January 26, 2013

It was nice to celebrate Martin Luther King Day on Monday, but short weeks always make us frantic because we plan too many fun activities to fit into four days.  We were disappointed when they all didn't get done, but what did get done was fabulous!

To kick off the week in a fun way, we introduced idioms to our kids during Word Block.  They thought our read aloud book, There's A Frog In My Throat was hilarious.  We chose this book because all the idioms were about animals, which connected with our science unit. After reading and discussing the idioms, each student illustrated their own animal idiom, which then became part of our class book. 

What a cute way to show, "The Cat's Got
Your Tongue!"

With the cold weather, we got very familiar with
this idiom this week!

We have uploaded the frames for all of the animal idioms that we used at our Teachers Pay Teachers store. (Teachers Pay Teachers) We've also included blank frames for students to write and define idioms they have found from other sources. One of our students came up with this idea because she wanted to write more idioms during Daily Five. What a way to take the lesson to the next step!

To reinforce the concept of theme during guided reading, students read fiction animal stories that paired up with our nonfiction reading in science. One of the books we used was Unlovable, by Dan Yaccarino. The kids fell in love with the main character, Alfred, and enjoyed discovering the theme of this book. After reading and discussing the story, as well as analyzing the main character, Alfred, we worked to determine the theme of this story. We did this by listing the important plot events, and discovering how they affected Alfred. Then, we looked for the event that caused a change in Alfred. The important plot events, coupled with the character change, is where the theme can be determined. The kids were so connected to Alfred, coming up with the theme was not difficult.

Our Character Web

Our Plot Points Chart

After brainstorming different ways to write the theme, students chose the one they liked best and wrote a full response. But the best part was when they got to paint their favorite scene! 

Here's Alfred on our bulletin board!

If you want more details on the three activities we did with this book, check out our Teachers Pay Teachers store tomorrow for the full lesson plan. (Teachers Pay Teachers) Connections to the Common Core State Standards will be included. 

We hope you had a great week this week, and a terrific one next week!

Kim and Anne

January 19th, 2013

Week Two back from break and our students had a fun and productive week.  We love this time of year because the kids are so focused and the distractions of the past months are gone.  Here are a few of our favorite things from this week.

Our new focus in writing has been based on Katie Woodray's book, Wondrous Words: Writers and Writing in the Elementary Classroom. It is a wonderful read. So much in fact, our books are marked with notes and dog-eared pages because we reference them constantly. Her big idea is students can use authors as models for their writing structure and ways with words. So we decided to use Cynthia Rylant's book, In November to use her writing structure and ways with words in our own writing. We read this book in November, but this time we asked the students to "read like writers" to see what they noticed about her writing. They noticed she used a repeated line, they noticed she organized the different vignettes by different subjects, and they noticed she used similes, sense words, and personification. We were truly impressed because this was only our second go at reading like a writer.

After taking the students to our outdoor classroom to brainstorm the happenings in January, we came back in and jumped write into writing. Here is an example of one student's writing project. Please excuse any typos, we did our best to make sure everyone's writing was ready for publication.

If you're interested in trying this writing lesson, our full lesson plan, including frames for the months of the year, will be posted for $1.00 on our Teachers pay Teachers store tomorrow. (Teachers Pay Teachers)  We are sorry, but the file is too big to be free according to TpT.  This file contains two writing frames that can be used for each month of the year.  We plan on having a free In January lesson plan and frame as soon as possible.  Right now we cannot upload it because there is a glitch in the system and we are waiting for an answer as to how to fix it.  However, we were able to upload it to google docs.  If you click on the side pinterest button it will take you to our boards.  You can click on the picture and it will take you right to google docs.  We hope you find it useful.

Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg was the perfect story to hook our students into making inferences during our shared reading. They loved the art/writing project that we did after reading, even though it pushed them to their limits. Our shared reading lesson took two days because not only did the students have to infer where the ants were, they had to provide evidence from the text, pictures, and their background knowledge. After reading, students recreated a scene from the story, and inferred what the ants were thinking or feeling. For our written response, we analyzed all of the events in the story and came up with the theme, which the students then had to write about.

This lesson is also on our Teachers Pay Teachers store. The only difference is that we focused on the theme for our written response rather than writing about the setting. Here is the direct link:  Teachers Pay Teachers

We look forward to sharing more of our lesson plans with you next week. We hope to get new ideas from you, too! We would love for you to comment below. 

January 13, 2013

Happy 2013! After twenty years of teaching, we are taking a risk and starting a new adventure with this blog! Let us take a moment to introduce ourselves. I am Kim Lally. I have been teaching in Lombard, Illinois for twenty years. During those years I have taught first grade, second grade, a looping second and third grade, and for most of those years, a multiage second and third grade, with my teaching partner, Anne Brown. What I love most about the students in these grades is their enthusiasm for reading and writing. 

I am Anne Brown. I have also been teaching in Lombard for over twenty years. I have taught second grade, third grade, a looping second and third grade, and the multiage class. What I love most about the students in these grades is how motivated they are to grasp on to new learning concepts. They truly have a love of learning at this age. 

Our passion is to keep this love of learning ignited. We try to do this through thematic teaching, and creating literacy lessons that are hands-on and engaging. We try to make sure our lessons reach all learning styles throughout the week. We decided to start this blog to share our excitement about our lessons and our students' learning with you! We hope to also then engage in meaningful conversations about what successes you have had in your classroom to motivate your students. As much as our students love learning, we too have never stopped loving learning new research theories, new lesson ideas, new motivational tools, and anything else that can help us continue to grow as teachers and learners.

As we kicked off our first week back from winter break, here are a few of the activities that the students loved and we felt were not only purposeful, but fun! Our Monday morning warm-up was the reading of the poem, New Year's Resolution, by Jack Prelutsky. Students had to answer five questions. This was great because it touched on the phonics skill for the week, as well as sequencing, questioning, vocabulary and author's purpose. A fun part of this quick warm-up was the students using the iPads and computers to look up the definition of resolution.

Then, thanks to Amy Lemons, we wrote our own resolutions and made this adorable "craftivity!" We highly recommend you visit her site for some great ideas! Her link is on our sidebar.

Later in the week, we were thrilled with our students' responses to the story, Pear and Wagner: Two Good Friends by Kate McMullan! After doing a shared reading of this story, which our students found to be hilarious, we showed them how to write an extended response, choosing which character they wanted to be friends with, Pearl or Wagner. We held our breaths after modeling because this was the first time they did one on their own. As usual, our students rose to the occasion, and we just want to show them off! Here is one example:

If you would like a free copy of this activity, including our modeling response visit our new store on TeachersPayTeachers. Here is the direct link. http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pearl-and-Wagner-Two-Good-Friends-Extended-Response

Day one of our new adventure has been exciting and fun! We would love to hear your comments about our blog, and about your successes in the classroom. We're always looking for new things to try with our classes!