Opinion Writing

I am on a writing kick I've noticed. However, I really feel like the students have done a great job with writing this year, and I feel like they really understand the writing process. We've amped up the amount of writing the kiddos are doing in all subject areas, and it shows. Makes a teacher proud! :-)

Anyway, we've informally done opinion writing all year, but we started a formal unit on it just recently. Here is the anchor chart we made for opinion writing:

I'm excited to see how their writing turns out. They were allowed to write about whatever topic they chose. More pictures to come later! 

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Owl Moon and Descriptive Writing

Happy Monday! We recently finished a unit in shared reading using the book Owl Moon. This book is such a great book for helping students practice visualizing, helping them to use and apply context clues, and helping them to identify descriptive words. 

With common core, we are integrating even more writing. My students had to read the story and visualize what was happening at different point within the story. They then drew a quick pic of what they were visualizing and wrote a sentence to describe their quick pics. Then, we close read the story to find out more information about our text dependent questions. We had a book talk to discuss the story and to choose lines from the book that really spoke to us and that were powerful to the story. My students had awesome thoughts, and it's always so cool to see them analyzing a book at such a young age! 

After reading the book, we then went back and close read again to find examples of descriptive words. The students worked together to find examples and to create a list of descriptive words. There were a ton in this book! We talked about how those descriptive words can help readers paint a picture in their heads and that they help readers to use their 5 senses to imagine that they were there in the book. I found an awesome owl craftivity on Amy Lemons' TpT website that was free (check it out HERE), and I printed it on cardstock. I then traced the body of the owl on lined paper and made enough copies for each child. The students then took what they learned about descriptive writing to write Who Am I riddles. They had to write about themselves using descriptive words, and then they were able to put together the owl craftivity and color it. I then stapled it on top of their writing, and hung them on the back bulletin board. The kiddos love reading them during Daily 5 time to try to figure out whose is whose!  See the pictures below! :-) The kiddos did a super job, and we will continue to work on using descriptive words in our writing!

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"Pumpkin Smash" - a free 2nd grade sight word game

Holy moly. How is it already parent-teacher conference time??? This school year has flown by on the wings of crazy. Anyway, in honor of conferences and all that goes with this time of year (being too busy, having a million things on your mind, etc...), I have a freebie sight word game for you. This one is called "Pumpkin Smash", and my kiddos got a kick out of it.

To prepare this game, copy it on cardstock and/or laminate and cut apart. Each group will get a stack of cards.

Students will shuffle the cards and lay them out, facedown, on the table or ground in front of them. Students will then take turns to play. When it is a student’s turn, he/she will choose a card, and he/she will read the word aloud. That student will then continue to draw cards, reading each word, until he/she gets a pumpkin card. If a student picks a pumpkin card, he/she says, “PUMPKIN SMASH!” (some students seem to think this is hilarious - how little it takes to entertain a 7 year old...), and it is the end of his/her turn, and the next player will go. Play continues until all of the cards have been chosen. The person with the most cards is the winner! They seem to think it's pretty funny when a student will draw a pumpkin card right away. Dear me...

Hope your students enjoy this game as much as mine do. J This is a great game to use for word work during Daily 5 or guided reading, or students could practice it at home or play it together any other time.

Enjoy! To download, click HERE, or click the picture below.

 



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Text Dependent Questions

The Common Core State Standards for reading ask that students analyze, grapple, and linger on parts of complex text in order to better understand what they are reading. To do this, students are now answering questions that can only be answered by explicitly referring back to the text being read. These kind of questions are called text dependent questions.

As we implement the CCSS ELA, we will become better and more comfortable at writing and developing these kinds of questions for our students. Hopefully this document will help you to understand how to do that.

This document has tips for you, the teacher, and it also contains 20 generic text dependent question prompts/stems (I cut these cards out and hang them on a ring for easy access, but you could post these in your room, keep a copy in your plan book, etc).

To buy a copy, head on over to TpT! Click HERE or click on the picture below.



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Sunday Freebies - Guided Reading Forms for Running Records

I just love Sundays... They are my "lazy" days. I love laying around with the hubby, watching football, napping/dozing off throughout the day, and just enjoying being home. :-)

 

Here are a couple freebies for you. One of my colleagues asked for a copy of one of these documents the other day, so I figured it may make a good freebie.

 

The first document is a running record form. How many of you get tired of counting words ahead of time and writing them out? I certainly did. It was NOT my favorite thing. So, I came up with this super simple, but very handy and effective, form. To use this form, all you have to do is keep recording while the student is reading, until you get to the bottom! There are 100 boxes, so once you reach the bottom, you're good to go. Hope this works for you as well as it has for me! To download, just click HERE or click the picture below.

 

The other freebie I have for you today is a data sheet I use to record running record scores for my students. I print a page for each student, and I keep it in my guided reading binder. Each time I give that student a running record, I record the info (including any observations or comments) on the form. This is then handy to have, because I can see a comparison of their scores on one page. I can also easily see/use this information when discussing students at PLC (professional learning communities) or when trying to figure out if a student needs an MTSS (RTI in other states) intervention. Hope you can use this form also! To download this form, click HERE, or click the picture below.

 

Wishing you all a wonderful week ahead. If you haven't already, stop by my new Facebook page and click "like". www.facebook.com/confessionsofaprimaryteacher

 

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Informational Text Feature Poster Pack Sale

Yay for Friday! As much as we love our classes and are quite invested in our students' progress, even teachers need some time off. ;-) Hope you've all got something wonderful planned for the weekend!

 

My Informational Text Feature Poster Pack is on sale for the weekend over at TpT! We will be teaching informational text features in a couple weeks for Instructional Focus, and I've finally finished my poster pack. I plan on printing, laminating, and displaying these posters that have a description and picture for each text feature. We've never taught text features explicitly for Instructional Focus, and I'm really excited to do so. I think this will be a great unit for the kiddos, especially since our students are expected to read informational text 50% of the time now. What great strategies for gleaning information from non-fiction informational text!

 

To download, click HERE for a reduced price over the weekend, or click the picture below. Hope you have a fabulous weekend!!!

 

 

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Sight Word Toss/Read/Write

We're definitely in the full swing of things at school. :-) I hope you've all had a great start to the school year so far!

 

To play this game, students will take turns dropping or tossing a chip, cotton ball, counter, bean, or pom-pom onto the board. The student will read the word he/she landed on, and he/she will write the word on the recording sheet. This particular download includes 16 various 2nd grade sight words.

 

To download a copy, click HERE or click on any of the pictures below:

 



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Informal Daily Writing Checklist

I've finally created a daily writing checklist to use during writer's conference or for informal observation as I walk around during writing time. This would also be handy for Daily 5, Work on Writing. This will help me collect data that I can then use for both grade cards and for other student data purposes.

I plan to put this sheet on a clipboard, write the date at the top, come up with how I want my coding system to be (letter grade, 3/2/1, +/-, etc), and quickly and easily mark what I observe for each student on their daily writing/work. The categories covered/included are capitalization, punctuation, and complete sentences. I won't use this every single day, but maybe a couple times a week. This then keeps all of my informal observation data in one place, or I can easily transfer it to my gradebook.

I am going to include a free copy of it in case you'd like to use it also in your classroom!

Enjoy, and I hope you can use this! I've included both a student numbered version (if you use student numbers in your classroom for confidentiality purposes) and a blank one for you to write in the students' names.

 

To download, either click HERE, or click on the picture below.

 



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IPICK Anchor Chart

Oh the many differences between 1st and 2nd grade... :-)  The list is long, but one major difference, at least in our school district, is the amount of time you have to set up you guided reading/Daily 5 time. In 1st grade, we have 6 whole weeks to get set up and go over expectations. In 2nd grade, we start in 2 weeks or less. AAGGHH! 2 week to go over Daily 5 and teach all of our minilesons???!!! Gasp. However, it can be done. Luckily, the 2nd graders know a lot more about expectations and learn a tiny bit quicker. For instance, I could skim over some of the minilessons like choosing a gathering spot, picking a signal, etc..., because the kiddos already knew those kinds of things.

Anyway, the students LOOOOVED the shoe minilesson (if you haven't read the Daily 5 book, you must must must - such great information) that preceded the IPICK lesson. They just thought it was hilarious that I brought in so many different kinds of shoes, and they about died of sheer delight when I showed them my husband's shoes, put them on, and asked if his shoes fit me (keep in mind that I wear a women's size 5.5, and my husband wears a men's size 12 - a bit of a difference, haha). This lesson was definitely a great hook for choosing books. We then made the IPICK anchor chart, and students got to practice choosing their books from our classroom library. Here is a copy of our anchor chart - more pictures of some of our other lessons to come later! Happy Thursday! Can you believe how fast the school year has gotten into gear???



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Sight Word Caterpillars

The students have been working so hard on learning and using their sight words this year. Students got a chance to make these little sight word caterpillars, and they turned out super cute! The kiddos got to choose a few sight words that they were learning, and they wrote the sight words on the caterpillars' bodies and used the words in sentences. What a fun way for students to practice what they've learned (and a great kickoff to our lifecycle unit in science)!



I'm not normally the corny type (at least I try not to be, ha), but our kiddos are kind of like these little caterpillars. They've been crawling their way through 1st grade, growing and soaking up food bits of information. By the end of the year, they will have turned into beautiful butterflies, full of knowledge, and ready for 2nd grade! :-)

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1st Grade Story Elements

We are working on story elements for instructional focus this week. For the tutorial group (our sweethearts who just need an extra boost and support), we started out by making and going over our anchor chart (you will notice we aren't focusing on plot or story events just yet for this week - we hit that more in sequencing or during shared reading/guided reading).

 Next, we split up into 2 small groups, and we went over this fairy tale sorting activity as a small group (just the characters, problem, and solution for this activity). We took some popular fairy tales the kids knew, and I read the cards aloud and had the students help me sort them into the correct column. This was a nice introductory activity where we could kind of work all together. If you'd like a copy of this activity, just either picture, and it will direct you to where you can download it, or you can click HERE. To prepare, all you have to do is download, copy, paste the boards on large construction paper, laminate, and cut out the cards. For older kids I would let them do this sorting activity in pairs, trios, or small groups, but for the younger kids or kids who need extra help, you can just do it all together.

 

Look for more story element activities later this week! :-)

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Spin-a-Sight-Word Game

Here is a new sight word game I've created for partners to use. I'll be putting this in my sight word center, so if you can use it, enjoy! To play this game, each pair of students gets a game board. Each student chooses 1 side of the game board (left or right) and gets 6 counters or game markers. Students take
turns spinning the spinner (on top of the recording sheets). If they spin one of the shapes,
they must then read a sight word on their side of the game board that is on a
corresponding shape. They can then cover that word/shape with one of their game
markers. If a student spins the “You Pick” option, he/she may choose any of his/her
words to read and mark. If all of the shapes are already marked when a student spins
it, he/she just loses his/her turn. Students may also fill out their recording sheets by
writing the name of the shape they spun and the sight word they read (any chance to combine math and ELA is always a plus)! :-) 

Instructions are also included, and you can either click either one of the pictures below to download, or you can download from my TpT store for free HERE

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Vowel Ladder Game

Here is a free game I created for my students to practice reading and identifying words with short and long vowels. To play, students share a game board, and each student chooses a ladder (1 will take the short vowel ladder and 1 will take the long vowel ladder) and places his/her marker at the bottom. The kids then shuffle the word cards (or picture cards for your lower kids) and take turns choosing a card and reading the word aloud. Then, if the word has a short vowel sound in the middle, the person with the short vowel ladder gets to move his/her marker up one rung. If the word has a long vowel sound, the person with the long vowel ladder gets to move his/her marker up a rung. The partner who makes it to the top first is the winner! You could also have the students write the word on the ladder rungs or on a separate piece of paper if you want your students to have the writing practice too. Click the link below the pictures to download, and let me know if you have any questions! If you are able to use this activity, feel free to leave me some feedback - thanks so much! :-)

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Free-Vowel-Ladder-Game Pin It

Instructional Focus - Sequencing

We do something called Instructional Focus each day at our school. I'm sure a lot of schools/districts do this, as my old district did this also. Anyway, I absolutely LOVE Instructional Focus, and I really think it's a super beneficial part of our school day. Each day, we start our day with IF. We are lucky enough at my school to have IF partners, as this is a school wide program. The specialists, classified staff, and other non-classroom teachers are pushed in to partner classrooms. The whole school is involved and engaged, and that sets a great precedence for learning. We love it because we get to focus on skills that are weaker, the specialists/partners love it because they get to see what we're working on in the classrooms (and some can carry it over and integrate it into other areas), and the kids love it because they get to work on engaging and relevant activities first thing in the morning. 

Each week we alternate between a math or a reading goal, and we set a Smart Goal for each week during PLC time (professional learning communities). Because we have partner teachers come in, my previous coworker and I started our current format for IF, and my current coworker and I are continuing to follow it. Basically, our push-in partner teachers are the library and PE teacher. So, my coworker and I split up the students based on flexible grouping (based on pre/post test data), and we have an "enrichment" and a "tutorial" group. The students may move between groups at any time due to data, anecdotal records, or informal observation. The library and PE teacher take the enrichment group and extend the lessons to meet the students' needs. My coworker and I take the tutorial group to go deeper and more intense with whatever skill/indicator we are working on. We provide all lesson plans/materials/explanations to our helper teachers for the enrichment group, and even though it is a lot of work, it is 100% completely worth it. Our helpers are amazing, and it gives us a chance to really focus and zone in on the kiddos that need extra help.

Anyway, our skill last week was sequencing. Last week I planned the tutorial group, and my coworker planned the enrichment group plans for IF. She focused on beginning, middle, and end flow maps and sequencing within stories. I focused on first what sequencing was, and then easing into sequencing within stories. First, in the tutorial group, we made an anchor chart that explained what sequencing was and when students would see it.

 Then, we started the week we just practicing sequencing in the context of technical writing (connecting to our snowman writing). We had the students write the steps for making toast, something even my ELL students could connect to, and then the students were able to make an example.

 Next, we took it a step further and started talking about sequencing in context of reading stories. I read the story Duck on a Bike, and we gave each student a card that had the story event already listed (the students drew a quick pic to match the event). When I read the story a 2nd time, the students listened carefully for their event, and the placed it in order up on the ledge. We then taped the events down in order.

On Wednesday, the Tutorial group got to read the story The Very Hungry Caterpillar and sequence the events on their own on sentence strips (I didn't have a chance to take pictures the rest of the week). Then, on Thursday, we read The Three Silly Girls Grubb, and the students filled out sequencing flow charts all together. And last, on Friday, we read short story called The Toss. I copied pictures of the story events, and the kiddos had to sequence the pictures and orally retell the story to their partner. Then, they 4 squared the events using time order words (literally take a piece of copy paper, fold it into fourths, and the students write 1 sentence per box using time order words, then they draw a picture). I wish I'd taken a pic of the 4 square, because they turned out pretty well! I was impressed with how well the students did with sequencing, and of course, we will continue to work on the skill in both shared reading and guided reading (and read aloud). Both the tutorial and the enrichment groups did well with this skill, and it was a very highly productive week for us! :-) Pin It

Magnifying Magic Sight Word Activity

Not only has it been a short week because of President's Day, but I was sick yesterday, so I had a sub. Then today, we actually had a K-3 sub day where we all had subs and we met for professional development (pretty amazing, huh??? - thanks so much to our awesome principal for giving us that gift) and implementation time. Anyway, I haven't even seen my darlings yet this week!! So crazy! However, today's professional development was so helpful, and we talked a lot about teaching vocabulary. My coworker and I will be explicitly teaching strategies for figuring out words and using vocabulary strategies as you read, and I'm super excited about it! More on that later! 

Last week sometime I mentioned a sight word activity using magnifying glasses. I actually got the idea for this activity from my old teaching partner who had heard of a similar activity using spelling words. I have used this activity for both spelling and sight words, and either way, the kiddos LOVE it! To play, students use a magnifying glass (either the little science ones that I'm sure your schools have, or anytime I can, I look for magnifying glasses in the $1 bins at Target - they sometimes have some super cute ones) to find the "secret word". They then write the word and use in a sentence/draw a quick pic. To make this activity, I just type the words in super small font - so simple! Feel free to download this 1st grade sight word magnifying magic activity below. I think I've got it to where you can just click the picture to download it - BIG thanks to Deb over at http://mrsreynoldsfirstgradeadventures.blogspot.com/ for helping me figure out how to link my images!!! :-)

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Snowman Technical Writing

I am pretty lucky in that my school district has so many resources for teachers. For writing, they actually have mini-lessons that you can use/refer to/modify if you want. How cool is that??!! Anyway, one of the lessons I love using each year is Snowman Technical Writing. To start, we talk about what technical writing is, when we would see/use it, and we then make an anchor chart (which I forgot to take a picture of). I collect examples of technical writing, and the students spend some time making observations and discussing what they notice. We talk about how technical writing can include time order words. Then, we read the book, The Biggest, Best Snowman by Margery Cuyler. We made connections and discussed if we'd ever built a snowman before. Then, we talked about the steps that the girl took to build a snowman. Students orally sequenced the steps to each other. Next, students wrote their steps on white pieces of paper that I'd cut up. After revising/editing their writing, students then went over their writing in marker and created their snowmen! They turned out super cute and fitting for winter (it's too bad the sweet snowmen pictures didn't bring a relaxing snow day with them, ha)! Enjoy!

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Rainbow Tracing Sight Words

Spring break is still 3 and a half weeks away, but I am all planned and prepped through that time. I am currently working on my plans for the rest of March and April, and because we have a short week after spring break (amen to the district head people who decided a couple years ago to give us a PD day after spring break - easing us back into it makes a world of difference), we are not doing a shared reading story. We're instead going to use that time that particular week for some sight word testing and sight word activities.


One of the activities I created for that week was Rainbow Tracing Sight Words. Because we're going to be doing some testing, I needed to come up with some slightly more independent activities, and I won't be able to do as many of my cooperative learning activities and group games that I normally mix in (i.e. find someone who, snowball mix n' match, quiz quiz trade, go fish, shaving cream, etc...).

To do this activity, students will read the sight words that are in the top boxes. They will then find the words in the text boxes below and rainbow trace them in the color shown. This is such a simple activity, but my students LOVE anything that has to do with crayons, markers, tracing/coloring, etc... I may even extend the activity and have the students then write the words out or write sentences using the given sight words (just on the back of their paper or in their writing to learn binders). The possibilities are endless, and this activity could easily be converted for spelling too! Here is an example of what it will look like when finished:

To download a pdf of this activity, just click the link!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Rainbow-Tracing-Sight-Words

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Making Tracks

Were anyone else's kiddos sugared up from the V-Day parties yesterday??? Class parties in the middle of the week should be outlawed. ;-) Anyway, I hope everyone had a great V-Day. The hubby was so sweet and actually made dinner for me last night (a very welcome present I assure you). He even set the dining room table and put out our wedding china. Steak, green beans, baked potato, and homemade cheese garlic bread for dinner and a yellow cake from a box for dessert. It was the cutest thing!

Anyway, one of the bright points of today was shared reading. I love teaching children how to make tracks and show their thinking as they read. We've been doing lots of modeling throughout the school year with making tracks, and we'd done a couple introductory lessons; however, we hadn't quite gotten as far as having the kids try writing their thoughts out yet. Today, as we were reading our shared reading story, At Home Around the World, the students got to share some of their thoughts and tracks (this is a nonfiction informational text about different kinds of homes around the world).

As we started to read the story, the kiddos had so many tracks that they were sharing aloud, that I decided to let them try writing them out. We'd made our anchor chart in a previous lesson and I had it up front for students to reference. I was curious how my students would do with writing out their tracks, and I was pretty impressed for their first time! The students loved this activity, and even though this was their first time recording their tracks, there was definitely significant pre-teaching involved in the week before through mini-lessons, creating an anchor chart, making connections, and heavy modeling. Here is our anchor chart. I found myself wishing I'd taken a picture of the one I'd made with my class last year, but alas, I didn't, and I couldn't remember exactly what I'd included, but this seemed to suffice.

While the students were reading, they then made tracks on post-it notes (do you love that I just happened to have house shaped post-is that went perfectly with the story???). Then, instead of having the kids stick their tracks in their books, we put them all up on chart paper so we could read over them together when we were done. I had the students put the page number of the page that "inspired" them, write their track, and put their initials - as you can see, most of them did that, but there were  few that "modified" the directions, haha. ;-)

The students were so enthusiastic about sharing their thoughts, and it was super cute to read aloud their tracks. Like I said, I was pretty impressed at the quality of the majority of the tracks, especially as this was their first time independently doing this for the year! As you can see from the writing, I've got quite the range of students in my class.... ;-)

Some of the tracks above: "I learned that some people's houses are made of snow." "This reminds me of my home." "I saw a wide house." "I didn't know that people can stay warm in an igloo."

"I didn't know that houses have wheels on them." "I know that houses go underground." "I didn't know that people can live in igloos.

"I made a tipi in school." "I wonder if they're cold."

As is the case every year, this was a great lesson to help the students "dig deeper"and really think about the text they were reading. I love that all of my students, including my ELL kids were able to share their thoughts through words and pictures and be proactive in their reading!

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