Reading Salad

Check out my students making reading salads at http://www.busseysbunchoflearners.blogspot.com 
They did such a great job showing their thinking. This was lots of fun!

SCOOT

Can't wait to try this AWESOME activity from Keep Calm and Teach on called "Scoot."
http://keepcalmandteachon.blogspot.com/2011/04/scoot-activity.html#comments
It is kind of like the musical math I did below but what I love about this is that you can actually use it as an assessment too: formal or informal. What a super idea!

Meaningful Work

This past week the students participated in some fun and meaningful activities. While working on comparing and contrasting characters, we first worked together and completed a venn diagram about two characters from a big book we read. The the students and I made a list of the adults in the school they know really well- like me and the related arts teachers (since they spend more time with them and me). Partners then selected two people from this list and worked to compare and contrast them. They did fantastic and were quite insightful. This took some higher level thinking for sure.

      Another activity that was a lot of fun and met lots of learning styles was musical math number collection boxes. I prepared large number collection boxes on construction paper- each with a labeled number in the corner. These were placed on various desks throughout the room. I turned on music and students walked around the room. When the music stopped, they went to the nearest collection box and added a name to the box. We continued until students had an opportunity to write in lots of boxes. What fun!



First Weeks...

BEFORE-AGGGGGGGGGG!...

Welcome!

My Second Grade Team that I joined this year already had these made...aren't they great?

We are following Covey's Seven Habits of Leadership. Each grade level and class

created mission statements.

I keep those classroom expectations handy!

It is great for a sub to have them on a ring.

My AGENDA and TRANSPORTATION Board

The "Reflection Desk"

I LOVE having second graders write their own homework- such independence!

Leader-opoly Incentives (instead of Homework-opoly)

Keeping organized...

Hall Display that my wonderful colleagues created...

First weeks have been spent teaching routines and expectations. Students have explored a book basket a day and will select books this week for their personal book bags. We will begin exploring and discussing how to select a Just Right Book using the I-Pick method in the Daily Five book. We will also begin CAFE from The CAFE book- however, I call it FACE for the 'face of a reader." In math, we use Everyday Math so we follow it as presecribed. In science we are beginning a weatehr unit. i will be searching for weather ideas- please share if you have some! In writing, we are finished a prompted writing that I will use as a beginning assessment point. We will decorate the fronts of our Writer's Notebooks this week and then begin learing Writer's Workshop routines. Lots of modeling going on now! Hope your year is going well. Second is super!

Leslie

First Day

Wow- I can't believe the first day is finally here.  All of that "getting ready stuff" pays off in the end... resulting in a fabulous first day. The "getting ready stuff" like getting folders ready, bulletin boards, printing labels, updating the class handbook, cleaning, reviewing long range plans, writing lessons plans...and the list could go on and on and on. But, when you have a successful day and successful students it is all worth it in the end.

Blogging

We are blogging today about blogging.

Love this idea for the first week...

Who Am I? Riddle Book
Have children share facts about themselves by creating a Who Am I? riddle book. Students write four or five statements about themselves. The last line is a question: "Who Am I?" I put this up as a bulletin board and have students guess who each person is. The first person to guess correctly gets to choose who guesses next.
      Tina Williams, Livingston Park Elementary School; North Brunswick, New Jersey