Team J's Second Grade Fun: August 2012

Bucket Filling

I love, love, love bucket filling! This is my first year doing it with my first graders and it has been fantastic. On Monday, we read two bucket filling books

We read this book first and discussed what it meant to have an invisible bucket.

Then, we read this book and discussed what it meant to be a bucket filler and a bucket dipper. As a class, we then made an anchor chart coming up with examples of both bucket filling and bucket dipping. We spent a lot of time talking about how we'd rather be bucket fillers than bucket dippers.

After reading the two books and coming up with our anchor chart, the kids had a chance to fill out two bucket filling slips. They were so excited. While I was walking around the classroom monitoring, I was so excited and so happy to see the nice, positive comments the kids were writing to each other. Since this was our first week doing bucket filling, I provided 5-10 minutes each day for the kids to write to two kids. We really focused on trying to write to someone new each day. Then, on Friday, we handed out each child's bucket filling slips and the kids got to read them and take them home.

Below you will see a picture of the bucket filling bulletin. I debated how to set-up the buckets and through some collaboration with other fantastic teacher at my school and my teacher candidate, settled on the picture below. There is a clothespin for each kid, but instead of them hooking it on the clothespin, they just drop it in the bag. It worked super well and I'm excited to see all of the kind things the kids come up with this week!

The whole bulletin.

A closer look

Math Stations - Intro Round

Math Workstations are one of my favorite activities and they are one of my classes favorites too. We started Math Stations 2 weeks ago and are completing a practice round. The practice round is mainly meant to practice getting math stations, working with a partner, and cleaning up math stations. The first day we came up with our anchor chart that stated the expectations during Math Stations.

Here are our expectations:

Use a Level 1 (whisper) voice
Share with your partner and take turns
Use rock, paper, scissors to make decisions
Talk about math stuff (patterns, numbers, adding, subtracting, shapes)

The chart is a little hard to see, but you still can get the idea.

For the first week or two of Math Stations, I put manipulatives and a math book in the bins. I don't start putting games in there yet because I mainly want them to focus on how to use the tools, how to work together, and the whole management piece of stations. I've done this for two years now and find it to be very successful. I have 12 stations going during Math Stations. Below you can see how I set it up for the first week or two.

Stations 1 and 6 - Snap cubes and a math book
Stations 2 and 7 - Buttons (to sort and count) and a math book
Stations 3 and 8 - Math racks and a book
Stations 4 and 9 - Attribute blocks and a book
Stations 5 and 10 - Dominoes and a book
Station 11 - Laptops (not started yet)
Station 12 - Smart Board (a basic counting activity game)

As I mentioned in a previous post, all of my station ideas and ways for setting stations up have come from Debbie Diller's Math Workstations book. She's fantastic. After this week, the kids should have stations down and we'll be able to start putting math games in from our Investigations unit.

Here's a picture of all of the Math Station bins.

ABC Station Task Cards

ABC Station is one of the first stations I introduce. This station has a lot of simple alphabet activities, which might be a little simple for first grade, but it's a great way to train kids on stations since the tasks are a little easier. Since this station isn't the meatiest, I only use it through November ish.

For the letter flipbook, kids can chose four letters or the teacher can choose four letters for the week. Under the flap, the kids need to draw a picture and write a word that begins with the certain letter.

I have some high frequency and short vowel, consonant blend, and consonant digraph flashcards for the kids to practice together.

Writing Station Task Cards

Here are my Writing Station Task Cards. Writing Station is one of the last stations I introduce. Since we are still working on learning about letters, lists, etc -I tend to introduce this station later in September.

For making lists, I have a variety of notepads different shapes, sizes, and designs for the kiddos to make lists on.

For card making, I provide construction paper and stationary if kids want to make their own cards. I also put in cheap card packs from the dollar bin that kids can write in.

Finished Classroom Product

So school has been in full swing for 2 weeks now and I'm just now getting my classroom pictures up. These pictures were taken before Meet the Teacher (kind of the calm before the storm). Needless to say the room doesn't look this organized still, but it gives you an idea of how it looked and how things were set up. Hope everyone is having a great start to their school year!

Handwriting Station Task Cards

Here are my next set of task cards. These task cards are for the Handwriting Station.

These wipe-off boards are my favorite. I take handwriting sheets, glue them to construction paper, and laminate them. Then, the kids can practice tracing and writing letters with a white board marker. These normally last a year or two before they need to be re-done.

I add the poem handwriting activity later in the year. I found these cute ABC poems - one for each letter- that the kids can copy and practice using their best handwriting.

More literacy station task cards to come!