New Product Giveaway

If you teach two-step word problems, enter to win this must-have product.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This product contains 45 two-step word problems -- that's one for each day of the quarter. Also included is a recording sheet and answer key to make your life even easier. Go ahead, enter to win. If you purchase this product and end up winning the giveaway, I'll send you a TpT gift certificate for DOUBLE the amount of the product. 

If you want this product NOW, download the preview for a week of FREE word problems! 

Check out my other goodies while you're here! 

Exploring Shapes

To introduce shapes I read aloud The Greedy Triangle (it's a must read for all grades) by Marilyn Burns. In a nutshell, this book is about a dissatisfied triangle that morphs into different shapes. 

While reading the story aloud, I had my students predict which shape he would change into next (each time he changes, he adds one more side and angle) -- they made these predictions on their individual dry erase boards by drawing the shape and writing its name.

This book mentions several times how the triangle is 'dissatisfied' with his life, so I made sure to review the meaning of the prefix -dis when this word popped up. 

After the story we practiced retelling it and created these visuals to help us remember all the important changes the triangle went through:

I then told students this would become part of their homework because they would need to retell the story to an adult. I stapled this sheet to the front of each visual so parents would know the expectation for the homework assignment. 

Click here to download the parent letter.

This is what I have planned for tomorrow (they're going to love it). 

 

We'll also become shape detectives and walk through the school looking for different examples of each shape. It should be another fun day. 

Irregular Verbs

If you teach irregular verbs, you must download this FREE activity using QR codes. My students absolutely LOVED it -- in fact, several of them came up to me and told me that I was the best teacher in the whole entire world. So thank you Literacy Spark for making my students' day (and mine too)! 

President's Day

Today we had fun learning about the presidents -- especially Abraham Lincoln. Here's the craftivity we made to conclude our learning. 

I provided the templates for students to trace, but they were responsible for assembling Ab by looking at my example. Once Ab was assembled, they had to write about one of Ab's character traits on each star.  

Skip Counting

We've been working on skip counting by 10s with 3-digit numbers. To my surprise, my students are doing great.  I'm pretty sure the reason why is because it's taken us a long time to reach this point. We've been using a new pacing guide this year and I'm seeing amazing results because of it. If you're interested, click here to download a free sample. 

Here's a fun game we played to practice skip counting by 10s: 

I made about ten different sets of numbers like these and gave one set to each pair of students. When I gave the set to each group I made sure the numbers were mixed up. Their job was to unscramble the set of numbers and tell me what the pattern was. (I had a little chit-chat with the yellow group after I took the picture. Did you notice a few of their numbers are in the wrong spot?)

Once they got the hang of that, I made it a bit more difficult. 

 I had one student remove a number and their partner had to figure out which number was missing. At first, they left a space where the number was removed, but then they pushed the cards together so you couldn't see where the missing number was (this was actually their idea). 

One more thing -- my students have difficulty skip counting from within one hundred to the next (392, 402, 412) so I made sure that each set of cards had an example of this transition.

Here's a FREE worksheet for your students to practice skip counting:


I hope you've enjoyed these goodies!

Comparing and Contrasting Stories

Need a cute anchor chart for comparing and contrasting stories?  Use this one! 


Before I jumped into comparing and contrasting stories, I  spent some time making sure my students knew what it means to compare and contrast. We wrote the definitions in our ELA notebooks and then practiced the skill by comparing and contrasting ourselves with a classmate. Here are some pictures:

Definitions of compare and contrast in our interactive ELA notebook.

Comparing and contrasting ourselves with a partner.  This was an easy and fun way for my students to practice the skill.  I'm hoping these partners can add a few more examples to their Venn Diagram tomorrow!


Then we read Red Riding Hood (my students actually voted for that one over five other choices -- very surprising since my class is boy heavy) and completed this activity. Notice how the main points on the anchor chart match the activity?  That didn't happen by accident! 

Next week, we'll read Lon Po Po (which is the Chinese version of Little Red Riding Hood) and do the same thing. Then I'll have my students compare and contrast the two versions by highlighting the differences. 

I hope you found a few goodies to use in your classroom! 

Verbs, Adverbs and Flowers

We made these cute flowers while learning about adverbs! First I took a picture of each student and had them think of 5 verbs they enjoy doing. Each verb was then written on the yellow part of the flower's petal. Students then had to write one sentence using the verb and a matching adverb! Having students correctly use adverbs is tough for second graders, but for the most part, I think they did a great job. 

Here are some close-ups of the sentences.

     

Did you notice the check mark on on the flower? After they wrote one sentence, I made them bring it to me so I could check it to make sure they were writing their sentences correctly. This helped many of them to clear up confusions with using adverbs correctly.  I also made them underline the adverb and verb. 

Before we created the flower, I made sure my students had a good understanding of nouns, verbs and adjectives. We reviewed how adjectives describe nouns and then I introduced that adverbs describe verbs. Then we compared and contrasted adjectives and adverbs (they're similar because they both describe, but they're different be adjectives describe nouns and adverbs describe verbs).  I also pointed out that the word 'adverb' has the word 'verb' in it. 

 Here's a great worksheet that reviews noun, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Click on the picture to download it for FREE! 

I also made this anchor chart and posted it on the wall! 

Hope you can use some of these goodies in your own classroom! If so, please leave a comment below.