Friday, January 31, 2014
Well we didn't get our wish...we were out of school both Monday and Tuesday of this week. Right now we have a big snow storm heading our way. They are predicting 8-12 inches! Enough already! Needless to say we don't have any finished products to post this week. We are in the middle of everything. Hopefully we will have a five day week next week and some exciting things to share with you.
Hope you have a great weekend and are not snowed in like we are going to be.
Kim and Anne
Friday, January 31, 2014
Friday, January 24, 2014
Similes, Native Americans and Polygons
January 24, 2014
Hi Everyone! We have survived another frigid week in Chicago, but it seems the worst is yet to come, as the forecast calls for horrible weather at the beginning of next week.
Before moving into expository writing, we decided to have one more crack at adding sensory images and supporting details to our writing. We did this by introducing similes to our students. We began by reading the books, My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks by Hanoch Piven, and Crazy Like a Fox, A Simile Story by Loreen Leedy. We also read two simile snow poems, and students had to identify the similes. Then, students had to write their own winter similes. We weren't sure how they would turn out, based on their oral responses, but we were quite pleased with the results.
We started the non-fiction part of our Native American unit. Kim found a great formative assessment to gage how much background knowledge students had about them. It was called, "Agreement Circles" from Page Keeley's book, Science Formative Assessment. It was a physical way for students to not only demonstrate their background knowledge, but to also defend their thinking. Before reading the poem called Native Americans, students were given pictures of different Native American ways of life, and they had to sort the pictures however they wanted. The poem introduced students to the different cultural regions and ways of life for the Native Americans. It was a complex poem, but after discussing it, the students were then able to resort the pictures that matched the different cultural regions.
To complete the lesson, we made a map of the different regions and revisited the "Agreement Circle." The students were more decisive, and able to defend their thinking with specific information they had learned from the poem. It really was a good formative assessment!
We had more fun with polygons this week. We found that our students really didn't know the different types of polygons, so they needed lots of practice with them. We found a great polygon lesson from AIMS Education called "Pondering Polygons." The geoboard activity was a big hit, as well as the Pick a Polygon game.
Those were the highlights of the week for us. Hopefully we will have a five day week to write about next week! Keeping our fingers crossed!
Kim and Anne
Hi Everyone! We have survived another frigid week in Chicago, but it seems the worst is yet to come, as the forecast calls for horrible weather at the beginning of next week.
Before moving into expository writing, we decided to have one more crack at adding sensory images and supporting details to our writing. We did this by introducing similes to our students. We began by reading the books, My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks by Hanoch Piven, and Crazy Like a Fox, A Simile Story by Loreen Leedy. We also read two simile snow poems, and students had to identify the similes. Then, students had to write their own winter similes. We weren't sure how they would turn out, based on their oral responses, but we were quite pleased with the results.
We started the non-fiction part of our Native American unit. Kim found a great formative assessment to gage how much background knowledge students had about them. It was called, "Agreement Circles" from Page Keeley's book, Science Formative Assessment. It was a physical way for students to not only demonstrate their background knowledge, but to also defend their thinking. Before reading the poem called Native Americans, students were given pictures of different Native American ways of life, and they had to sort the pictures however they wanted. The poem introduced students to the different cultural regions and ways of life for the Native Americans. It was a complex poem, but after discussing it, the students were then able to resort the pictures that matched the different cultural regions.
To complete the lesson, we made a map of the different regions and revisited the "Agreement Circle." The students were more decisive, and able to defend their thinking with specific information they had learned from the poem. It really was a good formative assessment!
We had more fun with polygons this week. We found that our students really didn't know the different types of polygons, so they needed lots of practice with them. We found a great polygon lesson from AIMS Education called "Pondering Polygons." The geoboard activity was a big hit, as well as the Pick a Polygon game.
Those were the highlights of the week for us. Hopefully we will have a five day week to write about next week! Keeping our fingers crossed!
Kim and Anne
Monday, January 20, 2014
Two New Products on Teachers Pay Teachers
Monday, January 20, 2014
We are a day late, but our lesson plans for The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush and The Legend of the Bluebonnet are up on our Teachers Pay Teachers store. Hope you can check them out. Let us know what you think.
We are a day late, but our lesson plans for The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush and The Legend of the Bluebonnet are up on our Teachers Pay Teachers store. Hope you can check them out. Let us know what you think.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Finally Back!
January 18, 2014
Hello Everyone,
It is good to be back on the blog. We have really missed it! Chicago weather has led to an interesting start to the new year. We are finally back on track!
We spent a great amount of time over winter break writing two reading lesson plans that cover several of the Common Core State Standards. They also blend in well with our second grade social studies history curriculum on Native Americans. The plans are centered around the Tomie DePaolo books, The Legend of The Bluebonnet, and The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush. Both plans include the same common core activities: a story structure organizer to sequence events in the story, a Question-Anwer-Relationship (QAR) page, a character trait puzzle, an extended response question, and an extension activity for vocabulary. We included answer pages to go along with each activity. Our goal is to have these plans up on our Teachers Pay Teachers store Sunday afternoon. We used these plans for our formal evaluation this year, and they were both very successful. We couldn't have been happier with the students' performance, focus, and deep learning of the standards. Here are some pictures of the activities.
We don't normally talk about math on our blog, but we are starting one of our favorite units, Geometry! We love this unit because we can incorporate three of our favorite things with math: art, reading, and writing. As we learned about points and line segments, we had the students use the art method of Pointillism to create a line or circle design. This lesson came from Renee Goularte. She has great lessons on Teachers Pay Teachers. For our parallel line lesson, we used art to involve the students with the concepts in a hands-on way. They seemed to have a better understanding as they made their designs and identified parallel and not parallel lines in their writing. Some students even wrote about perpendicular lines and transversals. This lesson came from the 2007 edition of teaching preK-8: The Magazine for Professional Development.
As we move further into our geometry unit, we will be using a new website we found called Math Is Fun. You might want to check it out! We are going to begin with the Sorting Shapes activity.
In science, we are learning about the properties of solids. We learned about engineers, and how they have to think about how the properties of solids work together to hold other solids up. Students had to apply what they learned to build towers out of various solid materials that could stand alone. As an extension to this science lesson, we challenged students to build a bridge out of 25 craft sticks and 100 toothpicks. Their bridges needed to be able to support a five pound brick. Testing this week was a hit!
We know we focused on more than just literacy this week, but it always seems like everything just clicks in all areas come January, and it is a really exciting and fun time. We want to share highlights from all of these areas.
See you next week!
Kim and Anne
Hello Everyone,
It is good to be back on the blog. We have really missed it! Chicago weather has led to an interesting start to the new year. We are finally back on track!
We spent a great amount of time over winter break writing two reading lesson plans that cover several of the Common Core State Standards. They also blend in well with our second grade social studies history curriculum on Native Americans. The plans are centered around the Tomie DePaolo books, The Legend of The Bluebonnet, and The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush. Both plans include the same common core activities: a story structure organizer to sequence events in the story, a Question-Anwer-Relationship (QAR) page, a character trait puzzle, an extended response question, and an extension activity for vocabulary. We included answer pages to go along with each activity. Our goal is to have these plans up on our Teachers Pay Teachers store Sunday afternoon. We used these plans for our formal evaluation this year, and they were both very successful. We couldn't have been happier with the students' performance, focus, and deep learning of the standards. Here are some pictures of the activities.
We don't normally talk about math on our blog, but we are starting one of our favorite units, Geometry! We love this unit because we can incorporate three of our favorite things with math: art, reading, and writing. As we learned about points and line segments, we had the students use the art method of Pointillism to create a line or circle design. This lesson came from Renee Goularte. She has great lessons on Teachers Pay Teachers. For our parallel line lesson, we used art to involve the students with the concepts in a hands-on way. They seemed to have a better understanding as they made their designs and identified parallel and not parallel lines in their writing. Some students even wrote about perpendicular lines and transversals. This lesson came from the 2007 edition of teaching preK-8: The Magazine for Professional Development.
As we move further into our geometry unit, we will be using a new website we found called Math Is Fun. You might want to check it out! We are going to begin with the Sorting Shapes activity.
In science, we are learning about the properties of solids. We learned about engineers, and how they have to think about how the properties of solids work together to hold other solids up. Students had to apply what they learned to build towers out of various solid materials that could stand alone. As an extension to this science lesson, we challenged students to build a bridge out of 25 craft sticks and 100 toothpicks. Their bridges needed to be able to support a five pound brick. Testing this week was a hit!
We know we focused on more than just literacy this week, but it always seems like everything just clicks in all areas come January, and it is a really exciting and fun time. We want to share highlights from all of these areas.
See you next week!
Kim and Anne
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