Dear Mrs. LaRue Week Recap

Happy Weekend! I've become such a weekend blogger, but that's okay. :)  I love being about to process through what we did this week. It allows me to think about what worked, what didn't, and what to improve upon when teaching a standard/skill later in year. 

Our story from our reading series this week was Dear Mrs. LaRue.  You can check out the book on Amazon {here} or click on the image below.

My students always love this story and most have read it before, so I thought it would be great to work on the following standards. 

On Monday, we used a small passage in our book for a mini lesson on referring to details in the text when we answer text dependent questions.  No photos of that, so sorry friends. :) 

On Tuesday, during my mini lessons between rotations, we worked with the following passage I wrote about my parent's dog Daisy.  The fun thing is the passage is about 98% true! :) 

I used the "I Do, We Do, You Do," model with this passage during my mini lesson.  We did the first two questions during the first mini mini lesson and the last one and the character traits during the second one.  My kiddos were super engaged because the topic was fun and I told them I would show Daisy examples of their hard work. :) 

We had another snow day this week so most of my small group lessons focused on reading some of Ike's letters in a close reading format and answering text dependent questions.  Again, since the story was so engaging, they didn't mind reading the letters multiple times to find evidence to support their answers.  Since we couldn't exactly mark up our text book while we"talking back the text", I used these arrow shaped post its to have my kiddos mark text based evidence for the questions we answered.  

I don't always have each group did the exact same lesson but this week I did because the skill was something we could all work on.  

For my highest group, I acted more as a facilitator.  I shared the questions, had them discuss answers with their shoulder partner within the group and then had them record their answers on their sheet.  I walked around the table listening and clarifying any misconceptions.  

For my on level groups, the process was the similar. I allowed them to discuss their answers with a shoulder partner, we shared as a group, and then I provided sentence stems for them, if needed, when they recorded their responses. 

For my lower groups, they still discussed answers with their shoulder partner, but the construction of the response was much more guided and we constructed the response together.  

Here is an example of some completed questions.

Since we read only portions of Dear Mrs. LaRue together, we read the rest of the story yesterday.  Our focus was more on RL 4.3, describing a character in detail.  

In my morning class, I had my students fill out the following organizer to help them write their character descriptions about Ike.

Although my kiddos still did a great job, it was harder for them to use the above organizer to write a detailed description of Ike.  In the afternoon, we used this organizer instead.  It worked much better!

Their final products made me such a PROUD teacher. :) 

Most were continued onto the back as well. :) Again, I could brag on my kiddos all day long. It's amazing what they can do when you hold the bar high as far as what you expect from your kiddos and provide the proper supports to get them there. 

After everyone was finished, we did a little walk around the room and read each other's descriptions and shared new things we learned about Ike.  They really enjoyed it!

Eventually, I plan on turning some of the things we did into a little activity pack but my grading pile/school to do list calls.  :)  I had to bring in big Bertha to take some stuff home this weekend. 

I was also observed this week and had a few IEP meetings, so a lot of my time and effort was spent getting everything ready this week.  Naturally, some things just took a back seat, it's time to get caught up! I'm thinking a lunch date with my grading is happening at Panera today. 

Have a great weekend, friends!  I'm hoping to tackle my to do list so I can watch my FAVORITE Olympic movie later. :) 

TOE PICK! :)

Reading Response Home Reading Log {Freebie}

Happy weekend, friends! I hope everyone is having a great day! :) Today is a busy one for me, oh my goodness in about a month we're moving and school starts again.  Oh my word.  Talk about craziness, but it's a good kind of crazy!  We were able to "sneak" into our house last night because all the doors are now locked, and saw our hardwoods, cabinets, and crown molding were installed.  Yay! Plus they painted earlier in the week, so our house is really coming along.  :) 

Earlier in the week, I shared my resources for my reading response journals on Amber's blog. 

This freebie has been downloaded from TpT almost 1,500 times! Wowzers. :) This easy to implement reading resource is one of my favorite resources to use in the classroom and I'm so HAPPY that many of you found it useful too.  

 Today I wanted to share with you another reading response freebie with you, my home reading log.  I used this baby for four years when I taught third grade, and LOVED it. 

 

Interested? Download it {here}. 

Thanks to Scrappin' Doodles, Hello Literacy, and Fabulous in First for the graphics and fonts.  Love them! 

Each week I required my kiddos read 100 minutes a week.  Our reading log went home on Mondays and was due the following Monday.  Ideally, I encouraged my kiddos to read 20 minutes a night, five days a week, but with sports, dance, and all the other things kiddos were involved in, I often saw logs with 50 minutes during the week and then 50 minutes over the weekend.  

Third grade, in my state, is the first year our kiddos take high stakes assessments.  What most of them really struggled with at the beginning of the year in third grade was creating decent responses to test questions, as so many wanted to write simple response made up of just a few words.  My reading response journals and reading response home reading logs, in addition to regular classroom practice and instruction, really helped my third graders get comfortable with creating quality reading responses.  

I stressed what quality responses looked like at open house with the parents, and put a completed reading log in my parent resource packet.  This really helped the families in my room really understand what was expected of their child.  

I monitored my kiddo's reading logs pretty carefully.  If they were reading the same book over and over again, I would let them take books from our classroom library home, and when the public library's bookmobile came to our school, really encouraged them to pick out books for their reading log.  I also used their ratings of books to help me decide what books to order from our book orders. :)

My fourth grade team does not do reading logs. I know there has been a lot of talk recently that reading logs can do more harm than good and cultivate readers who just read until a timer goes off and then stops, instead of readers who do have a passion for reading.  That was my team's rationale for no longer requiring them, which I totally understand too! 

I don't quite know what the plan is for reading practice at home this year, as I feel reading practice is so important, at home and at school.  My plan currently is to  implement reading challenges such as adapting this book challenge that I used from The Teacher Wife with my second graders, to fit my fourth grader's needs or doing monthly reading challenges, no idea what this would look like yet. Or just simply do the reading chain that I've been doing with my summer school kiddos, and once the chain reaches a certain length, rewarding the class with a prize. My summer kiddos are loving it.  Obviously, my mind is still brewing up ideas. :) 

If you don't require a nightly reading log, do you do any incentives to get kiddos still doing some reading at home? If so, please share! :)  I'd love to hear what you're doing. :)

Cause and Effect and Nouns!

Today was a really fun day in the classroom! We survived our second to last Dare lesson.  I'll spare you the details but the general idea of the lesson was about second graders, alcohol and a tree house.  Talk about the fun ole time.  

One of my favorite things about blogging is the sharing of ideas and resources.  Today we used Courtney's cause and effect organizer for a fun cause and effect activity.  I had the students buddy read the story and then I gave them a slip with two events of the story on it.  They had to determine which one was the cause which one was the effect. 

A proud teacher moment occurred when I saw several students visit our anchor chart and review our cause and effect words to figure out which event was the cause and which was the effect.  For example, this student used the word so to determine the cause and effect.  "The goose with one foot returned with a friend SO the girl is excited and happy."  

Here they all are hanging up in the hallway! My kids really enjoyed this activity, thanks for sharing your organizer, Courtney!

 In language, we've been studying nouns.  We don't follow Treasure's grammar anymore with the adoption of our new writing program.  We use Being a Writer, which I really enjoy.  It's been a challenge fitting in our writing lesson and teaching necessary language skills but we're making it work!  I had my kiddos do a noun hunt with our weekly story, A Goose's Story, and then we added the new nouns they found to our anchor chart. 

My kids really enjoyed this activity and were so engaged, carefully glancing through each page to find nouns.We then glued everybody's notecards on another anchor chart to display in our classroom.

Tomorrow is my second of eight biweekly all day meetings on the adoption of the Common Core.  I am loving the experience but creating good sub plans is always a difficult task!


Hope your Wednesday's were wonderful!

Treasures Second Grade Unit 3 Review Activity Pack

Hello friends! I've been working super hard on a review unit for my kiddos to work on this week.  We will be doing benchmark assessing over the skills we learned during our third unit this week and I wanted to create a review for my kids that be engaging and purposeful.  Goodbye completing extra workbook pages and hello games and cooperative learning opprotunities!

There are lots of great activities included in this review unit.  There are review activities for summarizing, cause and effect, and using illustrations.  Additionally there is review for reading a calendar, poems with alliteration and similes, a synonym match up center, an antonym scoot, word sorts for long u and long e, double and trip consonant blends and an "I have, Who has?" for Unit Three's high frequency words.  Even if you don't use the Treasures reading program, the activities are generic enough that they would be used in any classroom to review these skills!

Click {here} to purchase the unit on Teachers Pay Teachers.  I will give away one copy of this activity pack to the person who leaves the first comment on this post, please remember this activity pack would be used in any second grade classroom, not just ones utilizing the Treasures reading program.  When commenting, please include your email, so that I can email the file to you!

Hope you all are enjoying your Sunday!  Weekends go by too fast!

Yesterday I uploaded a couple of freebies from this unit.  Click {here} to go to yesterday's post to download the long vowel sorts that are a part of my Treasures Unit 3 Review Pack.

Click Clack Moo Leveled Readers Freebie

My district uses the Treasures reading program and it can be a love/hate relationship at times.  However, this week, I am loving it as the comprehension skill and the story actually align very well.  Tonight I'm sharing with you the set of graphic organizers I designed to use in my small groups this week.  Not only does this freebie help my students practice our weekly comprehension skill, it also helps me structure and organize my small groups more effectively.  Double win!

Click here to download your FREE copy.

I also found out the hard way this year when blog surfing, apparently the leveled readers that accompany each of the stories in Treasures can vary.  So if you plan on using this with your class, please read over the story titles, located in the top right hand corner of each page, carefully!

If you download, please let me a comment below, just so I can get an idea of how many teacher friends might be able to benefit from a resource like this. :)

We did several FUN science experiments as part of our winter unit today and my kiddos are so jazzed to make their own snowflakes covered in snow paint on Friday.  I can't wait to share the recap of the fun we've been having with you soon! 

Click Clack Moo Cause and Effect Flip Book

I've been working, working, working on my winter unit tonight but I wanted to take a break to share a cause and effect freebie that my class used today.  My district uses the Treasures reading series and this week we are reading and loving Click, Clack, Moo and for once Treasures got it right, Click, Clack, Moo is a wonderful story to use for cause and effect.   I love using flip books for cause and effect.  To use just copy the book 1-2 sided, have your students fold their paper in half hotdog style, lift up, and cut along the black lines.  Click on the picture of the flip book to download to your own FREE copy!

Happy Tuesday! :)  We're slowly but surely getting back into our routine!