Let's Give Em' Something to Talk About

Okay everyone.  My name is Tina and I am terrible blogger.

Ahhh, now that we have that out in the open, I feel like maybe I can do this.  Believe it or not, I went through high school and college as the one who COULD write....and write...and write.  Fast forward to today. Am I busy at school everyday?  Yes.  Am I doing things I would love to share?  Yes.  Am  I finding time to do that?  No.  I blame the clock.  LOL... I'm a terrible "sister."  Thank goodness for Amy- Sister 3- who keeps our little blog going!   Here I am with time today so I have lots to share!

Let's rewind to July.  (Yes y'all it has been THAT long since I have blogged!!)  The absolute most stressful wonderful time of my life!  I married my best friend.  Yesterday was our 7 month anniversary.  It feels like forever ago but I still remember every moment of that day.  I had such nervous butterflies.  Fear, excitement, nerves....I had it all!  But everything turned out amazing and our first newlywed year of marriage is FLYING by.  I remember as a kid, my parents telling me not to rush time because it goes so quickly.  I totally get it now.  Here are two photos (out of 670) of our big day. 

 Pretty amazing day!  We can't wait to celebrate our first married Valentine's Day.....building a closet organizer in our new room.  Oh yeah....on my little "hiatus" from our blog, we also built a house and moved in.  The pages I could write on THAT topic are intense so I will simply say it was supposed to be done in July and we move in November 1st.  Yes...exactly.  Make your own assumptions.  However I LOVE our new house and we are slowly filling every room and making it a home.  Here is a picture of it before we moved in.  It looks the same on the outside minus the piles of snow all around it. :)

See I have been busy?!?

At school things have been pretty busy as well/.  We started a new math series. It has pros and cons.  We are supplementing it with our own units to make sure we meet all of our standards.  Have any of you started a new series you didn't love?  How did you help yourself to adapt?  We love new and inventive ways to teach things and hate the "same old" but this has some very "different" ways of teaching things.

I currently have a student teacher.  She is only here for about 2 more weeks.  My students love her and she is really getting into the groove.  Her being almost done makes me happy (I miss teaching my students) and sad ( I will miss being able to get things done while she teaches).  I guess all good things must come to an end.

We have been studying informational text A LOT over the last few weeks.  We have used informational guided reading books, taught strategies with informational text, and been working hard on text features.  We've done lots of great things with this but I thought I would share the group posters my class made.  After they leaned about all of the informational text features, they got in small groups to make posters for each one.  These are hanging on a wall by our reading area so students remember these in the future through pictures and words.

This week we are quickly approaching the sugariest most lovable party of the year, our Valentine's Day parties.  They are tomorrow and to use the kids excitement in a positive way, we have been doing many Valentine's Day based activities.  Here's a look at a few.....

I am not sure who to give credit to for the above adorable craftivities but we made these to go with the book Love, Splat.  It is a great story for lower elementary.  These crafts included students writing about ways to show love.  They came up with some cute, creative ways.  Think "buy them a fish" and "hand them a Kleenex."  Out of the mouths of babes!! 

Here we also were making a cute little Valentine craft that went with writing.  Our students have been working on "How-to" writing using order words and organizers.  Today we did our final copy of "How to make a Valentine" and made these heart people to go with it.  Everything is better with a craft right?!?  Especially if you are a second grader.  This how-to writing and craft along with many more are included in our new unit found here.  This unit includes "how-to" writing activities that will last you ALL year!

Well I think I have taken enough of your time caught you up on enough for now.

Have a great day!
~Tina

Five for Friday

Time management has never been one of my strengths… like last week I started this post after school on Friday and of course got side tracked. This weekend I've spent a lot of time researching the safest baby car seats and looking for bedding to decorate the cutest nursery. ALL super important but my school work has taken a back seat. I'm not complaining at all! But I knew I had to get back to this post.

Soo….

Here's a peak at some of the things we've been up to the last two weeks!

Thankfully Halloween is behind us. But it preparation for our festivities we all made a candy bag. (Like they needed anymore sugar!) We used foam sticks, stickers, and markers to decorate our bags. They turned out so cute!

Unfortunately, after Halloween comes "falling back."  I am having the hardest time getting use to such early darkness. Ugh, I'm ready for bed at 6 every night! Or maybe it's the pregnancy??? Who knows! 

The day after Halloween is always so quiet... until we asked them each to bring a peice of candy to school! What were we thinking???? Ohh that's right, we want to spark their interest with activities they are excited about! We did "The Day After Halloween" graph, which can be found in our Halloween unit. We sorted all the candy first. We talked about the different ways we could sort them. Then we talled each type of candy on our tally sheet and graphed them on the back page. It was a blast!

Career Day! Last Friday we celebrated the end of our communities study with community workers. Each student researched the career they would like to have when they grow up. We had quite a variety from McDonald worker (I do LOVE their french fries!!) to archeologist to teacher to chef. They have some wonderful aspirations!

We also practiced using a thesaurus this past week. The kids could spend hours looking up new words. One of our activities was to use the thesaurus to find new and exciting words to replace dull words. Grab this activity now… Wow Words Freebie!

Our RtI program is finally underway. We do Monday through Thursday, 20 minutes per day. This year we decided to focus on informational reading. Between the three of us, Sister 2's WONDERFUL student teacher, and our three parapros we have pretty small groups! Each week we print off an A-Z pocketbook for each student. We spend the whole week working with that one book. The kids are intrigued and learning to love informational text. WIN WIN. 

Have a great upcoming week everyone!!!

Bubble Gum and Research Books

Hey, I thought I'd take a break from my homework to update you on our classroom happenings.

Today we did a Babbling Abby special! "Yum! Yum! What's your favorite flavored gum?" It fit perfectly with our graphing unit. First we made our choices, then we predicted what the class favorite would be, we made a class graph, analyzed our results, and did a quick write.

One guess as to their favorite part. YES! Chewing the gum! 

We love reading informational text. We made cute research booklets that you can grab here for free!  Unfortunately, we sent them all home without snapping a picture!  We used them as a whole class research assignment.  Next year we plan on using this earlier in the year so we can fit in some small group research and individual research projects too. 

When I was checking papers today I found this cute little answer... How darling? I felt a little bad for having to mark it incorrect. 

- Sister 3 -

A Day in the Life of the Sisters

Today we are linking up with our friend from Second Grade Nest!

Here's a look into our day!

We wake up between 6:30-8:00. [no no we don't live together.]  I'm ALWAYS the last one up.  I'm just not a morning person... thankfully school doesn't start until 9:00.  As soon as we get to school we make a cup of something!  Sister 1 drinks hot chocolate, Sister 2 drinks tea, and I drink my decaf.  Having a Keurig as school is AMAZING.  Then we spend some time chatting with each other and checking our email before the morning music starts.  Our school welcomes our kiddos with some upbeat music to get them pumped for the day!  Once the bell rings we take attendance.  Each class has their own office folder.  

These two cuties swear they didn't plan this! How cute are they?!?  After we settle in we go over the agenda of the day and review some of our learning objectives. 

First up is math.  This week we've been working on telling time.  My class calls our clock, Judy.  Most of them even say hi to Judy when they come in... strange? Maybe, but whatever gets them excited to tell time!  This week we're also studying time lines, so we thought why not kill two birds with one stone.  

I swear the "sharp" pail was full before school started! But after math, I always have to sharpen pencils.  I really don't know how they are all dull at the same time? Do they purposely break them just to torment me?

The rest of our morning seems to be lost because my next picture is lunch.  We hit up Subway, for the second time this week.  Don't judge. hehe

After lunch we had to take advantage of our beautiful 74 degree day!  But when we came back in, it was time to get back to business.  First we finished up a poem we had started  before lunch.  Then I went through everyones "Book of Poetry."  Each student selected their favorite poem and we did a run through of our program...  Tomorrow we are hosting, "An Afternoon of Poetry." We'll fill you in on this tomorrow!  

Next we worked on our informational research project.  The sisters and I each did it a little bit differently.  Sister 1 decided to do her research online and display it on the Smartboard.  Sister 2 is doing hers with a book.  I decided to print off a pocket book for each one of my students... tons of prep work.  I'm the crazy one!  But they all LOVE their little book on elephants. Soooo it was worth it. 

Finally, it was time for specials.  Today our class had science.  The science teacher comes to our room.  I always leave and sneak to Sister 2's room with Sister 1.  I forgot something I needed on my desk so when I snuck in to grab it I couldn't resist snapping a picture of these really cool bridges they where building.  How fun!

The sisters and I have prep last hour.  We generally spend all of it catching up preparing materials.  

Today we were busy.  I hung out with the copy machine for about a half hour.  I also hung up our pop can drive posters.  We got ready for our volunteer luncheon, Cinco de Mayo style.  We love our kindergarten teachers for making those adorable centerpieces!  Finally, after school made a few phone calls to parents.    

After school, Sister 2 had to run to all of her sons baseball practices.  3 boys, I don't know how she does it!  Sister 1 stayed late at school putting the finishing touches on the volunteer luncheon decor.  I had to scoot to the grocery store to get stuff for our "Afternoon of Poetry." Two trips later I had it all. Note to self, always make a list.  My mom and I made cupcakes, Rice Crispy treats, and a butterfly goldfish snack we found on Pinerest. We went a little over board!  We were so busy with the treats that we decided to order a calzone for dinner.   

After dinner, I took my little Bella Baby for a walk.  I couldn't get her to smile, she wasn't in the mood for a picture!  And now... the Wings are playing. It's finally time to relax.  

Phhew I'm tired! 

Pretty Penguins!

So I mentioned a few posts ago about our heavy emphasis on informational text!  Well we are finally in full swing of our penguin unit and the kiddos just L-O-V-E it!  We have read informational penguin books, watched penguin video clips, made our own penguin booklets, and discussed everything from their life cycle to the what they like to eat!  It seems all three of our classes can not get enough of these adorable little guys!  I can't lie....the three of us are also loving teaching about them!! 

Yesterday and today we worked on an informational writing craftivity.  It is a perfect writing piece to grade and makes a very cute classroom display.  I have to admit I took down something I just put up recently to hang these up!  They were too cute and they have made me smile every time I looked at them today.  Here are a few pictures of our work on these and a peek at how some of them turned out!  Check out some of the accessories they jazzed them up with....hair bows, bow ties, a bracelet, even sunglasses!!

See...you smiled too when you saw them didn't you?!?!  :)  I think they are even cuter than Tacky...and he's pretty cute!  Tomorrow we start small group research projects on specific types of penguins.  Then we will also do a text features scavenger hunt with informational penguin books later this week.  All of these activities and even more can be found in our penguin unit.  Check out the preview to see what great things your kiddos can get into while learning about informational text!

A Little This, A Little That

Happy MLK Day! Did you get today off? or were you in PD, like us? We did a lot of work with our new writing rubrics and thinking maps. Gotta love those thinking maps! More to come on how we are using thinking maps soon.

Last week we were learning about verbs. The kids loved this assignment. First we brainstormed a huge list of angry verbs.  Then the students wrote an angry sentence on a sentence strip and colored their angry bird. Check out our "Angry Verbs!"  

We've been making great progress in addition with regrouping. Our kids love "Solve It!" This game is found in our Addition with Regrouping Pack. 

Last Friday, we assigned groups of 5-6 to work on informational posters. Each group was assigned an information book to read together.  Then they completed their poster and presented it to the class. They took it very seriously and the posters turned out great! 

Infomational Text Features

After looking at the Common Core it's easy to see that informational text plays a huge role!  The sisters and I have been working hard on infromational text features for the last few weeks.  Our kids are really starting to understand why they are so important and how they help us as readers. 

We started our investigation of informational text by reading a book called "Changes in Autumn."  Each student had their own copy and we discussed important aspects of the text.

Next we completed our "Navigating Through Informational Text" text features reference guide, which can be found in our Here's the Info! pack.  This really hit home as to how text features help readers.  

Today we created an informational text feature poster.  Our students worked with a partner to pick out each of the different text features. Grab a copy of the headings.  

Tomorrow our plan is to use book orders from Scholastic (love them!) and do a narrative vs informational book sort!