Voyaging on the Mayflower

Happy (almost) Thanksgiving!  To celebrate the holiday and teach my sweet kiddos some essential research skills, we focused on researching the Mayflower during our two-day school week.  The students used an amazing, interactive, READ ALOUD (always a life-saver!) Scholastic website to become experts on the Mayflower voyage.  You can click HERE to get to that website.

Once the students were officially considered experts on the Mayflower voyage, they were given their task: to pretend as if they were actually a passenger on the Mayflower and write a letter to someone back home about their voyage.  Goodness gracious, did these students do a wonderful job!  They researched the actual passengers on the Mayflower to make sure their made-up names were true, made sure their heading was in the year 1620 (not 2015!), and added amazing details to make their letters informative and fun.  I was very impressed with their final products and know they will never forget all they learned about the hardships the Pilgrims endured on their journey to America.

 Here are my students working hard on their final products:

Look at the amazing writing these second graders did!

You can get this entire unit HERE!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Place Value Turkey

My second graders have been focusing on place value within 1,000 for the past few weeks and have been working very hard to become experts on this essential standard!  I thought my kiddos needed a break from our "usual" math curriculum, so I created a fun turkey-themed activity to let my students showcase all they've learned about place value.  My students loved creating their turkeys and I loved the fact that I could easily differentiate by assigning students numbers that fit their ability levels - win, win!

Look at the cute turkeys my students created!

You can get this fun Thanksgiving-themed math activity HERE.  Enjoy these last few weeks before Thanksgiving break - it will be here before we know it!

Happy Veteran's Day!

Yesterday, my students celebrated Veteran's Day (as I'm sure most of yours did, too!).  Our entire second grade was selected to perform at our school's Veteran's Day assembly and the students did a wonderful job of singing their America songs medley.  It was so sweet to see our kiddos so excited about their excellent hard-work after they were done performing!

After the students had finished their amazing performance for the school, we continued our celebration of Veteran's Day in the classroom with some fun, quick activities.  First, we read the book Don't Forget, God Bless Our Troops by Jill Biden.  It was such a wonderful way for the students to connect with kids whose parents are deployed.

Next, I found an awesome FREE unit by The Whole Wheat Class HERE that we used.  The students brainstormed why veterans are important and then wrote an informational paragraph about the importance of veterans.  They turned out very cute and the students loved learning the significance of a red poppy!

All in all, it was a wonderful day of celebrating our armed forces and my sweet second graders left school with a great appreciation for these important American citizens.

I'm already looking ahead to the next major holiday - Thanksgiving!  I can't wait to start my unit "Voyaging on the Mayflower" to teacher friendly letter writing, commas, proper nouns, and research skills all while letting students become experts on the Mayflower voyage.  I know they are going to love it!  You can get the full Mayflower unit HERE!

What did you do to celebrate Veteran's Day in your classroom??

Looking Closely at our Government Leaders

Hello, friends!  Keeping with the election season, my second graders started their study of government this week.  We started an amazing social students PBL titled "Who's the Boss?" (more on that to come!), so it was only natural to integrate our ELA block with what we were focusing on in social studies.  Integration = deeper learning and less wasted time! Win, win!

We started our week by working together to closely read informational texts about different government functions and laws.  My school uses Step Up to Writing for non-fiction writing, so I used the topic and star ideas outline to decompose the texts together and get students to focus on the topic sentence, main ideas, elaborations, and conclusion sentence.

Here is our article underlined with the Step Up to Writing color color-coding.

After underlining the article, we used the Step Up to Writing outline to understand how a non-fiction text is structured.  This is an example of our shared outline.

Students also got the chance to read and analyze their own article (with a partner, of course!) using the same technique I modeled to the entire class.  Here you can see what I gave the students to read, underline, and then fill in their own Step Up to Writing Outline:

After all of their hard work, my kiddos needed a bit of movement and hands-on learning, so we went on a non-fiction text feature scavenger hunt through different non-fiction texts.  They LOVED going from book to book and searching for these different text features!

My sweet students finished their first week of learning about government by researching a government leader and then writing their own non-fiction article about their leader.  I used the website Britannica Elementary which is AMAZING for second graders - it reads the kid-friendly articles out loud, so every student is able to understand what they're reading (it saves SO many raised hands and confused students - believe me!).

Once the kiddos were experts on their government leader, they filled in their own Step Up to Writing outline and then wrote their article about their leader.

We used Google Draw for their final draft, so you know they loved getting to work on their Chromebooks, change fonts, add pictures, and make the background color "perfect"! I was super impressed with their final products and it made this teacher's heart happy to hear students saying things like, "What should our caption for this photo be?" and "Let's search for the definition of our bolded word!".

Look at this awesome 2nd grade writing!

These students truly grasped these non-fiction text features and are now experts on their government leaders!  This entire unit is available HERE.  If you don't use Step Up to Writing, no worries!  I included another outline template that any classroom could utilize.

I hope this unit overview is helpful!  Let me know how you introduce government to your students!  Stay tuned for a look at our "Who's the Boss" PBL that's coming soon...

Let's Start at the Beginning

Hello, readers, and welcome to my first blog post!  I am thrilled to begin this blog and let the world get a glimpse into my second grade classroom.  I strive to have a classroom that encourages creativity, collaboration, and lots of fun.  Please stay tuned for posts about successful lessons, lessons that could use improvement (don't we all have those days?), and moments that make teachers smile.  Enjoy!