fun way to get the kids up and moving and learning at the same time! =)

Compound Word Day!

Yesterday, we had Compound Word Day in our classroom to celebrate compound words! I saw this idea online last year and tried it out with my class. It was such a hit and sooo much fun! For Compound Word Day, I encourage my students to try to wear as many compound words as they can think of. Last year I had a student who wore over 20 compound words and I thought that was unbelievable. This year, though, I had a student come in wearing over 30 compound words. Her parents even made a list of all of the compound words she was wearing! =) It was adorable. She had on a bathrobe, sweatshirt, earrings, necktie, butterfly keychain, and so much more. I also had one of my boys wear his swimsuit (trunks) to school- it was hysterical! At the end of the day, we also enjoyed snacks consisting of goldfish and popcorn... yum!

If you'd like to have a Compound Word Day in your classroom, below is a letter that you can send home to your students' families explaining what to do. It's a FREEBIE so snatch it up!

Happy Saturday everyone!

 

My New and Improved Word Wall!

This year, I decided to revamp the word wall in my classroom. I wish I had a before picture, but I never took one last year. Basically, I used LONG pieces of butcher paper  to create a large rectangle on the wall. This thing was probably 12' x 6'. It was a pain to hang up because you had to have at least 2 people hold the paper up and it took forever to add border to the perimeter. Last year, I would come into school in the morning to see that the entire top half of my word wall had come off the wall.

My awesome teammate, Kristin, used a completely different word wall in her classroom so I decided to create one like hers for this year. First, I bought a pack of 12"x12" scrapbook paper with colors that went with my classroom. Then, I cut the papers to be 8.5"x11" so I could print on them. I made a document on the computer that just had a large rectangle on the bottom half of the sheet. I printed the rectangles on the paper and then used punch-out letters to make the letters at the top. Last, I laminated and hung them up on the wall. Seriously, it took me about 10 minutes to hang the whole thing compared to about an hour that my old one did! In case you're wondering what the rectangle is for, I'm going to have my students draw a picture of a word that starts with each letter and then I will hang the picture in the rectangle. Here's a picture of my completed project:

As far as adding new words to the word wall, we have 5 sight words that we practice each week. I print these words on cards, hang them up on our front whiteboard, and we do several activities each week to practice them. Once the week is over, I add the 5 words to the word wall and then we start with 5 more the next week. One of the activities my students do to practice these words is use their whiteboards for about 10 minutes each day for our word wall routine. Here's how it goes:

1. The "word wall helper" (this is a student job in our classroom) leads the class at the front of the whiteboard with a pointer stick. Everyone else sits on the carpet with their own individual whiteboard, dry erase marker, and a sock (we use these as erasers!).
2. The word wall helper points to the word and the students SAY-SPELL-SAY-VISUALIZE-WRITE-CHECK.
3. First, they say the word aloud, spell it, and say it again.
4. Next, they visualize the word. They can do this 3 different ways but all 3 ways have to be done without talking. They can "air write" the word which means they use their finger to write the word in the air. They can "brain write" which means they close their eyes and visualize the word over and over in their head. Or they can "hand write" which means they use a finger to write the word over and over again on the palm of their hand. This only lasts for about one minute.
5. The next step is that the kids write the word on their whiteboard.
6. Last, the word wall helper spells the word aloud and everyone checks to make sure that they spelled it correctly. Once they've checked, they erase and we go onto the next word.

I know this probably sounds like it take forever, but once the students learn the routine, it only take about 10 minutes start to finish. It incorporates all types of learning styles- students hear the word, write it, trace it in the air, etc. I've had great success with my students learning their sight words and I know that this activity greatly helps! Plus, the kids LOVE being the word wall helper for the week. They get so excited to use the pointer stick and act like the teacher!

What are some fun ways that you have your students practice their sight words?