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

All Things Native Americans

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Hi everyone. We're writing on a Thursday night because we are at school waiting for our Rock and Reading family night to begin. Because we are short on time, we are going to jump right in with some highlights.

We are still on our Native American unit because of all of our days off (we've had three four day weeks now!), working with our ISAT buddies, and last minute assessing for our second trimester. We are wrapping up our study of the Eastern Woodland Native Americans. We used two different website sources to gather information about their ways of life. These sites are interactive, so they were highly engaging for the students. After reading and discussing the different aspects of the Eastern Woodland Native Americans' daily living, we recorded the important information on a matrix. This killed three birds with one stone- we talked about main idea and details, identified important information, and discussed the importance of gathering information from two sources.

Website #1

Website #2

One part of the matrix focuses on the homes of the Native Americans. The students were very interested in the idea that some Eastern Woodland Native Americans lived in wigwams. We think they just liked the sound of the word, but they said they could not visualize or imagine what that home looked like. So, we found directions on how to make a wigwam out of construction paper and coffee filters. Again, this fun activity not only helped them visualize a wigwam, but also made them read and follow steps in a process.

To review the visualization strategy, as well as poetry devices, we read and discussed the poem, Indian Children. The author is unknown. Then, the students illustrated their visualizations. We really feel that sometimes the strategy of visualizing is underrated, but we think it is vital for students' comprehension. We tell the students over and over again that there should a movie in their minds as they read, and if there is that means they are understanding what they are reading. We model this for them all the time as well.

Another part of the matrix addresses the customs. We learned that the Native Americans loved to play guessing games. One game is called "Passing the Stone." The students loved playing it.

Finally, we revisited the Native American myth and fable from last week. We completed a Venn diagram to compare and contrast The Great Ball Game and Why Bat Has No Friends. We were pleased to see that our students were able to independently generate more ideas for the Venn diagram than before. They are getting closer to our Learning Target Bullseye. (We'll talk about that in another blog.)

Next week we will share a great math lesson from Aims Education, and some articles that really made us reflect on our teaching, and have reenergized us for the last part of the year.

Have a great weekend!
Kim and Anne

Angle Fun and More

Friday, February 21, 2014

Hi Everyone,

We hope you found the Bright Ideas Hop useful.  We are not quite ready to link into it yet.  We're still just "getting our feet wet" as we learn the ins and outs of it.  But, we do want to share some more ideas that we hope you can use in your classroom.

In math we have been sharing our students based on their needs.  We want to make sure students that need enrichment are receiving it and are being challenged.  We also want to make sure that students who want to work at a slower pace have that opportunity.  One of the ways we enriched our students this week was learning about obtuse, acute, and right angles.  This is not in our second grade curriculum, but it was a great extension for our geometry unit.  Once again we used lessons from Aims Education.  They were called Angle Aerobics, Angles More or Less and Angle Hunt. The kids loved making the different types of angles with their bodies and going on their angle hunt in the classroom.  As an extreme challenge at the end, we went to the BBC Bite Size angle game to learn about the different degrees of angles.

Students wrote a reflection to demonstrate their learning.

The other group worked on finding compliments of multiples of ten.  This is extremely challenging for them, but we found an app called Math Tappers: Find Sums.  This provided excellent visuals of the compliment process, and it was easier for students to find those compliments.  This was a great springboard into using the base-ten blocks to help them solve problems in their journal pages.

42 + ? = 60  The students could easily see the answer was 18.

We are continuing with our Native American unit and our study of folktales.  After reading and discussing The Great Ball Game or Why Little Bat Has No Friends, students had to find the six most important parts of the story so they could summarize it.  To do this, they had to go back and closely read the text and make judgements as to what was the most important.  We came together, shared ideas, and then created a summary wheel.

We had a fun week at school.  We look forward to sharing more with you next week.

Kim and Anne

Hoppin Good Ideas

Friday, February 14, 2014

One year ago when we began our blog, our purpose was to share creative, motivating, yet effective ideas you could easily incorporate into your classroom.  Hopefully you have found some of them useful. Recently we came upon something called Bright Ideas Blog Hop.  Teachers blog about tips, tricks and ideas that have worked well in their classrooms.  When you are finished reading one blog, it links you to the next idea blog in the hop.  We just found this yesterday and already we have new ideas about our writing mentor text bulletin board, two great math place value and problem solving ideas, and our favorite one called Table Top Twitter!  We thought we'd get you started hopping with this blog site.

Happy Hopping!

We are not part of the Bright Idea Hop just yet, but here are two ideas from our classrooms that you may want to use with your students.

The Aims Education Foundation is one of our favorite resources to use when we want to enrich and deepen our math and science curriculums.  This week we used an old version of What Do You Sink Will Float? (Darn it! We didn't see this new and nicer version in time).  This was used to enrich our students' understandings of properties of solids.  It also forced them to change their thinking of the reasons why an object will sink or float.  Originally all of the students believed it was based on the object's weight.  After weighing each object, predicting which would sink or float, and then testing each object, we were shocked to find out that a tiny paperclip that weighed less than a gram would sink, while the pencil that weighed 5 grams floated.  The students soon thought about the material each object was made of and wondered if that had something to do with whether it sunk or floated.  This was a perfect segue into a discussion about density, which then will lead to an experiment about density.

Our second idea is our buzz log writing.  In our classroom our students "buzz" about their nightly reading.  Each night the students read a book that they have chosen.  The following day they get into small groups of 3-4 students and discuss what is happening in their books, as well as their thoughts and the strategies they used while reading.  Some days we extend that talk to writing about their reading.  In their blue notebooks, our students write us a letter telling us what they talked about in their buzz groups. We believe a combination of talking and writing about their thoughts deepens their comprehension, as well as motivates them to read.  Below are two buzz log entries.  One is from the beginning of the year and the other is from recently.  Notice the growth.

Again, we hope you can use some of the ideas we have presented her in this blog.  We would love to hear your comments below.

Have a great weekend!
Kim and Anne