Five for Funday

I tried to make the Five for Friday post on Friday, I swear! Unfortunately things got in the way and I didn't get home on Friday until almost 10! Then I tried for Saturday (had all the pictures uploaded for the post), but didn't get to writing either because I was out all day. And it's Sunday now, but I can finally sit down and write about week! Good because I'm spending some quality time away from schoolwork, but bad because it's making it hard to get back into blogging!

Ok, enough of my blabbing, time to Five for Sunday (or Funday!)

Last week's phonics focus was on "ar". Besides blending some "ar" words, we also did an "ar" word sort.

Last week's comprehension skill was on inference. Since it was the week of April Fools, I thought riddles would nicely tie into the week. What better skill to practice than inferring when it comes to solving riddles?

We ended the week by writing our own riddles about ourselves and having our classmates guess (I mean infer) using the sentence frames to see if they were correct!

Can you guess this one?

Math is all about place value right now. This week was focused on comparing two-digit numbers. I've always used the "Allie the alligator" method with my students in the past. However, during my district's summer institute this year, I learned a different little trick involving drawing dots and connecting them to create the greater than and less than symbols. It made so much more sense so I tried it out and it definitely worked!

We also started our opinion writing unit this week. I base my lessons off of Lucy Calkins Units of Study for writing. The opinion unit starts off with writing about our collections. The kids brought in collections from home, judged them fairly, and chose a winner. Then they had to write about the winner and state reasons for it winning. By the end of the week, we were self-editing our writing to see if we had 5 star+ writing. It's been so much fun watching all my students become more independent and taking more ownership of their writing! I also really love this writing rubric. I was a freebie on TpT! The pack also comes with a rubric for informative and narrative writing, which I will definitely use next year!

With all our time filled with some other activities, I was able to slip a short and simple art lesson in. The students were given a simple template and asked to turn it into a creature hatching from an Easter egg. There were some sample outlines that I displayed on the projector (a minion was one of them so plenty of students drew that), but some students went above and beyond and created there own!

Finally, I will end with some not so nice and nice pictures of food.

Found this lovely friend inside my mussell. I think it's a tiny crab?

A yummy chocolate tart!

The weekend is almost over, but I hope you all had a good one! Happy Easter and have a wonderful Spring Break for those of you who are lucky to have it already. I still have to wait another week. Hopefully I can make it through! :)

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 The Educents Marketplace is exactly what I want it to be -- the best place for parents and educators to find the resources I NEED at an affordable price.    

April Currently & April Fools

Happy April!

A new month has begun, which means it's time for a...Currently!

I think most of my Currently is pretty self-explanatory, but I do want to share my April Fools' prank! I found this awesome word search from Sweet Rhyme & Pure Reason. A word search with words that you will never be able to find! Classic.

PLC meetings were today. My grade-level's PLC meeting is 15 minutes after our morning recess, so I figured I would have just enough downtime to pull this prank. I told that kiddos that in the spirit of a new month, I had a new word search for them to complete while we wait for the substitute to arrive so I can go to my meeting. I told them that this word search was going to be more challenging that the ones they get to do during Daily Five time, but to work with partners and try their best. Watching the kids try to find a word was pretty hilarious, especially the commentary that came with it. 

"This is really hard!"

"I wish I had glasses so I can see the words!"

"This must be a trick!"

"I found the word fun! But fun isn't on the list!"

You would have to be there, but it was pretty funny to watch. Once the substitute arrived, I asked the class if anyone was able to find a word. No one raised their hand, of course. So right before I left, I was like "well everyone....APRIL FOOLS!!!" The classroom just erupted after that! The kids were especially excited when I told them to take the word search home to use as a trick at home. And then I left for my PLC meeting. :)

If you had school today, did you play any pranks at school today? What were they? Leave a comment and share! I would love to hear your April Fools story! :)

March Recap [PICTURE HEAVY POST]

Hi friends! I'mmmmm back! Did you miss me? :D

I also didn't make Five for Friday like I had said because date night got moved to Friday so didn't get home until late. Spent the rest of the night preparing for the job fair on Saturday (more on that in a future post) so just didn't have time for it. 

It is now Sunday and almost the end of the month. Since I haven't written a post this month I thought it would make sense to just do a recap of what's happened in my classroom this month. I will warn you though, this post is going to long and VERY picture heavy so I hope you're prepared!

Read Across America

The theme for this year's Read Across America was "Oh, the Places You Will Go". 

We also did some free reading time with Dr. Seuss books along with some sequencing practice with the cat in the hat!

Friendly Visit

My friend from Canada came for her annual visit to my classroom. She comes every year to take pictures of my students with our published book. (Check out her photography skills on her website!)

St. Patrick's Day Activities

We read The Luckiest Leprechaun: A Tail-Wagging Tale of Friendship and talked about who we thought was worth more than gold to us.

Writing & Craft from The Teacher Wife!

We also did a directed drawing of a leprechaun from First Grade Blue Skies! Last year, I used educreations on my iPad to record myself teaching this to my class so that students who had been pulled out for resource during that time could learn the lesson when they returned. A year later, I just pull the video up, play it, and sit back and relax as I watch my new class create their leprechaun drawings. I need to do this more often!! 

We also read The Night Before St. Patrick's Day, which talks about setting out leprechaun traps. So I guess we needed to make some too!

From Second Grade Sweets

The kids couldn't wait to see if they caught any leprechauns. Unfortunately, their traps couldn't outsmart the leprechauns, who left quite a mess in the classroom.

But at least they left some pots of gold beads behind for each student to find!

Contractions
One of my favorite anchor charts that I've made so far (thank you pinterest for the idea)! We also made a flip book to help us practice our contractions.

Bombaloo
Our school is participating in Project Cornerstone and the character trait for March is self-discipline. We read Sometimes I'm Bombaloo which is a great book that talks about anger and dealing with it. In the story, a girl turns into Bombaloo when she gets angry after her brother knocks her castle down. As Bombaloo, she destroys everything around her. You'll have to read the book to find out how she turns herself back into her. :)

After reading the book, we talked about what we would we do when we turn into Bombaloo and how we can turn ourselves back to our normal self.  

I actually really love how we have read the book because now kids will come up to me during to tell me that someone has turned into a Bombaloo (displaying bad sportsmanship). Sometimes I will have students in the classroom who will get upset and I remind them that they need to turn Bombaloo back into themselves. It really works!

Math
Math has been all about place value this month. We talked about two-digit numbers, how they are composed of tens and ones. We then spent a week practicing different ways to find 1 more, 1 less, 10 more, and 10 less of a two-digit number. Using a math tool to figure it out was simple enough for the kids, but doing it mentally took a lot more practice.

Freebie Activity from K. Almaraz

Freebie Worksheet from Grella Monsters

Spring Birds
A directed drawing lesson on drawing a bird using oil pastels and then watercolors for coloring everything in. I was pleasantly surprised at the results! Thanks to Deep Space Sparkle for the idea!

And that concludes the March recap! Congrats to all who made it through the whole post! I will be back for the currently in April. See you then! :)

I'm Still Here!

Hi friends!

It's been so long since my last post (was that two months ago???), but I just wanted to drop by and say that I haven't disappeared! I'm still here! :D

These last two months have been crazy hectic with just so much stuff happening at work and personally that I haven't been able to gather up the energy to be doing my regular Five for Fridays postings! Springing forward last weekend most definitely didn't help either. Waking up and driving to work in the dark is totally not my forte! (I like to wake up to natural sunlight.)

I hope to get back into the blogging groove once report cards are over (due by the end of this week!). Thanks for not leaving me behind. Hope to be back in the blogging world soon! :)