The Surgery Went Well... No Complications!!

Contraction surgery that is... Oh what fun!! This will probably be the kids' most favorite memory of the school year! They just loved dressing up as doctors and performing surgery on their contraction "patients"! Many thanks to Mrs. Pann over at Buzzing About Second Grade for the wonderful idea. You can get your own Contraction Surgery Kit at her Teacher's Notebook store here. Check out the cute pics:

Here's a quick video where the kids explain how it all worked (warning: turn your volume up for the kids and down for me! LOL) :

What I loved about this craftivity was that I could instantly tell which kids knew how to form contractions and which were having trouble knowing which letters to leave out. I pulled a small group within the first ten minutes of the activity and we had a mini-lesson right then and there. So easy and quick! The kids had so much fun and loved the fact that they got to keep their doctor's gear! This will definitely go in my files to do year after year!

Pronouns, Poetry, and a Pizza Party!!!

First things first (food, of course!), let's start with the Pizza Party... In our class, we earn marbles in our marble jar:

We get marbles for different things-- earning good scores in the cafeteria and special areas, having a code-violation-free day, and getting compliments from other adults in the building. It took us about 2 months to earn 100 marbles and today we celebrated!! I surprised the kids with a pizza party and lunch in the classroom. Of course for the 30 minutes of lunch, I was the "best teacher EVER!"

And then the kids surprised me with some really great learning! In language, we're studying pronouns and we read this fun book today:

We did our worksheet and moved onto writing, where we're learning about poetry. Today, I taught them how to write a 5 W's poem (who, what, where, when, and why). After a couple of examples of me modeling how to write one, they had the BRILLIANT idea of writing a 5 W's poem about the pronoun book we read. Okay, I said... Here's what they came up with...

Stanley

Met an alien named Zik

On the planet Krimular

When he landed in his spaceship.

He wanted to explore outerspace.

Spur of the moment genius!! They're such little smarties! Of course, tomorrow we'll go back and highlight the pronouns we used... Always, always the teacher...

Don't forget to enter the giveaway for my new Leap Day Pack!

I will pick two winners on Sunday!

Have a great rest of the week!

Leap Day Pack GIVEAWAY!!

In honor of Leap Day, I just added a new pack to my Teacher's Notebook store. Take a look here. Here's a preview of what you'll get:

I would love to make the "leap" from 50 followers to 75 (or more :) by next week. Soooooo..... If you'll help me, I'll giveaway 2 of my Leap Day packs for free!! All you have to do is post about my giveaway on your blog. Then, leave me a comment below with a link to your posting. I would also LOVE it if you grabbed my button and encouraged your bloggy friends to become followers as well!

Thanks for the support!!!

I'll randomly choose 2 numbers on Sunday, February 26th. Please leave me your email address so I can send you your pack.

Valentine's Day Pronoun Game GIVEAWAY

As we get ready to celebrate Valentine's Day next week and begin our unit on pronouns, I wanted to make a quick and fun game for my students to practice between all of the festivities. I created this simple matching game with a Valentine's Day theme. It's for sale in my Teacher's Notebook store (you can click to see more images), but I'm going to give 2 copies of it away for free!

Here's all you have to do:

1. Leave me a comment letting me know you follow this blog or have just become a follower.
   


2. Leave me a comment (and the URL) letting me know you posted about my giveaway on your blog.

That's it! You'll receive one entry for each comment you leave from the choices above. I will choose by random number generator this Friday afternoon!

Groundhogs, Writing Celebrations, and a Bathtub...

Our Groundhog's Day projects turned out soooo cute!! After watching the video of Punxsatawney Phil making his prediction, we glued on our groundhogs on the sunny side of the picture and drew our shadows. Here's how they turned out:

We also enjoyed Groundhog cupcakes after lunch. I got the idea from Reynold's. While mine definitely weren't picture-perfect, they did turn out to be adorable little groundhogs:

And on Friday, we had our 4th (and best to date) writing celebration of the year. We invited the fourth and fifth grade classes to celebrate with us this time. They came and listened to our stories that we spent almost two months learning how to revise. We've been working on writing lead sentences, showing not telling our feelings, adding lots of details, adding dialogue in appropriate places, and including interesting and thoughtful endings. The older students were so sweet and genuine with their positive comments and helpful feedback. It was like having a whole room full of tutors! I was initially afraid my second graders would feel a little intimidated, but that was not the case at all. They absolutely loved it! They loved having an authentic audience, they loved having other "teachers" besides me, and they repeatedly told me it was their favorite writing celebration so far this year. What a hit!! Here's some pictures of my kiddos hard at work listening to their older peers giving them some helpful writing hints:

And as promised a couple of weeks ago, here's a picture of our new reading bathtub-- THE hottest new spot in our classroom:

What a wonderful week we've had! It has been busy and I nearly dropped from exhaustion yesterday. But it was all worth it! Now, on to Valentine's Day, President's Day, and Black History Month projects...

Groundhog's Day, Here We Come!

So, we started our Groundhog's activities today! So fun! We made pictures like these from Highlights Magazine (minus the groundhogs-- we're going to add the groundhogs on Thursday when we know which side to put him on):

At the top of the burrows, we added crushed Oreos to really look like dirt. Can't wait to post pics! They're so cute! We also made a graph of yes/no votes for whether we think Punxsutawney Phil will see his shadow or not. The outcome? 10 votes for yes, 8 votes for no. It was close, but I have some optomistic kiddos!! They know we need some more winter weather here in Tennessee-- after all, it's been 60 degrees so far this week... IN JANUARY!!! It's just not right...

Tomorrow we are going to read "Substitute Groundhog" by Pat Miller. Since we're working on revising our endings in Writer's Workshop, I'm going to stop reading right before the end of the story and the kids are going to write their own endings. I can't wait to see what they come up with. I'm sure it will be entertaining knowing my bunch! I'll post pics soon!

100 Wonderful Days!!

Last Tuesday was our 100th day of school and boy, did we have fun! The kids came in to balloons, cupcakes, and lots of fun 100th day games, crafts, and activities. We made the cutest "this is me now and this is me in 100 years" project (see pics below). The kids also LOVED having their very own $100 bill with their face on it (thanks for the idea, Mrs. Bainbridge!). We made glasses and crowns-- I think I lived up to their previous 1st grade expectations! LOL It was such a great day to celebrate 100 day of learning and them (and me) being 100 days smarter!

So much fun! Looking forward to our Groundhog's Day activities!!

Wow!! How time has flown by!

I can't believe my last post was in August! Half of the school year is gone already! I guess that's what happens when you're busy. So much has happened this year. I've witnessed kids come in reading at a level E (guided reading level) who just tested at level H only half-way through the year! Yay!! Our second grade team made a goal to have 95% of our students at or above second grade level in phonics before the December break. That's 136 out of 143 kids. We were able to meet and even exceed that goal through working together during our daily intervention time. So proud!!

Before the break, we read lots of gingerbread man stories and made text-to-text connections. On the last day, the kids decorated their own gingerbread people. So much fun! And I kick myself for not having my camera that day! There was icing everywhere! We made the cutest glass ball ornaments with "floating" snowmen inside. The kids said they looked like snowglobes. I've so got to get better at taking pictures. I wish I could hire a permanent photographer to follow us around on special days!

Over the break, I was able to finish the one project I've been waiting forever to work on. My reading bathtub! It's been a dream of mine since I've been a teacher. My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Hartsfield (if you're out there-- I love you, Mrs. Hartsfield!!), had a reading bathtub. It was filled with comfy pillows, and we took turns sitting in it to read books. Recently, my mom purchased a home that had one sitting unused in the garage. She was able to include it in the contract and so I now have a reading bathtub. I refiinished it over the break (painting the outside red to match my classroom decor of course!!). My husband waxed the inside to make it look new and shiny. I made cute pillows for it and we brought it to my classroom the day before school began. The kids were so excited!! The first words of the day-- "A BATHTUB IN THE CLASSROOM??? WITH PILLOWS???" I just love kids!!! They get so excited over the simplest things!! I'll post pictures soon! Again, I forgot my camera...