Welcome back!

This week in reading our focus skill was determining the author's purpose for writing a book. We want our kids to be able to identify the purpose for writing because it aids in reading comprehension and allows them to see what really motivates some authors to write. With that being said, we had a lot of fun practicing this throughout the week!

Introduction 

We started off the the week with an author's purpose rap from Flocabulary. If you haven't heard of Flocabulary, I highly suggest you check it out! They have a rap/ song for almost every skill in every academic area you can think of. I love using them to introduce or review a concept... a bonus is that my kids absolutely love them! They are highly engaging and teach the academic language of the skill in a student- friendly way.

This is the anchor chart I created for the skill. I used it to explicitly teach the concept and the vocabulary for author's purpose. The kids also used this as a resource all week when identifying author's purpose during their independent reading. 

Interactive Read Aloud 

The interactive read aloud I chose to model this skill was Giraffes Can't Dance. I chose this read aloud because it was quick and very explicit as to determine that author's purpose is to entertain. There are SO many books out there that would be perfect for modeling this skill! After reading, questioning, and doing a think aloud, the kids got a post-it note and wrote what they thought the author's purpose was in writing this text  and why they thought that. 

The same day I also read part of a non-fiction text titled Mountains. They quickly could see that the author's purpose in that text was to inform!

Partner Practice 

We also practiced identifying the author's purpose with a partner. We made a PIE foldable beforehand that helped them refer to the three reasons authors write a text.

The partner pair had to read two books and determine the author's purpose for writing both books! I loved walking around to hear the conversations centered around author's purpose and craft- it made my teacher heart so happy!

During independent reading time in reader's workshop they had to jot notes about author's purpose and craft while they were reading their books. During my mini- conferences with individual readers they got to have a conversation with me about what types of books they like to read the most- books that entertain, inform, persuade, or a little bit of everything!

My more advanced readers started to discover that books CAN do more than one thing at once (e.g, persuade & inform.) I loved having these conversations with them!

Scavenger Hunt 

Throughout the week we discussed that we can sometimes determine the purpose of a story before even reading it. We can look at the cover and read the description of the story and make an educated guess about the author's purpose before we venture into the text! 

To practice this I took old book orders and had the kids read the title of the book, look at the cover, and read the description. They then had to determine what they thought the author's purpose would be, cut it out, and put it under the correct category! 

My 2nd- graders really enjoyed this activity. It not only allowed them to practice the skill but also exposed them to some great book titles! 

They each got a book order and a piece of paper which they divided in thirds and then labeled with the three different reasons authors write a text. From there, they got to do their scavenger hunt! 

There you have it! I hope you took away some engaging and meaningful ways to help teach author's purpose (it's as easy as P.I.E.!) 

-Brennan

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Brennan

Welcome back! This week in 2nd-grade was all about summarizing, time, and letter writing!

Reading 

Our focus strategy was summarizing this week in reading. Summarizing is a daunting task, especially 2nd graders, so I decided to focus on the Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then method to writing a summary! 

We started with a summarizing rap, anchor chart, and an interactive read aloud. A good read aloud to pair with summarizing is any story with a clear problem and solution. There are tons out there, but my favorites are Arthur and Kevin Hankes books! I decided to use Lily's Purple Plastic Purse to model this strategy. As I read we filled out our anchor chart together. After we filled out every part, we summarized the entire story! 

I don't have a picture of the anchor chart I made, but it looks very similar to the one pictured below. 

After I modeled the strategy, they got to practice the next day with a partner! The partner pair got to choose a book (I pulled a handful of Arthur books) and read the story together. As they were reading the story they had to record the parts of a summary in a foldable I whipped up. It was meaningful, engaging, and fun! 

I was so proud of them as they were working together to complete their foldable! I love seeing my students engaged and thinking critically about the text with one another... it really makes my heart happy! 

Throughout the week in reader's workshop I gave them a choice to work on a past skill (main idea, story structure, etc.) with their independent reading or to practice summarizing the book that they were reading. All of them chose to keep practicing summarizing! 

Math

This week in math we finished up our short money unit and moved onto time! In 2nd- grade they have to be able to tell time to 5 minutes, so we focused this week on telling time to the hour and half- hour, as well as starting to practice 5 minutes.

I stumbled across Magic of Math units by Amy Lemons over at Step Into Second Grade and decided to go ahead and try the time unit. I love her resources! They are super engaging and hands-on... the kids love them! She currently has units available for 2nd and 3rd grade math. With that being said, mostly everything used to introduce time this week is from her Magic of Math: Time unit! 

To introduce time we made a giant hula hoop clock as well as an anchor chart explaining the steps to tell time. They thought this clock was SO cool! It kept them engaged as well as offered a hands- on way to practice telling time. We re-built our hula hoop clock every day to review the steps in telling time on an analog clock. 

Below are some of the guided practice/ partner games that we played this week to help us practice telling time. 

They rolled dice to make the hour and then put it on top of the card with the minutes. They then had to make that time on their mini- clock and check each others work!

Here had to roll a die then write the digital or draw analog time on the corresponding recording sheet. Super engaging! 

On Friday before my lesson we reviewed with a game of musical time, which is just like musical chairs, but with time! Once they stopped at a chair they had to tell their neighbor the time while my para and I checked to see if they were correct. We had a lot of fun with this.. it was the perfect way to wrap up our week in math and clear up any misconceptions! 

Writing 

This week in writing we started our friendly letter writing unit. There is so many things that you can do with letter writing, so we are having a lot of fun with it! 

We started off the unit with the mentor text First Year Letters. We read the letters in the story, talked about the five parts of a letter, made an anchor chart, and started writing. r

Throughout the week we wrote a shared letter to a 1st grade class and a 4th grade class, started a pen-pal system with one of the other 2nd- grade classes, and wrote letters to other adults in the building. 

There you have it! That's a snapshot of what happened in our classroom this week. 

Happy teaching,

Brennan

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Brennan

Hey there! Today I am here to talk all about Morning Meeting in my 2nd grade classroom.

As you may know, I come from an early childhood background. With that being said, social and emotional development is at the front and foremost of my teaching philosophy. When I knew I was going to be teaching 2nd grade, I knew I needed something that fostered social, emotional, and academic development every single day in the classroom. I wanted a way to start our day off on a positive and exciting note while building classroom community. Enter morning meeting!

What is Morning Meeting?

Morning meeting is a 20-30 minute class meeting at the beginning of each school day.

It has four parts that go in sequential order:

1. Greeting: Students greet each other by name, often including handshaking, singing, movement, and other activities.
2. Sharing: Students share some news or information about themselves and respond to each other, articulating their thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a positive way.
3. Activity: The whole class does a short, inclusive activity together, reinforcing learning and building class cohesion through active participation.
4. Message: Students practice academic skills and warm up for the day ahead by reading and discussing a daily note to the class posted by their teacher.

The greeting is the first part of morning meeting. There are tons of resources out there, including this one by Sarah Garner, that have lots of ideas for fun and fresh greetings. Try to keep it simple at the beginning of the year. Once your students get in the routine of greeting, try one such as "hit the floor."

This greeting goes like this: "1,2,3,4! Come on _______ hit the floor! We're so glad you're here today, hooray, hooray, hooray!" Each student will go to the middle of the circle and do a dance when their name is called... I challenge them to get back to their spots by the last “Hooray!”

My students LOVE the hit the floor greeting. It's not only fun, but it makes every child feel welcome and excited to start the school day. Check out the resource above for other great greetings, as well as The Morning Meeting Book by the Responsive Classroom.

 After our greeting, we dive right into the sharing portion of morning meeting (one of my favorite parts!) In my classroom we have a sharing schedule. Every student has a particular day that he or she shares on, with Friday being our "overflow" day. I let the students that are sharing that particular day bring an appropriate object to share if they would like.

I have seen some teachers have a structured prompt for their sharing time, but I like to keep it open ended. That way there is not only any planning on my part, but also so that the child can truly share what is on his/ her mind.

This is the part of morning meeting that I believe has been the most transformative in building our classroom community so far. Letting students share something with the class, whether it be fun or serious, plays a vital role in building a positive classroom community.

 After we share, we get to participate in a group activity! The resource I shared above by Sarah Garner includes various different activities, as well as The Morning Meeting Book by the Responsive Classroom. In a nutshell, the group activity is a short, fast- paced game or song that involves everyone in the class. It helps to build class identity and supports crucial learning goals.

Some activities that we do incorporate academic skill- building and some offer practice in generalized skills such as listening, following directions, exercising self control, and/or practicing deductive reasoning.

One of my class favorite activities to do is called Follow the Leader. It goes like this: 

Choose one student to leave the circle and stand where she cannot see the group. Choose a “leader” - the leader will do a movement (such as stomping) and the rest of the class follows. The leader changes the movement regularly and the others follow the new movement. The hidden student returns and tries to guess the leader. After three tries, reveal the leader.

Some of the other class favorite are My Bonny, Aroostasha, Oliver Twist, and Mental Math Pushups. When I want to tie in academic content, a popular activity is "I Have, Who Has." This game not only integrates grade specific content but allows students to practice listening and speaking skills!

The Morning Message is the last part of the morning meeting. It is a letter to the entire class (written by the teacher) that provides information about the day.

Some days I use it to give an outline of our day while other days I use it to review or explicitly tie in academic content. At the beginning of the week I use it to model a decoding strategy. You can see in one of the pictures above we were working on looking for chunks in the word that we already knew to determine the word we were trying to read!

I love the morning message because it not only allows me to model and tie in academic content, but helps ease the transition into the rest of the day. It helps build the students' excitement about the day's learning!

The Power of Morning Meeting

I believe that Morning Meeting clears away the obstacles that impede children from feeling safe and engaged in school, creating the space for students to take care of each other and to do their best learning.

If you currently do not use Morning Meeting in your classroom, I highly encourage you to try it. We do every part of morning meeting. Every day. No excuses. My student's love it, and I know yours will too!

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Brennan

Hey there! Welcome to Prodigious in Primary's week in review. Once a week I plan to do a blog post discussing some of the learning that has gone on in our classroom.

While we are still adjusting to the procedures and routines of the classroom, we got a lot in! In reading we focused on visualizing and sequence of events, in math we launched number talks, and in writing we published our first piece of the year.

Reading

This week in reading our reading comprehension focus is visualizing, which is one of my favorite things to teach.

To practice visualizing we began like we begin all things in our classroom...with an anchor chart! We talked about how good readers visualize, or construct mental images, as they read a text. After I modeled the strategy using an excerpt from a Junie B. Jones book, the students got to practice visualizing on their own.

My Neighbor's Dog is Purple is a great poem to use to begin this unit. Not only is it very simple and fun, but it also shows readers that mental images can change as you read.

I had them close their eyes as I read the poem. After I read it I gave them each a copy of the poem and their job was to highlight the words that helped them to visualize (adjectives) and to draw their "mental picture" in the sunglasses template. Once they drew what they visualized in the poem, I had them color in their faces.

My students LOVED this introductory activity to visualizing. Beginning with a simple poem like this was helpful as we ventured into stories that required them to use their schema and background knowledge to create an image. Click here to get a free template of the activity with the poem! 

This week in reading we also practiced how to go back to in the text to find evidence to support our answers to comprehension questions. Since I am lucky enough to be in a 1:1 classroom, we got to do this on our computers!

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Math

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This week in math we are finishing up our unit on 2- digit subtraction with regrouping.

I'm super excited because this week we also started doing number talks as a warmup for math. Currently we are working on the "making a 10" strategy. I want to give a huge shout out to our amazing Math Coach Kerri for modeling this for me!

Basically, number talks are short (5-15 min.) discussions among a teacher and students about how to solve a particular mental math problem. The focus is not on the correct answer, but on all the possible methods and strategies of finding the answer. Throughout the week, each student has a chance to explain their method. 

(More to come on this in an upcoming blog post!)

Writing

Creating and cultivating a positive classroom community is very important to myself as an educator. One of the ways I have tried to accomplish this in our classroom is by having student see themselves (and their peers) in a positive light through an writing activity we called "The Best Part of Me." 

We used the book The Best Part of Me by Wendy Ewald as our mentor text. This book is a collection of photographs and responses from children when asked "what is the best part of you?" To start, we read some of the stories other children wrote in the book, brainstormed possible body parts, and then each student created a  word web of why that part was their best part. From there we took it through the writing process. We drafted, revised with a peer, edited, published, and shared our writing!

There you have it! That's a snapshot of what happened in our classroom this week. Be on the look out for more posts like these as well as a post all about Morning Meeting.

Happy teaching,

Brennan

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Brennan

Hey there! I thought for my second post I would give you a tour of my classroom. As I mentioned in my previous post, I took over a 2nd grade classroom mid- semester so I only had about a week to get the room together. Also, my classroom is sort of in a warehouse. The school I am at is temporarily at this old cereal plant for the entire year due to renovations at the current school, so, as you will see, I do not have full walls, a door, or any type of built in storage!

When I came in at the end of December, I decided I wanted to give the space a whole new look and feel. My goal was to create a functional, flexible, hands- on, and student- centered learning space. I ditched the teacher desk, a handful of tables, and a dozen chairs. Below are my results!

Before

After!

Here is what my classroom looks like as you first enter. I do utilize flexible seating, but I have enough "normal" seats for my students to use for specials that are inside the classroom.

 These are the focus boards I created on the left side of my room. This is where I will hang our anchor charts and resources for what we are working on in each subject area!

This is where my student's mailboxes are. Since I only have 13 kids (yay!) I use the bottom half of the box to store clipboards for my students when they decide to work on the floor. My "in-bin" is to the left of that. Everything, and I mean everything goes in the in-bin (my students will tell you that.) I hit up the Target dollar spot a couple of weeks ago and got a TON of great things like the "be awesome" pennant and other signs that are throughout my classroom.

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Brennan