Writing Lessons

Happy Saturday!

We've known our writing lessons needed an overhaul but we just weren't sure where to start. When I found the book, No More, "I'm Done!" that all changed. This is a must read for all lower el teachers.

Here are few of our favorite writing lessons we've taught so far this year...

Adding Details

This lesson starts with the story, A House For Hermit Crab, and a big empty square drawn on chart paper. Read and enjoy. Then discuss all the details on hermit crab's house. By now, kids are wanted to know what the big square is for on the paper. Invite each student to come up and add one thing to the "house." Then write a story that includes each and everything that was added.

Story Structure

We have taken a look at numerous ways stories are arranged and by far the two favorite have been ABC stories and stories arranged by days of the week.

We absolutely LOVE the book, The Z Was Zapped by Chris Van Allsburg.  The kids have a great time trying to guess what will happen to the next letter. This prompted TONS of ABC books to be written.

We also read, Cookie's Week. This book is very simple but is wonderful for showing a different way that authors can choose to write a story. After reading the book we did a shared writing. Of course they wanted to write about Baby T.

We typed it up... they love rereading stories written with help from all their classmates.

Good Leads

Are you sick of reading stories that start with, "One day..."? Yeah. Us too. The good leads portion of the book was really good for us. She outlined some of the most interesting ways for students to start stories. We picked 5 leads that we thought our students would be most apt to use in their writing.

We introduced one lead each day and modeled writing with that lead. After 5 days we had learned all the different leads.  Our culminating activity was suggested by Jennifer Jacobson.  Her book said to gather about 20 picture books that all started with good leads. We read the beginning of each book and then sorted them by the type of lead. Such a great way to show students that they are doing things real authors do!

Happy Writing!
-Amy

Super Sunday!

Today and tonight our town is getting the biggest snow storm of 2015! A foot is predicted. I'm thinking snow day tomorrow?

The snow reminded me of a fun how to writing we did last week. How to Build a Snowman. Everyone got marshmallows, pretzel sticks, chocolate chips (regular and mini sizes), and a TicTac. First we build a snowman, then we wrote the steps on our writing planning sheet. Last, we did a final copy. They turned out great!

We've been working on putting together all of our how to writing into a one stop shop pack. Look for it in our store soon! In the mean time...

We are having a Super Sale! Visit our store today or tomorrow for 20% off everything.

Happy Super Bowl Sunday!
-Amy

Why I Like Me!

This has been one of my favorite writing pieces this year! We started by reading the book, Me I Am by Jack Prelutsky.

Then we brainstormed some reasons why we like ourselves. The kids completed a thinking map. We love using thinking maps in writing... the final piece always comes out so much more organized with great details!

Then we worked on our rough copy organizer. Once they had their rough copies done we talked about editing. This is still a work in progress. They think everything they scratched down the first time is perfect! But clearly... They is not spelled thAy. hehehe They just don't believe me! 

Once we "edited" we moved on to our final copy. We added a cute drawing of ourselves to the final copy, it added a special touch!  Here's a few that are just too cute not to share...

That hair!!

Boys do rule!

I also love it when people cheer for me! 

Such a fun activity! If you want to add this to your bag of tricks grab it here! 

-Amy

Scary

That moment when a coworker buys one of your products.

It happened. Today.

We have not promoted the fact that we started a TpT store at our school. There are only about 3 other people who actually know we have this blog and a store. We were a bit apprehensive to share our venture, you know... it case it was a flop. Well, it's been a year [!] and we are going strong. We feel so blessed.

For those of you who blog and/or sell, did you tell your coworkers?

Hehe

So this week has been everything scary! 

Monday we made a list of scary words.

However, the scariest thing about this picture just might be my spelling! UGH how embarrassing!

After we made this list and the students copied the words into their Writer's Notebook (whoops... they all spelled tarantula and slime wrong!) we used the words to make scary sentences. Every year after we do this lesson I think to myself, "Tell the kids they can't write about Bloody Mary." Then the next year rolls around, I forget, and I get 20 sentences about her.

Because we like to turn activities into friendly competitions we decided to find the person who wrote the scariest sentence of all! I set the writing timer for 12 minutes and the spooky music went on. [We had to set the mood!] After our timer went off I had each student reread all their sentences and star the scariest. Each student shared their scariest sentence with their table. The table then voted who had the absolute scariest. That person when came up to the front of the room. We have 7 tables in our classroom so we had 7 sentences about Bloody Mary to vote on. We found our scariest writer and applauded them. It was a fun!

Yesterday, we turned those scary sentences into stories. I had a sub so my stories were, well... not so good. However, Tina's turned out cute so she had her class turn theirs into a final copy today.

I feel like this is the first year in a while that I've really been excited for Halloween. I'm attributing it to the baby! I bought her 3, yes 3, costumes. I'm seriously going to return 2.. I just can't decide which one to keep. Piglet? Strawberry? Ladybug? They are all just TOO cute.

I have been lighting this candle every night! I just LOVE it.


-Amy-

A Peek At Our Week

I had every intention of sharing our plans with you on Sunday night... but the baby fell asleep on my chest and she was just so cozy that I didn't want to put her down. So here is a "Peek at Our Week" a few days late...

Yes, I didn't sugarcoat them. We seriously still write out our plans in the the old school plan book. It works for us! Don't judge.

This week we've been working on the difference between complete and incomplete sentences. Yesterday we did a flap book. Today we made incomplete sentences complete! We've been using activities from our Statements, Exclamations, and Questions OH MY! pack.

We've also gotten into our mini lessons for Daily 5. This week we are working on the strategy, Check For Understanding. We need some more work on it, the kiddies want to give predictions instead of telling who and what!

We also introduced Work on Writing. We've been talking about forms of writing, writing ideas, and using our word books.

One thing that we are really excited about is our new spelling program! We found The Teacher's Clubhouse. Saw her spelling pack. And HAD to have it! So far... we are loving it. Spelling lists are so much more meaningful this year. Our lessons in class match the word lists. Everything we need is included in her pack!

We are trucking along in our math series. Not to much to share on that home front. We are just seriously missing all of our cute/fun/interesting activities, games, and lessons that we created 2 years ago before we were forced into using this new series. BUT what's a teacher to do? We are trying to make the most of it! I find myself putting my own spin on the lessons which makes me much happier. Here's a look at the "Work Places" we've been engaged in.

As far as social studies goes... full speed ahead in our communities unit! This week is all about rural, suburban, and urban communities. We are also studying for our Where I Live test... this Friday. It's pretty amazing how many kids don't know their address, phone number, or city. Scary.

Now that the "honeymoon" phase is wearing off Go Noodle is my best friend. That Zumba helps get our wiggles out. Life saver.

Amy

WHAT we teach

This late night post has been delayed for a few reasons: 1) Our power went out last night and was still out this morning 2) It's my last Friday of vacation :((( and 3) I just wasn't sure what to write!

But, I have decided that my favorite things to teach are Writing and Math.  I absolutely love anything with numbers and math has always been my favorite, but I am a little nervous to begin this year because we have a totally new math series again.  The series is, Bridges, and it looks like it will be very beneficial BUT also super intensive without a lot of prepping.  So, we'll see. :)

I also adore teaching writing.  Well...usually.  At the beginning of the year, I might wanna cry and pull my hair out sometimes, but I remind myself that these little cuties will develop quickly.  I love writing because there are so many types of ways for the students to show their creativity.  We do most of our writing based on a great book and usually wrap up the lesson with a cute final copy or craft.  

Have a good weekend!  I'm going to soak up the sun and squeeze my boys tight because I know I'll be missing them like crazy next week.

-Lindsay

Five For Friday Freebies!

It's FRIDAY!

Today we are linking up with Doodle Bugs. Who doesn't love Five for Fridays? Especially when it's five FREEBIES!?!

Our kiddies have a really hard time with the difference between nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I can't tell you how many times we've gone over them and yet they still get confused. We decided to do a little cooperative learning activity to help their understanding. We put one of these on each table. Groups of four had to work together. They got one minute to write down as many nouns, verbs, and adjectives they could before rotating to the next table.

They did a pretty good job... hopefully this means they are FINALLY catching on. Grab this nouns, verbs, and activities cooperative learning activitiy here!

This week we've also been working on skip counting, specifically by 5s, 10s, and 100s. To make it a bit more challenging we've had different starting points... so when we count by 10s we don't start at 130 but we'll start at 137. Talk about a brain bender! Gotta get these kids thinking. Grab a skip counting sheet here.

Next Tuesday we are going to focus our writing lesson around MLK. We have tons of great informational books to read and share with the students. We are going to use this organizer and final copy paper. It's nothing fancy but will get the job done. Sometimes that's all you really need! Why make everything a production???  Included in that file is also a winter writing organizer and final copy paper. Enjoy!

Evens and odds always need to be reviewed. We have a full evens and odds pack that will take you through the year posted on TpT but you can grab a free snapshot here! 

There you have it, 5 freebies.... just for you! We appreciate you visiting our blog and hope you stop by again to follow our journey in teaching, snatch some free stuff, and learn about us!

- Sister 3 -

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!!!

Five for Friday on Sunday

It's Friday again.... or Sunday?, when I'm actually able to finish this post! Better late than never!

#1. Halloween is seriously right around the corner!! I mean, really... where is this year going? It's def been a whirlwind, for me at least! Our Halloween projects and activities official started this week. Our classrooms are really starting to look "spook"tacular. 

We started our week with some scary stories. Each child picked to write a spooky story about either a witch, vampire, or Frankenstien. We had them work through the writing process and turn their stories into final copies. We used our writing toppers from our Halloween unit to jazz them up a bit! They turned out adorable super scary.

We also did some opinion writing this week with some inspiration from Amy Lemons' spiders. We are just amazed by her! We read a ton of informational spider books throughout the week. The students then had to use their new information to answer: Do you think spiders are creepy or cool? Some just couldn't decide because the creepy things about spiders makes them so cool! lol, second graders are so insightful sometimes. Check out some of our finished products...

#2. This past week we also started telling time. Our cuties got o'clock and thirty without a problem but were really struggling with the five minute intervals. Sister 2 whipped up this cute Halloween inspired I-Spy. Grab it from our TPT store here... free!

I also pulled out our brand new telling time floor mat for some additional practice. I had my students go out into our pod with a parent volunteer to practice telling time.

#3. This week we were also working on making visualizations. We have two poems that we just love for this strategy. One is about a pencil and the other is about an unusual pet. Grab them both here. Our students were so surprised to find out what the poems were actually about!

#4. My wonderful room mom knows just what this mom-to-be craves and popped by this week with my FAVORITES. Kind of random but my baby loves soup and McDonald's breakfast sandwiches.

#5. Remember how last week Big Boy swung by school with ice cream sundaes?? This week Olive Garden came to my classroom with salad, breadsticks, and pasta! They brought chef hats and name tags... the kids (and their very hungry teacher) were in heaven! MMM thank you Olive Garden!

Now I just need to get Sister 2 to give Chili's a call back! I'm hoping they want to bring their famous (and our favorite) chips and salsa!

The Lions are on so I'm off to relax before our weekly Soup and Sandwich Sunday dinner tradition!
-Sister 3- 

Time to Catch Up

Where has the time gone?!? About a week and a half ago we said we had another major announcment... sorry to leave you hanging!

I'm having a baby!!! Lots of big news on my end this year.  My students are beyond excited! Every day I find sticky notes on my desk with potential baby names.

In the mist of wedding and baby planning I am managing to get some teaching in! hehe... Thanks to my two lovely sisters, of course.

We have our bat unit under way. We have to say we are very excited about this unit because it was our launch into TPT. It's our first Sister Secrets "baby" if you will! Check it out if you're interested in studying bats this year. Here's a writing craftivity from the unit.

We are also starting our Halloween inspired activities and lessons. Today our cuties began rough drafts of scary stories... look for pictures of the finished projects soon! We also have been enjoying Halloween Bump! in our Math Menu rotations. You can grab a year of bump here, for free!

This week we've been doing all sorts of visualizing. It's one of my favorite strategies! Yesterday, I read See the Ocean.. it's such a sweet story. I stopped about half way through and had the kiddies go back to their desk and draw what they saw when they heard the words on the page, in their Daily 5 Notebooks.  Then we did a gallery walk. Here are a few of their visualizations!

And finally the highlight of last week was a visit from Big Boy! Our students had written resturant letters a few weeks ago and Big Boy wrote back saying they wanted to bring an ice cream sundae treat to ALL of us! 90 ice cream sundaes!! Such sticky fun. :)

I'm off to meet a contractor... we're wanting to renovate the bathroom. Wish me luck!
-Sister 3-

And we're back!!! Halloween, Happiness, and Headaches!!

First...let us start by apologizing to all of you!!  We have been MIA for the last few weeks with SO much school stuff.  You get it right?  SOOOO much school stuff!  The beginning of the year is just plain exhausting.  We love the excitement of back to school but we must forget how tiring it is.  Have we mentioned the SOOOO much school stuff?  Anyway...boo hoo enough about us!  You are all in the same boat and so we can sympathize with each other!

So forgive us for being absent for so long!  But we are back!!  Things are finally settling into a routine and we can get back to what we love....blogging, our teacher friends, and TPT! :) All three make the three of us very happy ladies!

We've worked on a few products in the last few months to prep for the fall season. Somehow working on TPT is like therapy that relaxes us...yes, we need help! :)

Check out Apples, Fall Writing, and Halloween!  All three are packed with fun for this season!

 

We have a new math series this year.  It is the absolute DEATH of us so far.  We know that new things come along and we always adjust what we do as the years change...however, sometimes we are forced to use things we don't think are the best materials for our students.  We are trying to stay positive that the farther we get into it, the more it will all make sense but....eeekk.  Right now all three of us worry about our math instruction.  We've decided to try to find a happy medium of the program we have to use and supplemental materials...for the kids and for maintaining our sanity.  We don't want to give out the name (to protect the innocent...lol) but out of curiosity...what math program do you use at your school?  More importantly tell us what you think of it!

Hope you are all having a wonderful beginning of the year and settling into your routines!  Halloween will be here before you know it!

Journal Prompts

Getting second graders to write can be quite a chore but the sisters and I have found a sure fire way to get them interested!  We created a journal for each of our students.  

The kids this it's amazing that their name is TYPED on the front!  We used the binding machine to make each journal.  Within the journal are a few important features.  When you open it up they find a "Writer's Checklist."  These are the things we require them to do in every writing piece.

It's a great visual reminder.  Next are 20 writing prompts... we don't want to overwhelm them with a HUGE stack of choices.  We tell them they can pick any page to start on, that's a biggie.  Allowing them to select for themselves is a big motivation.  They love sharing their writing with a friend and of course us!

Coming up write writing prompts can be a daunting task.  So we've made it easy for you!  Check out our Journal Prompts [12 Months Worth] packet on TpT. 120 prompts for less than 10 cents each, it's a steal! 

Spring Fever!

Well we made it through conference week!  It was a few very long days but everything went well for all three of us and now we are onto our last trimester of school!!  Let me tell you my class has SPRING fever!!  Ok...so do I!!  I am over the snow and cold weather!  I am ready to be done wearing my Ugg boots and move on to flip flops or at least no socks!  This week marks the first day of spring....at least by the calendar!  The forecast doesn't look very "springy" with thirty degree temps! :(   But we decided a great way to kick off our first week of spring and get us into the spirit would be to work on spring writing!  This week we planned to have our students write an opinion piece on which season is better and a narrative story entitled "The Year I Was the Easter Bunny."  Next week we will be writing another narrative piece for April Fool's Day and then after spring break it will be an Informative piece on Plants! 

Check out our Spring Writing Pack and think spring!! :)