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Five for Friday – June 24

Uncategorized June 24, 2016
Oh, how I’ve missed Five for Friday. My blogging has taken a serious backseat over the last few weeks again.  But, I’m back and linking up to share some of what I’ve been up to.  I’m linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday.  Link up here…

This post is a little late, but since I was out of commission I still had to share. The hubby and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary on June 12.  It was quite an adventure since I had just had gum surgery a few days prior and we were driving to Phoenix when we got stuck in major traffic due to an accident. A trip that should’ve taken 5 hours took 8 hours and we didn’t have much gas and it was 100 degrees. But, those are the adventures and memories we will remember.  Love this guy so much! So lucky to be with him and have him on my team!
This was a super cute housewarming gift we got from Andy’s aunt and uncle. I love anything cute with our last name on it! It’s the perfect addition to the couch in our great room.

So Las Vegas recently got an IKEA, well recently as in a month ago. I wasn’t brave enough to join the crazy people who went the first few weeks it was open, but Andy and I took the trek over there this week. I love IKEA. That story is amazing and overwhelming all at the same time. Got many ideas for the new house!

Last night I watched the NBA Draft with Andy. Although he didn’t have any players he has coached in it this year it is still tradition to watch it.  
Yes, it’s a picture of a mostly eaten quesadilla, but this was a very exciting moment for my week. I had gum surgery two weeks ago and it was major dental work.  12 teeth to be exact. So my diet for the last two weeks has consisted of mash potatoes, applesauce, and mac and cheese.  While those things are yummy and great for an actual diet, I missed real food.  Today I went to the doctor and got cleared to begin eating real food again.  A quesadilla never tasted so good!
Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

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Instagram Change

Uncategorized June 21, 2016

I love Instagram, but have found mine to be cluttered with things, so I decided to separate my personal and school life. So, I’ve created a new personal Instagram and changed the name on my school one.  Feel free to follow one or both…

Team J 2nd Grade Fun Instagram – Follow for school ideas, TPT, blog updates, etc.
Jordan Johnson Instagram  – Follow for some of my personal favorites, shopping, working out, house ideas, cooking, crafts, books, being a coach’s wife, etc….

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Five for Friday – March 18

Uncategorized March 19, 2016

Well I had originally started this post and had it planned for Friday morning – the fun stomach bug I picked up on Thursday had a different plan. So, I’m linking up late, but still couldn’t resist linking up! I’m linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five for Friday! Be sure to link up here…
Check out what we’ve been up to the week before Spring Break below…

I started the pencil challenge this week. Pencils seem to be disappearing left and right from our class this year and it’s been driving me crazy! But, all be honest, the pencil challenge drove me crazy too! Maybe it’s my pencil sharpener since I thought Ticonderoga were good pencils, but they broke like every 5 seconds. So instead of needing a pencil, they were needing me to sharpen it every five seconds.  Drove me even more crazy! Funny enough, at the end of the week we found a big collection of pencils that had fallen behind a cubby area.  So, we’ll see – not sure if I’ll continue the challenge after spring break. Anyone else have pencil issues? What do you do to solve it? I’m open to any ideas!

This week we finished up our math unit on graphing with a create your own graph project. In groups, students created their own survey question, came up with their choices, surveyed the class, and completed their graphs. They also presented them to the class! Quite the fun project! I’ll try to put this up in my TPT store soon!
We were finishing up the final drafts of our PBL project on Important People in History.  Kids have been researching George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks.  This week students used checklists to edit and checklists to make sure they included everything in their paper. When we get back from break we’ll work on presentations with our groups.

On St. Patrick’s Day, the leprechauns visited our classroom and made quite the mess. They knocked many things over and left green leprechaun dust on the desks. The kids thought it was quite funny! For morning meeting, I had students use the chart above to figure out their leprechaun name. They had fun greeting each other with their new names.
So, our house is almost finished! We close in about a week! I’m so excited to move in and can’t believe how quickly it all got finished. Here’s the latest update above…
Hope everyone has a great weekend! So excited for this week off for spring break!

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Five for Friday – March 11

Uncategorized March 11, 2016
Phew…it has been a busy few weeks. My husband’s regular season for basketball has come to an end and things have been busy with that and school.  Since it’s been crazy, blogging has taken a backseat, but I had to link up for Five for Friday. Link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching here…

In math this week, we learned all about line plots. We first started by creating a line plot based on our classes’ data about how long we’ve been at our school.  The kids have had fun learning about the different types of graphs! Next week they’ll get to work with a group to create their own survey and graph.

Yay! Cursive has finally begun! You should have heard the squeals of excitement when I told them Tuesday that it was finally our first day of cursive letters. I’ve never seen a class so excited to do handwriting before in my life. Normally I get groans. But, not on the first day of cursive! Definitely a rite of passage!
This week we started talking more about being efficient in math. We’ve learned a lot of strategies during second grade and the kids are proficient in most of them. However, some of them have gravitated back to the older way of solving them. While there is nothing wrong with that and it does often lead them to the correct answer (as long as they follow the steps correctly), this week I showed them that the old way isn’t always efficient. On the 800-427 problem I timed myself using the two different strategies. I wanted to point out that when you have zeroes in the top number subtraction can take longer the old way and it’s also easy to make mistakes since you’re doing so much work.  They were surprised to see how quick empty number line was.  Same thing with the top problem.  So, we talked about looking at the problem and deciding what strategy would be quickest and most efficient before they start solving.  Sometimes the old way is more work…

Our school celebrated Reading Week this week. We’ve had many fun activities. On Wednesday students dressed up as their favorite book character. We had two Gregs in the class from Diary of a Wimpy Kid. We’ve also had a lot of special readers and activities. Above is our Findlay TA Skylar reading to the kiddos during morning meeting.  Today we have PJ and pancake day and a read-a-thon in the afternoon. I love Reading Week!
OMG! House of Cards! This has been the best season yet! Andy and I started it when it came out and finished it last night! Can’t believe we have to wait probably another year for new episodes! Crazy show, but man is it good! Does anyone else watch it?
Hope everyone has a wonderful Friday and weekend! One week to go for us until spring break!

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Five for Friday – February 19

Uncategorized February 19, 2016
Another busy week even thought it was a super short week! I’m linking back up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. Link up here…
We starting working on the comprehension skill – asking questions this week.  The above lesson is from Debbie Miller’s Reading with Meaning. I love the book Grandfather Twilight. I think it’s an uncommon book so the kids always have great reactions to it because it’s new to them.  The first day we came up with questions before we read, while we read, and after.  Some questions were pretty deep and some were more surface level. We were very worried about the animals this year lol.

I love Class Dojo’s Growth Mindset videos. We’ve watched three now and they are fantastic! If you haven’t seen them, you have to check them out! The first one is about how your brain is constantly growing and learning. The second is all about the importance and that it is ok to make mistakes. The one we watched this week is all about timing.  You might not how to do something right away, but it’s not that you won’t ever get it, you just don’t get it “yet.” Great videos that provide great discussion opportunities!

I love number talks! Love, love, love them. I need to give number talks it’s own post to fully declare my love lol.  Above is one we did the other day using mental math and solving a 2-digit by 1-digit multiplication problem. Mind you we’ve only been focusing on basic multiplication for about a month. Look at the number of different strategies and the way the kids are using the numbers flexibly to figure out the answer! I was impressed!

We had our second round of conferences on Tuesday. Luckily we had the whole day off school to meet with parents. I always love showing how much progress the kids have made. I have a great group of kids and families this year so the conferences were very productive and helpful!

Here’s a shot or two from Valentine’s Day on Sunday. My husband knows me well – flowers and Fritos lol.  The way to my heart! We also had an amazing dinner at Brio! Love the restaurant!

Have a great Friday and weekend!

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Five for Friday – February 5

Uncategorized February 5, 2016
Crazy that we’ve already finished the first week of February! January flew by and I’m sure February will do the same.  I’m linking up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five for Friday.  Link up here…
We’ve moved on to measurement for February.  On Monday, we used Hope King’s Measurement Play Book and measured the items to the nearest half inch or inch. It worked out perfectly since it was football themed and the Super Bowl is this weekend! Perfect timing!

I’ve been doing more charts with our phonics. I’ve struggled finding a rhythm with our program and phonics at a second/third grade level. So, we’ve been working with our sounds and doing lots of charts and examples. This week was tricky with the er, ir, ur, or sound since they all practically sound the same. The kids did a great job identifying words and helping me put them in the correct column.
Yesterday, we continued with measurement. We learned about the standard and metric system this week.  Then, we went around the room to find items that were about a centimeter, inch, foot, and yard/meter for our recording sheet. They love using the meter stick! Wish I had one for each kid! But not too much fighting over it so I’ll call it a success.
This will be a separate post eventually. I’ve dove into Project Based Learning this year and couldn’t be happier with how it’s going and prouder of the kid’s progress.  The last 2 months students have been researching a country.  They then wrote a report from their research and worked with their group to create a presentation. I let them have free rein on the presentation and I love that they all chose different things. The group above decided to make a book.  They worked so nicely on their presentations and I love seeing the independence the PBL promotes.  I promise I’ll have a big blog post or many blog posts on all of the cool PBL projects we’ve been doing at some point…
No picture for this one…this week has been rough! I’ve had a bad cold/upper respiratory infection (well I didn’t go to the doctor so who knows if it was officially that) for the past week! I’m so sick of being sick.  Any other teachers in this boat?? This year I’ve been hit particularly hard! Can’t wait to be healthy again!
Hope everyone has a fun and healthy weekend!

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Five for Friday – January 29

Uncategorized January 29, 2016
It’s Friday – So I’m linking up again with Doodle Bugs Teaching for Five for Friday. Be sure to link up here!  I’m super excited for the weekend as this week went a little slow.  A little too slow for my liking.  See what we’ve been up to for the past week below…
This game is called Double Compare Multiplication. There are many different versions of Double Compare and for all you need a deck of number cards. We used our Investigation number cards. Students divide out all of the cards so they have an even amount.  Then, both students flip over two cards.  They multiply the two cards (their factors) together and whoever has the largest number (product) wins.  Just a quick way to do some multiplication review.

Oh, how I love this book! We do three chapter book whole class book studies throughout the year in addition to using the Journey’s series. I love the book studies because it give us a break from the program routine.  I also love this one because it’s hilarious.  The kids love it and they are super engaged because they can’t wait to see what all happens to John. I highly recommend this book for either a chapter book study or a class read aloud – 2nd or 3rd grade.  It’s too funny!

We still have a few days to go until February, but my awesome group of room moms were already ready to decorate for February. Look how cute this door display turned out! I’m super grateful that we have very active parent participation at my school!

This is a sneak peek of one of my newest soon-to-be TPT projects that is not in my store yet. We’ve been working hard on multiplication and have also been working on finding the missing factor.  This week, kids had a chance to work on Factors Around the Room. A product and separate blog post about factors is coming soon!

I haven’t bored people with house pictures in awhile so I thought I’d add a few in here lol.  Andy and I are building our first house! It’s so crazy to see how much progress they make on it in just a few days time.  Here the framing is pretty much complete!  Can’t wait to move in!

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

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Five for Friday – January 15

Uncategorized January 15, 2016

I’m linking up again with Doodle Bugs Five for Friday. Link up here!  So excited for the long weekend ahead! Check out what we’ve been up to below…

Contractions were our spelling/phonics focus this week. It’s so funny to me that the kids were really good about coming up with the word that made the contraction, but had difficulty reading the word as a contraction. Something about that apostrophe throws them! We made this chart together and practiced reading all of the words a lot! It’s starting to stick!

Our comprehension skill this week was comparing and contrasting characters. We read the story Yonder Mountain in our Journey’s text and then created a double bubble (thinking maps), well more of a triple bubble map to find the similarities and differences. Later in the week, we read Strega Nona and the kids compared Big Anthony to Strega Nona.  They loved it!

Multiplication! Another exciting thing we’ve been working on in second grade. Last week we started this unit and have been focusing on building the conceptual understanding (with arrays, repeated addition, pictures) instead of just memorizing the facts.  The kids have done AMAZING! This week I even started giving them problems that were one digit multiplied by two digit like above and they rocked it! They really understand the concept of equal groups and have no fear when trying bigger problems. I am so proud of them and love seeing them try various strategies.

We worked on word choice again this week in Writing Workshop. Last week, we added on to sentences together. This week I gave kids the chance to work on their own sentences. I put up the basic sentence and then they had to make it more descriptive, specific, and interesting.  They had fun being quite creative!
This is a beautiful portrait of me from the back of a spelling test last week. My favorite part is that she captured my sunglasses on my head, which is where they always are!
Happy Friday! Have a wonderful 3 day weekend!

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