Five for Friday - January 24

I'm linking up over with Doodle Bug for Five for Friday.  You can link up with her here.  For a short week, it sure has felt like a long one. I know there was a full moon last week, but I swear the effects were long lasting lol.  Here's what we've been up to this week....

 

We started our All About Penguins Project this week.  We began by learning penguin vocabulary from a teacher-created PowerPoint. 

 
Then, we started our research using National Geographic Kids.  They had a great article on penguins in the January/February issue.  We've been reading through it, discussing, and adding facts to our circle map.
*Disclaimer - I tried to get this picture to go the correct way about 10 times and this is what I got...Sorry

 
In reading this week, we began working on Theme.  I read multiple books such as - Ferdinand the Bull, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, and the Little Red Hen (more books to come next week) to introduce and discuss theme.  They've done a great job with it and have even picked out the theme in most books on their own without too much prompting, which isn't easy.  I always find theme to be a hard one for them to understand.  We're also working on a circle map and adding themes to it as we go.  We've also started written response about theme now that they are familiar with it.

*This picture wouldn't go the right way either :-(.
 

New Website - I heard about Weebly from a co-worker and knew it was something that I would get to eventually.  At my old school, we each had our own website through Schoolwires, which had teacher and class info, but also links to practice various skills.  I missed this terribly and I missed having links readily available during stations.  So, this weekend since it was a long one I finally sat down and got one up and running.  It's very basic and still needs work, but now I have some reading and math links all ready to go for the kiddos.
 
 

TPT Success - I opened my TPT store this summer and have been gradually working at growing it.  Now, I'm not very far and this is nowhere near the success some people have had, but I was super excited to reach 100 items sold today.  I still have more goals ahead of me, but for someone who just started out I was excited to see that people are buying, using, and finding my products helpful.
 
 
 

This is a personal weekly item, but I finally upgraded my phone to the 5S.  I've had the iPhone 4 for 2 and a half years and let me tell you it was time.  My poor little phone just couldn't keep up like it used to. So now I have a new phone that is quick and takes beautiful pictures!  Love it!
 
 
 
 
That's it for my week! Can't wait to see what everyone else has been up to. Be sure to link up!

Double Digit Addition and Subtraction

My kiddos had struggled a lot with double digit addition and subtraction. Some had learned the straight algorithm, but had no idea what they were doing or why they were doing it, and some were trying to draw 44 circles and 23 circles and then count them all up one by one.  So...I decided we needed some strategies.  We started with straightforward double digit addition and subtraction - no borrowing, no regrouping.  We worked on 3 strategies.  One each day as to not overwhelm students. After exposing them to each strategy and letting them practice each one, they got to choose the strategy that worked best for them.  We worked on place value, empty number line, and break apart.  After we went over these, they really started to get the hang of it and problems weren't taking 8 hours to solve like the drawing 44 and 23 circles :-).

Here are two anchor charts we made to document our strategies.


 
 
 
 
This week we'll be tackling regrouping.  I plan to go back to these strategies and also have some fun games that I bought from Amy Lemon's Double Digit Addition and Subtraction Games pack added in for practice.
 
Hope everyone enjoys the day off!
 

Five for Friday

I'm linking up with Doodlebug for Five for Friday.  Join the linky party here...


 
This week we spent a lot of time researching and learning about Martin Luther King Jr.  We watched a Brainpop video and "Martin's Big Words" on Bookflix.  We read two articles and read a mini biography about him.  To keep track of our facts we used a circle map. Then, we planned our writing and wrote All About Martin.
 
 
 


 

We also learned about Author's Purpose this week.  We made a little flip book for the different reasons authors write.  We made a characteristics chart for specific things to look for with each purpose.  We also used the lessons from Readworks.org.  They have great lessons for Author's Purpose and also provide text for the students to read at their level. 







 

For the final activity with Author's Purpose, we did Author's Purpose Scoot with a packet from Fishy Rob that can be found here.  The kids had so much fun moving around and practicing their new skills with this activity.

 

In Math this week, we worked on comparing numbers. We started by making an anchor chart with important vocabulary and some examples. Then, we practiced whole group with some practice problems on white boards.  We also played games from Sunny Days unit, which can be found here. The kids had fun playing Compare and Capture.  We also played Roll and Compare a little game I created (which will be a freebie here later this weekend).
 

 








 

And, my last excitement for the week - new books! We're starting to teach theme next week so I ordered some new books from Amazon to add to my teaching collection!
 
 
Hope everyone has a great start to the 3 day weekend!

Text Features Anchor Chart

Over the first half of the year in 2nd grade, we have spent a lot of time working with informational text.  While some of the text features have been easy for the kids to identify and use, some have been more difficult.  So one morning we worked together to make a Text Features Anchor chart using clippings from National Geographic for Kids, Time for Kids, and the regular Time Magazine.  What I love about this is the kids have been referring to it while on their text features hunt at literacy stations.  I love anchor charts for this very reason and it's even better when the kids remember to refer to it on their own!


Some Geometry Ideas - 2.G.2

Well I had this great post about everything we did the first week back and then the internet went down, it didn't save, and I lost it.  I was so frustrated the other day that I'm not posting some of those neat activities until now.  I will do better with  my resolution about blogging, but it'll take a bit to get back into things after the craziness of trying to get back into school mode.

Last week we worked on the Geometry standard - 2.G.2 - where students have to partition/divide rectangles into smaller shapes.

The kids loved the introductory lesson.  I got a packet from The Common Core Creations on TPT called 2.G.2 Activity Pack.   I highly recommend her packet.  On the first day of teaching this standard we did the first lesson called "Cover Up." Students had a large size rectangle and square and had to cover it up.  Now, the fun part of this and the part all the kids love and will remember is we didn't use tiles, we used Cheeze-It's like the packet suggested.  Anytime you give the kids food to work with engagement always seems to occur.  Here are a few pictures of this activity...




 
 
Then, we made a new Geometry vocab book. In this book, we wrote the definitions and drew pictures/examples for the words - row, column, equal, partition, and divide.





Then, later in the week, we did another great activity.  I got this activity from K-5 Teaching Resources (a great website with lots of math lesson ideas and games).  There were 25 different rectangles/squares and I labeled each with a different letter for tracking purposes.  Then, I made my own recording sheet where students could record their results.  Students then picked a rectangle and filled it with tiles.  After filling it, they wrote down the number of rows, columns, and how many tiles total filled their shape.  They had a great time with this activity!







 
 
Hope everyone is having a great week so far! Only 2 more days until a long weekend!