Falling Behind

We've been super busy in room 507 and we are way behind on sharing what we've been up to lately!  Before the Thanksgiving Holiday, our students took a closer look at life for a Native American and Pilgrim child.  We read two great Scholastic News for Kids articles and followed it up with a graphic organizer.  I wish I snapped a picture of one to share!  They had to compare and contrast what Native American and Pilgrim children wore, what they ate, what chores they completed, and what they did for fun.  They also had a column to fill out including information about themselves!  To wrap up the three day week, our students completed these:

  The students began with the prompt, "If I were a Pilgrim/Native American girl/boy I would..." I was really happy with how they turned out!!!  Here are some of my favorites:

The students really had a great time working on these and I couldn't believe how much they remembered!!!

During the week we also read, "The Thanksgiving Story Bracelet," which was found on Pinterest.  After reading the poem, the students had to make their bracelets by sequencing the story.  Then they took turns retelling the story to their "shoulder partner" (Kagan Structure) using the beads on their bracelet to prompt them.    

In science, we took a closer look at how the Native Americans taught the Pilgrims to grow corn successfully using fish for fertilizer.  The timing couldn't have been better because we had just wrapped up our unit on soils!  To make it fun, each student received a chocolate jello pudding (as the soil).  They then placed a corn seed (one candy corn) into the "soil".  Next they fertilized it with fish (Swedish Fish).  Then they covered it with dirt (crunched up Oreos)!  To check for understanding, students had to complete a sheet that went along with the activity and our soil unit.  

The last day the students had the choice to be either a Pilgrim girl/boy or a Native American boy/girl.  Each choice accompanied a different craft that would be worn for the reader's theater play we'd been practicing about the first Thanksgiving.

I am so thankful for our 18 wonderful students!

Hooked on Anchor Charts

As we wrap up the eighth week of school, I feel like we have anchor charts coming out of our ears.  However, I can't imagine teaching without them!  Here are just a few of our charts that we've generated with our students!

In the beginning of the year, we created a lot of charts about what classroom procedures should "look like, sound like, and feel like." 

We used this great visual to help our students get a better understanding of the beginning, middle, and end of a story.  It was definitely Pinterest inspired!  

To help encourage recognition and mastery of our weekly vocabulary words (seen here), our students love to  write their found vocabulary words from their reading on this classroom chart.  Our kids are so excited when they find our vocab words in their books! 

After learning that good readers question 24/7, our kids generated this chart of "I Wonder" questions and "I Learned" responses after reading a book about tornadoes.

  This visual and acronym has been great to help kids remember author's purpose.  We will continue to build on this idea through out the year.

After introducing author's purpose, we created a PIE chart that we will continue to add to through the next month or so.  We also created an anchor chart showing the difference between common nouns and proper nouns.

While studying non-fiction text features, this anchor chart was used to show how to read labels.  Our students then labeled their own picture in their non-fiction text feature booklet.  (My picture is obviously Pinterest inspired!)

We've recently been studying pictographs and bar graphs in class.  Before the students completed their own graphs, we made some together.  The students also generated their own questions to go along with the graphs. 

After generating their own questions, our students worked with their shoulder partners (Kagan grouping) to answer their questions.  

It's amazing how involved kids become in their learning when they get their initials written next to their examples!  It's been a great way for them to take ownership in our whole group lessons.

Our list of wow words continue to grow as the year goes on!  Our kids love adding things to our anchor charts!

Soaring High in 2nd Grade!

Welcome to 2nd Grade!

I'm fortunate enough to share a classroom with another wonderful teacher, Mrs. Bowen.  We are entering our second year job sharing together in 2nd grade!

Upon walking into the classroom, we've utilized the back of our bookshelves for a pocket chart station.  

(The pocket chart will be moved the the left side once I buy some more hooks this weekend!)

As with most of our workstations, we usually always have an "I Can" list that we will add to throughout the year after introducing and modeling new activities.

Here is the other side of the doorway:

Although this spinning shelf takes up a great deal of floor space, all of our AR leveled books are stored on two sides for checkout, and the 2 "magazine sides" display our previously studied author books for our kids to revisit and explore on their own.  The big apple chart on the wall is used as a management system for the school library and AR testing.  Once introduced and practiced, this system pretty much runs itself!

 Next to the bookshelf we post our class rules and our behavior management system:

Here's a big picture view from the doorway.

Due to only having one bulletin board in the classroom, we created a "Reading Strategies board" that will display strategies we use with our guided reading groups.  Since we just finished testing and grouping all of our students, we still have a blank canvas:

The colored boxes in the middle are used for our five reading groups.  Organization is key in a classroom, especially when there are two teachers!

To the left of this, we house all of our students' book boxes.

After introducing new books to our guided reading groups, students will store their books in these (free) cereal boxes!  We will usually allow students to keep all of their guided reading books in their boxes around 6 weeks.  That way, they always have books on their level in which they can be successful readers!

Continuing to the left we have our "Wall of Fame" to display great student work:

We will soon have completed work displayed.

Here is a view of our back wall:

To the left of the bathroom door, we house all of our math and literacy workstation tubs on two metal shelves:

Here's our math side!  We began using the Debbie Diller math station set up this year and so far it's been a huge success in our classroom.  The numbers on white labels correlate with identical labels that can be found on the floor so students always know where to go.  The blue numbered tubs at the top of the shelf house each team's math manipulatives from our whole group lessons.  This helps waste less time passing out materials.

Due to having such little wall space, we made our back cabinets part of our vocabulary word wall:

Each week we introduce 7 new vocabulary words.  By the end of the year, our students will have learned in-depth, 168 new vocabulary words!  We continue to promote use and recognition of these words by keeping a year long tally.  Above the word wall is our goals banner that our students created at the beginning of the year.  They each wrote one math goal and one reading goal.

Here's a full view of the next wall space:

This space is contained by four white bookshelves, 2 on either side.  All of the books shelved on the left side house our non-fiction books.  Our fiction books can all be found on the right side.  Our computer workstation is hidden behind the two bookshelves on the right.  We found that other students were far too distracted around the computers, so we placed them away from our other workstations.  All of our graded work gets filed into the two red pocket charts.

All of these books are categorized into genre buckets (some labels obviously need to be replaced!).  I spent hours doing this about 5 years ago.  In order to check out books, students will place their "library card" that's attached to a ring on the bin where the book belongs.  I have used clothes pins in the past, but I have found that these work better.

The floor space between our fiction/non-fiction bookshelves is where we meet with our kids on the carpet.

  Our reversible literacy/math workstation assignment chart, our Steck-Vaughn "Elements of Reading" vocabulary words, and our math meeting chart are all housed on this wall.  

And last, but not least, here is a view of the front of our classroom:

Our ever changing word wall is to the left of our white board.  Our daily schedule, along with our objectives, are posted to the right of our board.  Our sign language cards are posted to the left of our clock (which we use for water breaks, bathroom breaks, questions, etc.), and our dot math numbers are to the right of our clock.  Below our board we hang anchor charts made from previous weeks, and our "Wow Words" poster.

Although not used much during the day, here is how the two of us stay organized day by day!

I hope you enjoyed a tour of our classroom!