Cyber Monday and New Common Core ELA I Can Statements

We hope everyone had a relaxing and enjoyable Thanksgiving with your families. We both had a wonderful time but ate wayyyy too much!  ;)

We are participating in the awesome Cyber Monday sale on TPT. You can conveniently click the link below to check out our store.

We are soooo excited to announce that we just finished our second grade ELA "I can statements." Each standard is broken into several statements that students are able to understand. A picture accompanies each statement to help make the words more meaningful. This pack is arranged into each of the ELA strands and the standards that go with each strand.  We hope you and your students enjoy!

Have a great rest of your weekend.  We will be spending ours looking at all of the packs we will be purchasing on Monday!

Voice

That is one of my least favorite topics to teach my kiddos about in writing. Really. Out of all of the resources I have gathered over the past couple of years, you would think I would finally have it down. When December rolls around and I reflect on my 'voice' lessons from November, I usually feel that 1/3 of my class really grasps the concept and the other 2/3 are thinking "Whew! Glad that is over!"

This is the year though! We have been working so hard to understand what it means when a writer uses voice in their story and I couldn't be happier with the progress we have made. Here is what we have been up to for the past 2 weeks:

The first strategy for adding voice to our stories that we discuss, is making our emotions stand out. We spent a lot of time looking through various picture books and searching for the author's/character's emotions. These are some of the books we previewed:

 

Then we started brainstorming other strategies we could use besides showing our emotions. Here is our anchor chart:

And today was by far my favorite lesson so far this unit. I wrote 3 sentences that could be a part of a story. My kiddos worked in pairs to add voice to what was already written. Check these improvements out:

It's hard to read this one but I love it: "Finally, my chick hatched. P.S.- It's the coolest chick in town".

After I demonstrated how amazed I was at their corrections I had some who were anxious to head back to their seats and write their own stories. How fabulous is this one?!



We still have another week or so of working with voice and I am excited to see where my kiddos take it.

We also wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! It is a bit early, but we're stepping away from posting until after Thanksgiving....it gets to be a bit hectic! Enjoy the time with family and friends, we will be back to catch up soon!

A tribute to Veteran’s Day

Both of our grandfathers fought in World War ll so Veteran’s Day is a special time for us to thank them for all of their bravery and dedication to serve our country.  Many of our kiddos had either fathers or relatives who are currently enlisted in the services.  We are so blessed to have all of those courageous soldiers fighting for us!

What better way to start out our Veteran’s Day lesson than with a great book…Pepper’s Purple Heart by Heather French Henry is a great book for students to connect with.  Through the little girl Claire, and her friend Robby, children learn all about this day and why he honor veterans. 

 After reading this story… students were eager to create their own soldiers and bald eagles that we displayed. Our kids had a great time individualizing their soldiers and brainstorming words to describe the soldiers.  The web below our soldiers was inspired by Mrs. Williamson on her blog Welcome to Room 36 A Kindergarten Blog. You can check our her super cute soldier by clicking on the blog name. 

Students also had a blast making these bald eagles!  We don’t use paint often in second grade so when we do our students go crazy...of course the whole time we were engaged in a discussion about Veteran's Day. By the end of our two projects, students had a greater understanding of this important and special day dedicated to the men and women who serve our county. 

                                                                                 

November Currently

This year is just flying by! I keep hoping that it will slow down so that I can do a better job of keeping up with this little blog. But....that's life!

We are linking up with Farley over at 'Oh Boy, 4th Grade' for November's edition of currently.

There are just too many cute Veteran's Day packs on TpT and I just can't pick! I did find a cute craftivity on Pinterest so I'm pretty sure that is what we are going to attempt. I'm not a fan of breaking out the paints but these bald eagles were just too cute to pass up. I will be sure to post some pictures next week after I try it with my kids. (and I want to make sure I link up to the webiste where I found it!) How do you discuss Veteran's Day in your classroom?



Spiders and a Halloween Freebie!

Halloween time is perfect for integrating skills using a “spider” theme. The Boys couldn’t wait to discuss the creepy, crawly critters, and the girls got excited to use their crafty skills to create pom pom spiders.

This year we are implementing the new common core standards along with still teaching the old standards to ensure our kiddos are ready for the Ohio Achievement Assessment in third grade. Writing an opinion piece is a part of the new ELA Standards for second grade. After brainstorming several opinions, students were quick to share how they felt about the hairy 8-legged creatures. (One of our favorite opinions was "they are gross because the guts splatter on your shoe when you step on them." ) haha

They were quick to engage in meaningful discussions about spiders after reading several nonfiction texts.

(I was so exicted when this student called me over to point out a label which was one nonfiction text feature we already learned!)

Students were sooo excited to make their very own spiders to go along with their opinion writing. Aren’t they adorable! (Hobby Lobby is one of our favorite places! ;)

To celebrate our week on spiders, we made our “cheesy spider  web” snack thanks to Christina Bainbridge’s snazzy snack recipes. Students had a blast creating their own spider webs and spiders.  It was a tasty way to end a great week on spiders!

Click on the image below for a Halloween freebie I have, Who has game with doubles and doubles plus one facts!

Happy Halloween! =)

Save the Literary Pumpkins

Whew! We have made it through our first party of the year. Although we are exhausted, we couldn't wait to show your what our kiddos have been up to!

Last year we purchased the 'Save the Literary Pumpkins' pack from the LessonPlan SOS Teachers and gave it a try with our kids. It was a HUGE hit! This year, we did it again.

Each student is trying to 'save' a pumpkin from being carved by disguising it as one of their favorite storybook characters. After they disguse their pumpkin, they write about how this disguise will save their pumkin from being carved. Take a look at how neat they turned out!

Annie: The Magic Tree House Series

The Lorax

Shrek

Hello Kitty

Cookie Monster (who came with a plate of real cookies!)

Then, we filled our school display case with all of the pumpkins and the accompanying books:

Our kids have truly enjoyed working on their pumpkin. They love when we have time to walk past the display and look at all of the different characters (Out of 3 second grade classes, we only had 1 or 2 kids use the same character as someone else....there was definately a variety!)

Interested in trying this with your kids? Use the link above to head to the LessonPlan SOS TpT store and purchase the pack. You won't be sorry!

We hope you all have a spooktacular Halloween!

Linky Party

We are linking up with The 3am Teacher for this fabulous linky party! She is celebrating her 1 year blogging anniversary!

We are very new to the blogging world, seeing as we have only been blogging for a few months. With that being said, it is hard for us to pick out our favorite memory. We feel that we have learned so much not only about the blogging world, but about ourselves in the process. We have met so many fabulous "fellow bloggers" and have gained so many resources along the way.

Since we have to choose, one of our favorite memories about blogging would have to be hosting our first giveaway. There were so many questions running through our minds....Who would be willing to donate an item for our give away? Would anyone even enter? How-in-the-heck do people get that cool Raffelcopter thing on their blog?! Pushing our questions aside, we plunged forward. We asked some friends to donate items to the give-away, we spent waaayyy to many hours figuring out Raffelcopter, and yes, we even had some people enter! We will never forget the feeling after it was all said-and-done. Phew! We made it through. That's what is like for us as newbies....stepping out on a limb and hoping for the best. We know that we're probably not the only ones who have felt like this but all you bloggers are so dang good, it can be hard to keep up sometimes!

Are you interested in joining this linky party? We hope so, becuase we want to read some of your favorite memories from your first year of blogging. (and meet some new bloggy friends of course!)

Thanks for stopping by!