Up Close and Personal with Gibbons and Cherries

the authors Gail and Lynne respectively that is!
Yesterday our second graders got to “meet” Lynne Cherry, the author of the Great Kapok Tree {and other environmental themed books}. I really had no idea about any of her books besides the Great Kapok before then! You may remember my post about our district’s yearly collaboration with our local university’s Little Read program and getting $300 to spend at Barnes and Noble.

She spoke about her early love of writing and being alone in her woods. She also spoke A LOT about groups of kids who have persuaded many big wigs to stop using Styrofoam {including McDonald's!} and even a group of kids whop raised money to buy an entire forest. She has a collection of film shorts as well.

Later on, she showed us how to draw a dragon…random, but fun and came in handy when I couldn’t take much more on Friday afternoon!
   
We learned about using series of Cs, Vs, and shading using crosshatch.

Speaking of not taking much more…if I have to teach one more lesson on subtraction with regrouping I am gonna loose it! It does take lots of practice to perfect, but our Math Expressions unit is going on 2 weeks.

My latest tactic to break the minutia, writing on our desks. Hey, you gotta do whatcha gotta do

  
I had student volunteers use money models and equations to show ungrouping on the document camera. See the AMB magnets…more on this later!

-----------Insert Chili’s Presidente Margarita break with the hubs here------------

Part 2
And on to Gail Gibbons! My FAV nonfiction author. Her books are the perfect avenue to teach text features. Each year I have my students make “expert posters” on a chosen topic. They each check out a Gibbons book from the library and read it daily for the first week. During that week I review features we’ve learned and introduce new ones, too. Then during week 2 {this coming week} each student gets a poster sized paper to make their posters.

Here is my own on tigers I made as an example. It includes a title, diagram with labels, comparison, fact box with vocab, and a map. Each poster must have at least 4 text features and be labeled with what the feature is.

There are lots of resources online, and I use a lot of them. But I wanted my students to make a text feature book with their own creations. Enter Text Features Gurus!

This packet {on TpT and TN} includes a student book to use to glue in examples OR make their on. I personally can’t decide if I want to make the book about themselves {since they are definitely experts on that} or on their topic. I will have to let you know! We also look for examples in Scholastic News and old magazines. I also included a newspaper style sheet to create if you do not have access to poster paper!

 
This booklet is a freebie from Beth Newingham’s Scholastic blog. It’s a lot of copies, but I think finding examples is just as important as creating them.

Well, you’ve read enough about Gibbons and Cherries! As a grade level we have decided to renovate my mom’s garden {which is outside my classroom window} in April! I can’t wait to share the progress!

4 school days til Spring Break!!! woot-woot!

A Potpourri Post, a freebie, and a lot on the way

A completely
random
post
But, do you ever make a file or sheet to share, then when you use it, decide it’s not what you want? or there are a lot of things to change?
That’s me with  my Common Core posters…cute, but just not exactly perfect for me…
Especially since I discovered KPM Doodles! Love her!
So I spent my weekend revamping the file into full size options {because apparently administrators are blind} and adding new graphics and “I Can statements” that are reworded to be kid-friendly since I just found out that is what I will be required to post next year! Love how expectations change
every
single
day

Well, I am really happy with how they turned out! See for yourself! Click the images to go to TpT

I Can Statements in half size for pocket charts

I can Statements full size with full color and printer friendly format

And “Teacher Version” in full size

And Whoooo’s On Target with little owl subject headers that are freakin’ adorable!

I also posted a few other tidbits I made to use with my kiddos this week.
We attended a performance of Cinderella Around the World by our local theatre and it was great and laced throughout with good humor! Since we were not leaving school right away, I made a story problem mini-book with a Cinderella theme. You can snatch this freebie on TpT

We also made Amy Lemon’s watch pattern to show how characters change over time {a Common Core goal y’all!} I had my kiddos divide the watch face into halves or fourths and illustrate her growth as a character. We will also use the Invention idea this week. For the life of me I cannot locate a copy of Bigfoot Cinderrrrella and my students like are obsessed with the show Finding Bigfoot! I guess I will have to wait on Amazon to ship!

I will be doing a camera dump on our weather unit we just finished up soon. I am also working on putting together our unit as well as a Mealworms and Life Cycle pack! I am waiting on some custom clipart cause who in the world makes mealworm graphics?? I love those little boogers and so do my kids!

And I just saw Sara Cooley’s Lemonade stand file and had just read about Alex in a magazine this past week. Can’t wait to use it and teach my kids about caring for others, and give to the cause. We just completed the St. Jude’s Math-a-Thon and I encourage you all to participate next year!

53.8 pounds and an Easter Egg Hunt

First off, I am really tired of Lucky Charms switching up their marshmallows every single year-stick with what works people! That said, as we sorted yesterday using my little booklet, we had NO stars and did have shamrocks-so we improvised cause that's what teachers do and recorded shamrocks in the star column. Regardless-I adjusted the file on TpT

Second of all-they LOVED the pots of gold that greeted them Friday morning! Of course they wanted to keep the little pots, but …! It was just enough challenge to keep them thinking! Worked perfect!

 

Around mid-morning during some partner questioning practice we had a few teachers form another district come in and watch how we roll. I don’t know who told them Friday in my room would be good {or any day because we are pretty wacky!} but we entertained them nonetheless. And the quote of the day {we should really write these things down you know} was one of my kiddos saying his bones hurt, I responded that maybe he was growing {he’s pretty teenie} and he laughed and said “Hardly, I’ll weigh 53.8 pounds forever!” Geez! But like I said, we aim to entertain!

After lunch we made our Leprechaun Pie. It’s pistachio pudding and you can either take it or leave it {I’ll leave it} but it’s fun to watch them try new things each month.

This is was made for my former TA who helped me make snazzy snacks each month last year! I always send one down to her. Aren’t these precious!

I just uploaded an Easter Egg Math Hunt I did last year and loved! Student teams hunt for all their group’s eggs {assigned colors} and when they finish, they work together to solve the story problems. I just picked up some 12 packs of eggs at Dollar Tree with 6 different colors per pack. That’s perfect because I like having smaller teams so I’ll have 6! Check it out on TpT and Teacher’s Notebook

{TpT}  {TN}

PTSD {People tryin.to.move.on.after Seuss Day}

So Read Across America week has come and gone. Dr. Seuss celebrations are over
Now what??
Well, I have really tried to e-x-t-e-n-d things this year. We were still doing Dental Health this week…
I don’t mean to drag things along, in fact, I hate it
But between Pinterest and Blogging I just find too much I wanna do!

SO to carry along with Seuss and cover Questioning, and Summarizing, and St. Patty’s…
We read Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? and introduced Questioning {real questioning, not constant blurting from 7 year old minds questioning} with Schlopp.

I thought this was the perfect segue into how thinkers question all the time.
We had Schlopp last Friday, so Monday I asked what their questions about the food were before they ever saw it, after seeing it, while eating, and lingering questions. I did finally give in and admit the ingredients. I guess some figured out I didn’t really go to Who-Ville…
We’ve also done this on stickies while previewing One Dark Night from the basal, while reading Grandfather Twilight {my personal fav for questioning} and will read the Sweetest Fig tomorrow-any VanAllsburg book is a constant questioning fiesta. They are good for lingering questions.

After reading Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? aloud {which I’d never read before and had to practice first!} we brainstormed 3 reasons we are lucky then wrote stories to hang with our Lil’ Leprechaun Cuties from First Grade Fever. And boy will some tears fall from mommas’ eyes when these go home! Precious!! You can get my I am Lucky to be Me writing paper on TpT here…but I won’t share the bulletin Board heading since I remade them from Lesson Plan SOS blog.

 

 

Yes, did I mention we just wrapped up dental health…I am adding this activity to my toofy packet! The kiddos wrote facts they learned from our nurse on big teeth and we made a big ol’ mouth in the hallway! cute! Our lip got a little ripped and I really contemplated adding a lip ring…

Are you ready for a little St. Patty’s fun tomorrow. We went ahead and wrote our Snazzy Snack recipe today to save time tomorrow and I left little pots of gold for each kiddo for a morning surprise! Can’t wait to share pictures! {fyi-I fixed 2 grammatical errors in my St. patty’s minibook, so redownload if you purchased!}

A Pot of Money, Schlopp, and a Freebie!

St. Patty’s Day is kinda one of those holidays where I don’t have too much creativity. Probably because I do not really get it. But that’s ok, cause I’ve got Pinterest now! haha

One idea I came across on the net {not sure where now} is filling up little kettles with coins and having the kiddos count it and then each other’s pots of “gold”. I was bummed though because I figured I couldn’t find kettles in March, but lo and behold Party City!

They always come to the rescue! And cheap too. All for around $6 for 24 little kettles! Free money manipulatives at school, and a free recording sheet! Erin Go Bragh!
So here’s the freebie in Google Docs

And I’ve finished up a teenie activity pack for this week, too! It’s on TpT now! I made a Lucky Charms mini data book, included the above coin activity with a little more, All Things Green bubble mapping activity, and MY FAV…a Blarney Stone persuasive writing activity where students tell what they would do with the Gift of Gab. Precious!

And I wanted to share some of the suesstastic things we did this past week! And my favorite things were all free for me! Thanks to making my own stuff, Abby at the Inspired Apple, and my teamie’s Dr. Seuss minibook {told you I’m obsessed with these things!}

We made Seussy creatures on Switcharoo Zoo website after reading I Wish that I Had Duck Feet

Made Cat in the Hat Snazzy Snacks and tried some Schlopp with a cherry on top!

And took everyone’s picture with my new Cat in the Hat camera app! These are my littles since I know their mom won’t mind if they're on the blog!

And used our Rhyming Dictionary to make up some hilarious rhymes for a “things you can think” activity: one of the best: Dr Phil on a treadmill in an oil spill!

Love/Hate Relationships {Allow Me to Summarize}

Mrs. Lamb
wanted
to make this week as captivating as possible,
but sometimes kids get a little overexcited
so we had a few meltdowns
then ended up having a great Friday

I love the “Somebody wanted, but, so, then” summarizing tool. It is technically copyrighted to a lady who used to work in our district with reading, but she has moved on to bigger things…like a gig with a pretty well-known textbook publisher…

I hate trying to get the ideas of determining what is important in text and summarizing…really hate it with 7 year olds…
Why?
I get caught up in the minutia of details just as much as they do
that’s why I take 3 days to add the perfect clipart, borders, and fonts to files
that’s why I am a procrastinator…I’m not really, I just have a hard time staying on one task without moving to whatever is on my mind…

Anywho-Each month my school focuses on a reading strategy to teach-last month was summarizing. I compiled the ideas we shared and some I already used into a pretty sweet literacy packet

In this packet I have my 2 favorite ways to trick kiddos into focusing on main ideas…The ABC Summary {which is also a freebie at the bottom!} and the Somebody, wanted, but, so, then frame {fiction, nonfiction, and bio versions included}

click to purchase {TpT} {teacher’s notebook}

Here’s a little peak. I love this ABC summary chart. I have used it to review before tests and as a pretest to see what they already know. Another break from the ordinary is to have them walk around the room trying to get one word in every box from each other.

click picture for freebie on google docs

Right now I am working on making the o’ faithful lucky charms data activity more 2nd grader appropriate-it’s all so easy! Here’s a sneak peek of what I’ve got so far. Can’t wait to share and USE!

and I also uploaded some freebie fun last night that I will explain more about later!

Wanna Be the Coolest Teacher EVER!? {Just add shaving cream}

I saw a post on Lesson Plan SOS about one of the gals having students write on their desks with their dry erase markers. I wasn’t ready to believe it would really erase well {and I hate dirty desks}, but as we were pulling apart cotton balls making clouds, I needed a quick way to name them before they blew off the desks in a frenzy of kids lining up for lunch.
So…get out your board makers
Now they are pretty trained, so they dragged out their boards too
Nope you don’t need them…huh?
Now do not EVER tell anyone what we are doing…we are going to write on our desks!
OMIGOSH…won’t we get into trouble…will you get in big trouble…
what if the custodian tells the principal!!
{I love innocence}

Let me tell you…these kids would throw me under the bus!
when we lined up for lunch 5 minutes later I saw one little gal had written “Mrs. Lamb told me to do this”, at the bottom of her desk!Sheesh!

Well it all came off with a little shaving cream! I had a stockpile from our cursive writing practice at the end of last year, so I broke it out, squirted massive piles on each desk and let them at it.
After each one had shaving cream, we did our math lesson in it. It was great. We are drawing diagonals and what discussing the shapes that are created going corner to corner or midpoint to midpoint. Needless to say, they think they officially have the best teacher ever!

In other news
Yesterday a local meteorologist visited and I can’t remember the last time I learned so much! It was wonderful and we got on Facebook! Always a little plus.

How a tornado forms demo!

We like to give guests little gifts! All 90 kids drew weather symbols to add to the planter.

Thank you John Wendel from News 36!

Happy Seuss Day tomorrow!