I appreciate each and every one of you teachers and blog readers!!! Seriously where would we be without all of our teachers. So I am thrilled for the upcoming sale.
So go get your shopping on!! I know my cart is filling up.
Finally May has arrived and with it come so many good things!! Once again I am linking up with Farley for Currently.
Listen: I just found out the song to that sweet Jess Google Chrome commercial...the one with the dad and daughter at college...is Broken Chair by Chris and Thomas. It has become my current favorite song. I am loving the pandora station I created from it.
Loving: So I started Instagram!! I thought I would not enjoy it since I am not a fan of facebook, but I can handle this. Bonus it is making me take more pictures and think how I can visually present my classroom. Follow me @applesandpapers
Thinking: Okay so May means my favorite event of the year. Seriously it is my favorite day better than a birthday or Christmas. It is marks my first camping trip of the year with some of my favorite people ever. Bonus this year one of my best friends...I have known her since we were 5...is getting married. So much fun will be had on top of enjoying the weather!
Wanting: I have yet to take a full day off this year. I have a few coming up with my upcoming events and can't wait for a mini break.
Needing: My days seem to be planned to the minute lately without any time to enjoy the amazing weather.
Bucket List: Nothing crazy but you should get points if you started singing Kid Rock's "All Summer Long" while reading this.
I have a confession. I may be on the younger side but I am so behind with technology. I guess that I why I have been playing catch-up. In the last two weeks I have joined ebay, purchased the lastest Ipod nano (for running purposes) and got my first Iphone.
My favorite new thing...well I guess it's apps in tech talk...is Instagram.
I just started this account...like in the last hour kind of just started. Come follow me at @applesandpapers
Heather has created a packet that addresses many second grade Language and Conventions of English Common Core State Standards but in fun activities. We have been working on plurals and adjectives these last few weeks.
Dominos to practice plurals and possessive nouns. This was a hit with my students.
The bags have parts of sentences where students add a what and who to the cards. The cards have a when, how and a where. This activity has helped students put together longer sentences.
This upcoming week will be playing an adverb game and sort Heather has so students understand what adverbs can describe.
Okay I know I am kinda cramming two posts into one but I didn't want to miss out on some Monday fun.
Skittles Version
Red- Favorite Ice Cream Flavor
Has to be Chocolate Moose Tracks. Can't get more chocolatey than that, right?
Orange- Favorite Memory from College
Football games. The before, during and after. The best were the Michigan State vs. Michigan games.
Yellow- Favorite Sports Team
Detroit Tigers! I am a fan for life!
Green- Favorite Fast Food Place
I don't do fast food. We aren't friends, but if I had to pick some place it would be Jimmy Johns or Quiznos.
Purple- Wild Card(Tell anything about yourself)
In May and June I have a 10K and two triathlons all because I can't say no to a challenge or to any of my friends doing them.
This one is my favorite one M-22 Challenge- no swimming as you kayak instead.
Side Note:
It is probably just the time of year, but the amount of tattling and students forgetting how to get along and why that it is important.
Earlier in the year we studied the White House and one of the things they wanted to see was more of the White House. Enter Kid President (aka Robby Novak).
When I saw the recent video where Robby got to meet President Obama, I knew my students would enjoy it. Bonus it shares a great message: kids and adults need to work together to make the world a better place. One of those ways is for everyone to be nice to each other.
We talked about who Robby is and why he is Kid President. Totally check out his website here if you haven't. He is a nine year old third grader which my students can easily relate to. Then I showed my favorite video of his. Pep Talk. I love, love, love this video.
After we generated ideas of what we can do to make our classroom and school be a better place where kids and adults work together. Now all I have to do is reference Kid President and it helps remind some of the students about their actions.
My second graders are so excited for math now. Why you might ask? It is simple they get to do super cool multiplication. We started this week and they are feeling oh so excited and smart. They rattle off facts to each other and to me when they can find the time. What is even better to see is the few students who were nervous and thought multiplication was going to be scary are understanding how it works. YEAH!!!
From my teacher perspective, I have found multiplication to be a great shake up to our math and we have been doing more activities and less paper pencil activities to help with our skills.
Lego Towers
Students built a tower out of legos and labelled the array for the legos they used. They challenged themselves to see how many lego parts they had on their tower.
Students hard at work being builders and mathematicians.
Race to Fill
In pairs, students played a dice and array game. They rolled the dice to create a multiplication fact. Then they filled in the array for the fact on the board. The winner could be chosen by who had the most arrays or who filled in the most squares on the grid. Students loved this game!
Here is a grid to play your own Race to Fill games. Click the picture or here.
This upcoming week we are going to be heavily into learning and memorizing the facts. I am so excited to be using Jen's Tasty Facts for this!
One skill that has been particularly hard this year for many has been finding missing addends and subtrahends. It feels like we have been reviewing it over and over again.
We have done the activities where use a balance and cubes to figure out the missing number.
We have used hundred charts as a game to pick any number then your partner does and figure out how to get between the two numbers.
I finally put together a packet of some of the other activities we have been doing in math centers to help with this skill.
The packet includes 6 activities. Each activity comes in an addition version and subtraction version. Within both of the addition and subtraction versions are versions working with numbers up to 20 or numbers up to 100.
