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...