Uncategorized

This week in Writing Workshop we started working on word choice. I started by showing the kids the first sentence “The dog ate.” We talked about how it was a sentence, but it wasn’t very interesting. Then, the kids and I worked together to come up with a few different ways to make it more exciting.  I was also so excited to see some kids taking what we had talked about and trying it in their own writing like my student example above. I love how she talked about “freshly bloomed, red rose petals,” and the “big really poofy flower girl dress.”  

We started multiplication this week! Boy were they excited! Something about multiplication is always a big deal in second grade. On Tuesday, we talked about multiplication as equal groups and showed how to model that. Students then played the game – Circles and Stars and/or Birds(eggs) in the. Students roll the dice once and that number is the number of groups they have (circles). Then, they roll again and that is the number in each group. Then, they count to find the total. 

On Wednesday we continued on in multiplication and began learning about arrays. I wanted to make it a little more interesting and was inspired by our CGI training on Monday, so I had them make arrays with Skittles. Immediately it was super exciting and the best activity ever they kept telling me.  Something about candy…

I’ll try to not to show house pictures every time, but I’m super excited because framing has begun on the house Andy and I are building! Exciting to see it all go up! Come on April so we can move in!

This is a picture from New Year’s Eve. Andy and I went to the Spazmatic’s show – they’re an 80’s cover band. Quite a fun night and quite an entertaining crowd.

Hope everyone had a great first week back!

 Facebook

 TPT 
Store

 

Listening: It’s just me up and all I hear is the sound from the heater. I love quiet days like this!

Loving: So glad today is Friday and we still have 2 more days of break. I’ve enjoyed this winter break a lot and am not quite ready to go back to school yet :-).

Thinking: To Do List – I had quite the to do list for break and didn’t make much of a dent in it. I got sucked into a Netflix binge session on How To Get Away with Murder (my new favorite show) and somehow cleaning didn’t take priority over it.  So my to do list is still there, but there’s always tomorrow, right?

Wanting: Motivation – I need to hit the gym and really make better eating choices which is why I am wanting motivation to help me do so.  A fresh start and a new year is the perfect time to do that.

Needing: More than 2 days – I always want longer breaks!

One Word: Determination – I am determined to make better choices this year (food, gym, sleep, etc) to help me be healthy!

Happy New Year everyone!

So my teammate and I decided to make this cute parent gift that Rachelle from What the Teacher Wants made.  The page has turned out so cute and I love the idea of this being a keepsake or one you can change out each year.  Thank you Rachelle for this great idea!

I love, love, love Around the Room activities and this one saved me yesterday. As the crazy continued to bubble up this Holiday Solve the Room was fantastic! Thank you to Jessica Boschen for creating this. It kept things semi under control, provided math review, and movement! 

As I’ve mentioned many times on here, my husband is a coach for a prep basketball team at our school.  The players on the team come from all over the United States, Canada, and we have a player from Lithuania, and Senegal.  While this is a wonderful opportunity for them, these players had to make sacrifices leaving their friends and family and some are unable to go home for the holidays due to distance.  As a part of the PTA committee for the team, we asked for donations from families at the school to put together holiday bags for each player. The results were amazing! I was blown away by the generosity. Each bag on that desk is full of goodies in addition to each player getting multiple gift cards.  I’m so proud to work at a school that is so generous and caring.

Ahhh..nothing like a fresh mani-pedi to make a long week better.  Here’s my holiday nails – I’m definitely ready for Christmas!

This is my teammate and I at our holiday lunch that was put on by the PTA yesterday.  We’re very spoiled at my school and the PTA treats us amazing!  They had this cute little photo booth as a fun touch to the luncheon.

Hope everyone survives their last day today or the last few days next week! We can do it!

Follow me on…

I’m linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five for Friday.  I sure do love the holiday season, but wish it would slow down a bit. On one hand I’m glad it’s moving quickly because that means we’re closer to break. On the other hand this is my favorite time of year and I wish it could slow down a bit!  Be sure to link up with Doodle Bugs here.

My Five for Friday today is less school and more personal life than normal for a school week.  I took off Thursday and Friday to head down to my husband’s basketball tournament in AZ so I had less school stuff to report. And, to be honest – I forgot to take a lot of pictures on Monday and Tuesday at school.

This week we read “The Science Fair” in our Journey’s series. The kids really enjoyed it and could relate to many of the experiments in the story because they have done some of them in their science class. Loved seeing their ideas of what they would do for a science project for a science fair.

Oh the joys of being gone from school…sub plans.  I’ll be honest –  many times when I’m sick – I go in.  It’s worse doing the sub plans than being at school sick.  However, when you’re out of town – you’re out of town. So the first three days of the school week I was running around like a crazy lady trying to pull all of my sub plans together. This is the first time my kids have a sub this year so I always get a little nervous, but they have a great sub with them so I know they’ll be ok!

So excited for my friends Katie and Sam. Katie and I met teaching two years ago and have become great friends. She was even a bridesmaid in my wedding! Andy and I were able to go to her wedding this past weekend! She was a beautiful bride and it was a beautiful wedding!

Last Friday, Andy and I were able to see one of his former high school players playing with his college team Oregon.  The UNLV/Oregon game took place at MGM Grand. We had a great time seeing him play!

I was lucky enough to be able to take off work yesterday and today to attend a basketball tournament in Phoenix that Andy’s team is playing. I hardly turn down a trip to Phoenix because I get a chance to see family who comes up from Tucson and see friends I left behind when I moved from Phoenix three years ago. I still miss it, but am grateful for opportunities to catch up!  Also so glad I’m able to attend my husband’s games home and away!

Have a great weekend! 4.5 days til winter break!

Follow me on…

 Facebook

 TPT 
Store

 

I started Elf in the Clasroom this week.  I have to say it’s actually pretty fun being creative and comign up with new ideas for our little guy Buddy. I have a separate post highlighting our first week with Buddy the elf that will be posted tomorrow, but I had to share these two cute stories.  At vocabulary station, two partners decided to work together to create a story using our weekly vocab words about our elf, Buddy.  Another student decided to create his own story about Buddy in his spare time.  Apparently Buddy fought in the Civil War

So I’ve mentioned in multiple posts how in love I am with project based learning. I also have said I’ll fully post about our experiences and haven’t done that yet. Above is a picture of our first day of research for our new project.  I love how engaged these kids are and how they’re all so excited to be researching on the iPads.  For this project, students are researching about a community around the world.  I have a set launch page for them to use for each country so their research doesn’t take them to crazy places.  They’re loving it so far!

Number Talks…another thing I love. I have a CGI post started and also not finished, but number talks go along with Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI).  Number talks are where you put a naked number problem up on the board – like 243+322 and students solve it using mental math. Then, students share out their strategies out loud while you document their thinking on the board. I love this because it shows there is more than one way to get the same answer. It also shows students how to put down in writing what they’re doing in their head. And, for students who are stuck it provides them multiple strategies to try in the future.

I love, love, love the holiday season. Over the past weekend we decorated our tree and there is just something warm and cozy about a decorated tree and Christmas lights.

Big news for Andy and I – we bought a house! Well, we’re building a house. Above you can see our lot.  This is our first house and we are super excited to get to pick everything out.  More pictures to come as the building begins!

Hope everyone has an amazing weekend!

Follow me on…

 Facebook

 TPT 
Store

 

 Facebook

 TPT 
Store

 

I’m linking up again with Doodle Bugs Teaching for another Five for Friday.  This seems to be the one blog post I’m actually able to get to in a week. This week was crazy with report cards due and it being the start of my husband’s team’s season.  Link up here.

This week we finished up our island projects and map project.  This was our 2nd project based learning topic.  The kids had so much fun, but it’s always a little crazy and a little messy when they start building their islands with the model magic.  We had a lot going on. I’m hopeful to share more details of our Map PBL soon on the blog.

We learned how to edit on Tuesday. The first time we edit, I like to model the process with the kids. I write up a story and make lots of mistakes. We go through our process (more on this later) and work together to edit my piece so they can see how to do it. They enjoyed finding my errors and were hard at work editing their own pieces for publication.

This might be one of the sweetest notes I’ve gotten from a student in a long time.  Nicer than infinity is a big compliment! I’ll take that.  I’ll also take being crowned the best teacher! These little notes are great reminders of why we do this job!

We finally used our white board table today.  I’ve been hesitant to do it because I heard that it can be difficult to clean and who wants a dirty table with white board marker all over it. But, today I decided to give it a try. As long as you erase when you’re done it wasn’t that bad.  I then used Expo cleaner on it once we were all finished. The best part of all – the kids thought it was the coolest thing ever! Definitely a student crowd pleaser!

As I know I have mentioned in probably a billion posts, my husband is head coach for Findlay Prep – a basketball team. They had their pre-season scrimmage on Monday and tonight is their opening home game! Crazy how fast the season came up on us! Excited to see them in action and cheer them on! They are an amazing team – very talented!

Hope everyone has a lovely weekend! Have 2 basketball games to keep me busy!

Follow me on…

 Facebook

 TPT Store

 

I’m linking up with Doodle Bug’s Teaching for Five for Friday. So happy to have this Friday off for Nevada Day! Halloween Week for teachers is crazy! Link up with her here…

This week for Halloween we had a change of schedules and plans. We didn’t do our typical Journey’s story and Writing Workshop, we had Halloween Week. One of the activities we did was an opinion piece about “The Best Kind of Candy.”  This can be found in Anna Brantley’s Common Core All Year Long pack on TPT here. The kids had a blast and some of the reasons they came up with were quite good…especially for our first time writing opinions.

Next, we worked on researching bats. We used three resources: Brainpop video, Bats book by Lily Wood, and another book (normally I use the National Geographic Bats, but it somehow has gone missing :-().  We do this research together since this is the first informational paper we right in class. We watch or read one source and then added facts to our circle and tree map. I used different colors for the facts so the kids could tell what source the facts came from. Then, once all the research was complete they wrote an informational report about bats.

We had our Halloween party at school yesterday since we have today off for Nevada day. The pictures at the party all had cute little faces in it so I can’t post those, but I do have one from our morning Just Dance Ghostbusters brain break.  The kids are allowed to wear costumes all day, which makes life interesting, but we did actually get some work done.  I love the cute fruit display with the pumpkin and the mummy waters! Parents are quite creative.

My teaching partner and I always dress up and we like to do a joint costume. Since there is just two of us this year we thought it would be great to do Koo Koo Kangaroo since the kids love the brain breaks so much. Here’s a picture at recess (minus fanny pack and head band that were left in the classroom).

It was my husband’s 32nd birthday on Tuesday.  We had a lovely dinner at Hank’s Steakhouse…way too much food – but it was delicious!

Hope everyone has a safe and fun Halloween weekend!

Follow me on…

 Facebook

 TPT Store

 

I love teaching inferring! There are so many great ideas and activities to help make it concrete and great resources to help make it fun! We started off inferring about pictures on Monday and then on Tuesday we watched the Pixar clip “For the Birds.” They thought the clip was hilarious and had a good time inferring about what was going on.

Later in the week, in addition to inferring about text (Charlie Anderson), we also made inferences about why I had certain items in purse.  They thought it was so cool to be able to see what was in the teacher’s purse and some of their inferences for why I had it were pretty amusing.

All About Nouns – We’ve been working on nouns the last few weeks.  We began with basic noun info, the difference between common and proper nouns, and the difference between singular and plural nouns. Then, students completed Nouns Around the Room, which can be found in my TPT store here.  I love activities that get them up and moving and it’s a great formative assessment!

This is a teeny, tiny sneak peek.  I love, love, love teaching math. Part of why I love teaching math is having had the wonderful opportunity to be CGI (Cognivitely Guided Instruction) trained.  I was trained in my old district a few years ago and my current school is going through training now.  I gave the problem above the other day and students solved them on their white boards. As I went around the room, I noticed at least 10 different strategies/ways to solve it.  And, they were all correct! I love that my students are able to think flexibly with numbers and they’re not stuck in a box. I’m saving their awesome strategies for a little CGI weekly series post I’m planning on starting soon!

My husband is a huge, huge Cubs fan. And, he is ecstatic over their amazing win against Cardinals and advancement in the playoffs. Since he’s a fan, I’ve slowly become one too and I have to admit the games are pretty exciting to watch! Excited to see them take on the Mets in the next round of the playoffs!  Go Cubs Go!

Have a great weekend!

Follow me on…

 Facebook

 TPT Store