Biographies and OK writing

Friday, May 16, 2014

Well right now we are trying to blog while 35 students are in our rooms for recess because once again, the weather is freezing cold and rainy. Please forgive us if there are typos, it is kind of a mad house in here.  This weather makes it difficult to believe that summer is coming and the school year is almost over.

Last week on the blog we mentioned that we would share our biography reading and our I'm Ok writing. We'll start with the biography reading. We started working on the biography reading because it went along with one of the stories in our reading series called, A Weed Is a Flower. The kids were fascinated reading about George Washington Carver's life. Once again we split into two groups, one more guided and one more independent. Both groups started with a timeline, where they had to predict the sequence of events that happened in Carver's life. One group had five events to sequence, while the other had several more. That group had to sequence their events in small, cooperative groups rather than as whole group. After reading, discussing, and taking notes from the story, both groups revisited their timelines and adjusted them as needed.

We used two other sources to add information to our notes about George Washington Carver to help us write our own thumbnail sketch biography. Since this was our first time writing a biography, we used a frame to help us. One group had a simple frame, while the other group's frame required more details of his life. Next week, we plan on continuing this genre with biographies about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. We especially wanted to read about Lincoln because of the connections the students can make between Lincoln and Carver, and we wanted to read about Washington because this reading goes along with our social studies unit.

This was our first time using the OK book  by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld as a mentor text for our writing. After reading the book, each student a descriptive paragraph about something that they are OK at. It not only reinforced descriptive writing, but also first person point of view writing. We combined each student's writing into a class big book, and together we wrote the lead and ending.

Have a great weekend. Here's hoping it warms up soon!

Kim and Anne

Guided Reading Project, Area and Perimeter

Friday, May 9th

This week we found ourselves finishing up on some fun projects that we couldn't get to last week because of MAP testing. For the past several weeks, our guided reading groups were reading nonfiction texts of their choice about bats or squid. During the reading they recorded their important facts, responses to the facts, and questions. As a final project (our kids love projects!) the students chose the most unique facts that they found, recorded them on a notecard, and then wrote an opinion statement about the fact.

For the final few weeks of school, we are basing our guided reading groups on the students' interests. Everyone got to pick the chapter book or nonfiction text that they wanted to read. They are reading in partners or independently, and then using Edmodo to share their thoughts and insights with their peers. We are also responding to them, and periodically ask questions for them to answer. We check in with groups to make sure the comprehension is there. They love the choice and independence of this, and cheer when we say it is guided reading time. They also like the fact that we are once again mixing classes.

Two measurement concepts that we have been working on are area and perimeter. We found two fun art projects for the kids to do. The first one came from Amy Lemons. It is called perimeter ice cream cones. We used the idea, but made our own shapes to meet the needs of our two differentiated math groups.

If you would like a copy of the patterns we used, let us know in the comments section, and provide your email so we can send them to you. Sorry, we haven't mastered Google Docs yet!


The other project we have found all over Pinterest, so we don't know who to give credit to. The students made area people. One group used square inch graph paper and was guided through the process. The other group used centimeter square paper and worked independently to create their own, unique area person.

Happy Mother's Day! Next week we want to share our biography project and a writing project we used  the book, I'm OK.

Kim and Anne

MAP Practice

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Happy May Day!  We know we've been MIA for the last couple weeks.  We've been busy gearing up for the MAP test.  They are finally over today and things will swing back to normal next Monday.

We are so proud of how well our students performed in both math and reading on this test.  We all cheered and celebrated for each other as we made our goals.  To help our students prepare for the tests, we used some fun interactive sites.  You will find them below.  Our students found the activities so fun they did them at home, and we are sure they will continue to use them throughout the rest of this year.

There are activities on this site for all RIT bands.

Math Practice Using RIT Scores

This is a great site because it has both math and reading practice.

Prepdog

We are excited to get back on schedule next week and to share the fun things we are doing as the school year winds down.

Kim and Anne

Fable Writing

April 11, 2014

We had a fabulous first week back from Spring Break.  This is a wonderful time of year because we can really see how much our students have matured.  They flow with us now.

As promised from a previous blog, we wanted to devote our time on this blog to our fable writing.  We used Jane Loretz's fable lesson.  We decided to combine our classes together and let the kids get into small writing groups of two or three.  They were thrilled.  The details on how to carry out this writing lesson are included in her packet.  It worked beautifully and it was very engaging. The students cheered  every writing session.

Students chose their characters and moral from the bags.

Planning page

First draft

Final copy

We are also using Jane Loretz's reader's theater scripts from this lesson plan bundle.  Since the students are enjoying this genre, we thought we would take advantage of their enthusiasm and practice oral fluency and expression.  To review them, the What's My Voice Fluency cards from Smekens was a fun way to drive home the point that you need to be expressive with your voice to communicate your moods and feelings.

Next week we plan on making Podcasts of the reader's theater performances.  We we were also invited to showcase our fable writing and Podcasts to our Board of Education.  What an honor.

If you decide to try any of these ideas, let us know how they worked out for you.

Have a great weekend.  Enjoy the nice weather we are finally having.

Kim and Anne

Iktomi and the Plains Native Americans

March 30, 2014

Spring Break is here! We are grateful for a little reprieve because we have been working like mad since coming back to school in January. It was a four day week for us, so we tried to cram a lot in to wrap things up. We were successful in some areas, but we still have some loose ends. We are excited about our fable writing. It is going well so far, but we are not finished. We will share the process we went through, and our final products, in our next blog.

Besides fable writing, this week was all about Iktomi, the Plains Indian trickster, legends. If you haven't ever read these books, you should really check them out. The kids really think he is a hoot! We read aloud many of Paul Goble's Iktomi legends so the students could get to know this hilarious character. While we were reading, we kept adding to our Iktomi character trait web.

We read two different Iktomi tales during shared reading, and each student had their own copy of the book. One group read Iktomi and the Boulder and the other read Iktomi and the Berries. During this first read, students recorded their thoughts in their reading notebook, and we discussed them after reading every couple of pages. We have been so pleased with the development of their thoughts from the beginning of the year. The students are truly starting to have authentic conversations about their reading.

One of our target skills was cause and effect. So, each group completed a cause and effect page with the story. We differentiated between the two groups. One group only had to identify the effects. The other group had to identify both causes and effects. Over the break, we plan to put up the two cause and effect pages for free on our teachers pay teachers store.

After break, we will switch books between the groups and complete a story tree, which will address another target skill-plot.

We connected social studies with our shared reading and read nonfiction texts about the Plains Native Americans. The students recorded important information on their matrix, and we compared the Plains Native Americans with the Eastern Woodlands.

In computer lab, we used tagxedo to review important cultural components of the Plains Native Americans. We were happy with how much they learned about the Plains Native Americans in a short amount of time.

As a fun way to end our week, we made rattles. We learned through our reading that the Plains Native Americans used them for many different purposes, including playing the Hand Game. This was another Native American game our students enjoyed playing.

If you are on Spring Break like we are, we hope you have a good one! We'll see you back on this blog in two weeks.

Kim and Anne

Fables

Friday, March 21, 2014

Sorry for the break last week, but we were trying to get our report cards finished.  We are relieved that they are completed and have been sent home!  It's hard to believe we are now in the last trimester of the year.

We have been reading fables, myths and legends for the past few weeks because our students have really hooked into this genre. This week we read A Froggy Fable by John Lechner.  The kids loved it and were able to have insightful discussions.  We did two story element projects with this fable.  One focused on the story structure.  Some students completed a story mountain independently and the other group completed one in a guided lesson.  It was challenging for the independent group to decide which events were important and needed to be included on the story mountain. To help support them we gave them event markers on their mountains.  We had to discuss the importance of not including too many or too few details.  The other group was challenged to complete their story mountain with events that were given to them.

Independent Group Story Mountain

The students then used the story mountain to decide the theme of the fable.  We thought about the protagonist's thoughts, feelings and actions throughout the story.  Then we thought about where in the story the character changed and learned something that we could apply to our own lives.  From there, themes were discovered.  Some possibilities were flexibility, appreciation, and acceptance.  After writing the theme and supporting it with evidence from the text, they created a tissue paper scene that also supported the theme.

We have been talking about the themes of stories all year.  To review this concept we showed them commercials from the website values.com.  A colleague shared this site with us.  The kids had to explain how the events in each commercial supported the various themes.  It really is worth checking out because it hooked the kids in.

Next week we are going to be writing our own fables.  This will be a brand new activity for us, but we found a great fable lesson plan by Jane Loretz on teacherspayteachers.  We are really excited.

We will let you know next week how it goes.

One more week and spring break is here!  We just hope we have spring weather.

Kim and Anne

Free Aims Education Lesson and More

Friday, March 7, 2014

Another busy week down!  At least it was a five day week and we got a lot accomplished. The biggest accomplishment was publishing our In winter...writing.  To take some of the blame off ourselves, we did have many days off this winter.  They turned our fabulously.

Last week we focused on social studies, so this week we will highlight our science experiment.  After studying the properties of liquids, we used the scientific method to draw conclusions about the density of liquids.  We were so thrilled that our students were able to use their background knowledge from our Sink and Float activity to draw a conclusion about why the liquids formed in different layers.

After the experiment we made A Big Density Column that we learned about when we took part in a Golden Apple Science workshop one hundred years ago!  It's such an effective way for students to learn about how molecules are arranged in different liquids and why they have different densities.

Last week we promised to share with you a great math lesson from Aims Education.  This was a free Common Core lesson plan offered through Twitter.  The equation mats really helped our students understand the story problems better and recognize where the numbers should be placed on the mat.  The problems that are part of this lesson are much more challenging than traditional second grade story problems because they include start unknown, change unknown, and end unknown.  Here is a link to find your grade level's free lesson plan.

Here is the second thing we promised to share with you--an article that really gave us a shot in the arm during this long winter.  Speaking of which, this winter has been incredibly tough on our students.  Besides missing so many days of school, they are often indoors during lunch recess because of the cold weather.  Cabin fever has set in.  This article fell in our laps at just the right time.  It was just what we needed to revitalize our teaching.  You may find it useful.

Looking forward to springing ahead this weekend.  Hopefully the weather will spring forward as well.

Kim and Anne