TPT Shoppers - Ready Your Carts!

Hi!

I'm linking up with Teaching in the Tongass to get my ready to get my 'shop on' during TPT's Cyber Monday (and Tuesday) sale! You can save up to 28% by using the code SMILE! As in SMILE, you're about to score some great deals on all those products you've been stockpiling on your wish list!

Here are the top three wish-listed products that you'll want to check out in my Grade 2 Hullabaloo store. Drum roll, please!

Click on this image to be directed to the product.

Over the years, I have had many famous Americans visit my classroom... well, the paper version of them. Without a doubt, my Famous American Biography Project - Make a Mini Famous American is a memory-maker for my students. The pride they take in becoming experts on their chosen American is evident. The creativity they use to craft a mini-version, complete with wardrobe and props, gives them good reason to beam with satisfaction. Plus, the final product is just darned adorable!

Helen Keller

Bill Gates with his biography and other interesting details tucked inside his jacket!

     

Click on this image to be directed to the product.

What do you think when I say... regrouping? Did I just hear a groan out there from my fellow second (or third or fourth) grade teachers? I feel your pain. I am in the midst of teaching regrouping with subtraction right now! Can we all agree that regrouping is a tough skill for second graders?

My Addition and Subtraction with Regrouping, 2 & 3 Digit -- CCSS Aligned product grew from a need to give my second graders more practice with regrouping with addition and subtraction, after I had introduced the strategies and steps. I have used the pages of 16 problems in math partner and small group rotations with page protectors, as homework, and as formative assessments. I've even cut them in strips for a 'ticket out the door' type of quick assessment. 

This is my favorite, go-to resource for checking the progress of my students. Plus, I just freshened-up its nifty cowboy theme! You'll receive pages of 2-digit addition problems, 2-digit subtraction problems, 3-digit addition and 3-digit subtraction problems. If you really want to get your kiddos thinking, laminate and cut apart the regrouping puzzles and place them in your math stations. They're challenging!

Click on this image to be directed to the product.

Finally, my grammar-loving heart loves that so many of my purchasers have loved this product -- Editing Sentences ~ 20 weeks -- CCSS Aligned. They're organized in a four-day, Monday through Thursday arrangement, because the time slot that I use them in is used for spelling tests on Friday. Once you get going with the routine -- one fix-up sentence and one 7-UP sentence a day, you'll have this completed in less than ten minutes! It's a time saver and a paper saver if you copy back-to-back.

As you can see from the wonderful feedback (above), this product isn't useful just to second grade teachers. Special education teachers (Angels on Earth, I tell you!), writing coaches, and second grade teachers find these useful. Be sure to check out the preview to see how the pages are arranged. I suggest copying them back-to-back, so that your children have both in hand when it is time to practice these essential skills. The Fix-Up Sentences have a handful of errors in them -- misspelling of grade level words, missing punctuation, incorrect punctuation or capitalization errors. 

The job of the student is to use your existing editing symbols to mark the errors, and then rewrite the sentence correctly. The 7-UP sentences are those sentences we all hate to read. "I see it." Oh, my, how I detest those sentences! Seven-UP sentences must have at least seven words in them. By requiring seven or more words, the student is forced nudged into writing a sentence with more details. So, I have used these deplorable three-and-four word sentences as examples that children must, 1) turn pronouns into nouns or nouns into proper nouns, and 2) add details to make the sentence more robust (7 or more words). 

The beauty of this practice is that it is a quick and meaningful activity. Yes, you'll have to model what you want for several occasions. It's easy to check, therefore saving you time, and it transfers to your other areas of writing! You can now require 7-UP sentences on all written assignments, and your students will know what you mean. Win-win!

So, hop over to Grade 2 Hullabaloo on TPT and browse through my shop. You definitely want to like my Facebook page, also, because I am giving away one copy for every five shares of my Reading and Writing Connections: Santa Claus: The World's Number One Toy Expert resource. 

Here's the preview! It's packed with fun and academically-based activities -- even a Toy Testing Day activity that is sure to be a hit with my kiddos this week!

Five for Friday - 11-13-15

Hello! It's Friday, and that means I am linking up with Doodle Bugs Teaching to share five random things about my week.

Here goes!

My sweet cat, Raleigh, is still suffering from anemia. I am giving her meds, every other day, as the vet prescribed, but I really don't see her improving. This makes me very sad, because I don't want her to suffer. Here she is before she started losing weight. We'll go back to the vet in a week to reevaluate her situation. 

It's not even officially winter, but I am already tired of the short days and chilly weather. I've been surfing Trip Advisor in search of the perfect spring break trip. High on my list are St. Maarten and Anguilla. Anguilla is a ferry ride away from St. Maarten, so I can get two passport stamps in one trip! My goal is to get to every Caribbean island.

Missing salt air and sand! Taken in Barbados

One of the traditions I have in my room is to play Rebecca Black's Friday Song. As you can see from the picture, they kind of like it. :-)

We are STILL working on our how-to books. It takes my sweet kiddos some time to get logged in and all set up to work on the laptops. However, I believe it's worth the time, because they are going to have that skill under their belts when they go to third grade (a tested grade). 

I had to edit the editable template (again -- see this post for the long and gory details of creating it). The way I look at it is this: I learned a valuable lesson in creating the editable template... AND I learned to quadruple the time allotted for getting logged in and typing the books! 

This year, I initiated a homework journal for my students. Twice a month, they have an optional assignment to write to me about a topic that I choose. Sometimes, I invite them to tell me what's on their minds. The purpose of the journal is to strengthen our relationship and to encourage writing. I stayed after today to write to the nine (half my class) students who wrote to me. This week's prompt was to tell me about a family tradition of theirs. 

It takes a bit of time to answer each one. They have a friendly letter template in the front as a guide to how to set up their response. Some follow it, and some don't. That's fine. I want them writing for fun. Below is a response from the previous prompt -- write to me about anything you want. Bless this child's heart! The first question is so cute. The last two comments made my heart smile.

Happy Friday!

Five for Friday - November 6

Happy Friday!

Thanks to Doodle Bugs Teaching for hosting this weekly linky party!

I have to admit that I am happy to have October all wrapped up. It seems like it flew by this year! It's a little late, but here's a recap of our Pumpkin Week. It was great fun! 

I love this book, by Jill Esbaum, called Seed, Sprout, Pumpkin, Pie. It has beautiful pictures and interesting pumpkin facts, including what the ridges of a pumpkin indicate. My students were fascinated by the details.

Here we are gently tugging at the top to feel the connection between the stem and the stringy seed connections inside. We chose a large, medium and small pumpkin from our collection of 9 (yes, NINE) pumpkins that the kids brought in for our study. 

No Pumpkin Week is complete without the counting of the seeds. It took forever, but the children worked so well together, and it was great practice for counting by 2's, 5's and 10's. After they counted, they wrote the total on a sticky note and slipped it inside the empty pumpkin. We had a pumpkin seed reveal of the totals to add a little drama to the finale!

Finally, to wrap up our Pumpkin Week, we made Pumpkin Pie in a Cup. I have to admit that I am not a big fan of pumpkin, but this was pretty good. The kids thought it was excellent. They asked for seconds. 

I have to admit something. After a full day of Pumpkin EVERYTHING, my nerves were a little frazzled. A student gave me this cute sign a few years ago. I keep it right above my computer as a reminder to keep calm. It was certainly appropriate for this day. Ha! Keep Calm and Pumpkin On! We go the extra mile to make learning especially fun for our students, don't we? At the end of the day, it's very gratifying to send them home with exciting stories to tell about their day. For me, it's great to go home to the peace and quiet to recharge for the next day. 

We had a fun field trip to a local science themed museum. The children participated in MORE pumpkin activities, including a fun STEM tower-building challenge. They even tasted pumpkin muffins (which weren't bad)!

This week, we've been studying the moon and sun. Today, we pulled in the COWS (Computers on Wheels and did some reading on PebbleGo.com. I really like this site for kid-friendly research. Students worked in pairs to read about the phases of the moon, and then record the names on a graphic organizer. 

Do I have next week's plans finished? No. Started? Not even! 

It's time to take down the scarecrow glyphs, but they turned out so cute, I decided to keep them up until we have our next work ready to display in the hallway.

I'll be working next week's plans this weekend. We have a strange week, this next week, because we're off on Wednesday to celebrate Veterans Day. We usually have PD on Veterans Day while the children have the day off, but our school board decided to make it a holiday for all staff this year! So, it will be like 2 two-day weeks for us!

I'll be working on developing a Veterans Day patriotic craft to go along with America's White Table by Margot Theis Raven. It details the symbolism of the White Table Ceremony, which began during the time of the Vietnam War. The White Table Ceremony is a tradition to honor those missing in action or held as prisoners of war. I'll use it to teach inference and finding deeper meaning in texts. 

Happy weekend!