Plant Overload!

We are wrapping up our unit on plants this week and have had so much fun carrying our theme throughout all subject areas!

We wrote plant part cinquain poems to complete our "Poemas Es'plant'aculares" bulletin board for spring! 

I printed out several strips of paper each relaying one of the five main parts of a plant and placed them in a bin. Each student had to close his/her eyes and select one for their poem topic so we had a variety of all!

Here is one of their creations:

I got the cinquain writing paper from Cara Carroll here.

We also reviewed long e patterns this week through completing a hunt for "seed" words and "leaf" words. (I noticed after snapping this photo that my little one here left "seed" out of the dictation after the word "peach" which was a key link to the sort below!)

After writing the words it also led to a great discussion about how some do not follow the rules!

Grab yourself a copy of this activity with/without the dictation portion here.

We also continued our practice with finding area by creating and measuring plants! The students had to find the area of their flower, stem, and leaves!

Grab a copy of the measurement labeling sheet in English or Spanish here.

We continued by reading about those crazy "Meat Eating Plants" and then organized strips of sentences in order in groups to complete an organized retell/paragraph of this non-fiction text.

And...we also spent the week doing some fun exploration activities such as labeling the parts of flower...

Each group added the names to strips of paper and used push pins (post a safety discussion ;)) to place them where they belonged!

Finally we investigated how water moves through a stem. Day 1 we made our predictions as to what would occur, and Day 2 we followed up!

This stem investigation activity page among others we completed throughout our plant unit this month that are not pictured here are included in my "A Little Dirt Never Hurt" pack pictured below if you are looking for more activities!

It has been quite the "Plant"tastic past few weeks!

On a final note, my plant pack above, as well as all other items in my TpT store will be on sale tomorrow and Wednesday in honor of Teacher Appreciation week. If you have been waiting to purchase something- now is the time to do it folks ;)! Receive 28% total when you enter code: TAD13! 

Click on the link below or on my plant pack above to take you to my store! I'm looking forward to doing some serious shopping tomorrow too!

Open House, Animal Teeth, and other Random Things!

Linking up with Doodle Bugs for "Five for Friday Saturday"! I have a good excuse for being late though- we had Open House last night until 8pm...and if you all can imagine how it feels to be at school until 8pm...you can imagine my bed was the only place calling my name when I arrived home! 

So here goes...5 randoms from my busy week!

1. Alphabet Countdown - We started our annual "Alphabet Countdown" as a school on Tuesday. "A" was for "Show your Appreciation" to you teacher!

I love the "From one princess to another..." card. Too cute! (We are on "E" Monday!)

2.) We have been working on main idea/details all week. One of my students bought me the most adorable book at the book fair last week called "What if You had Animal Teeth?" which I thought would be perfect for practicing this concept.

Each kiddo created their own little "mouth/teeth" organizer to retell the important parts of the text!

3.) "Super Gallon Man" arrived to teach us all about equivalent units for capacity!

4.) We wrote acrostic poems for addition adjective practice!

(And to answer your question, no it is not a crack in his tooth, it is shining!)

You can grab a copy of the acrostic poem template here.

5.) And we set up our poems in our chairs and cleaned our room on Friday to prep for Open House that night!

I must say...they were the most well-behaved students I have ever had!

I even "hung out" for the evening at my guided reading chair to man the "class books" area ;)!

Feel free to check out other "Five for Fridays or Saturdays" and link up your own from the week!

May Currently!

Linking up with Farley @ Oh' Boy 4th Grade. 

Looking forward to seein' what you all have been up to as well!

Instagramin' it Up!

Yes, by now most of you have probably seen the posts floating around about teacher bloggers taking over Instagram! I just could not resist joining in the fun! I am such a visual person and have always used Instagram as a way to share my personal photos with friends and family...so why not share the juicy classroom ones with my blog friends and fam, right?

Plus, each Tuesday we will all have the chance to link up our photos with "What the Teacher Wants" and Apples and ABC's for #teachertalktuesday! (See image below...and click on it to learn more as well as find other bloggers joinin in the festivities!)

I would love for you all to follow me and I look forward to followin' you all to check our your fab images as well! A picture is worth a thousand words, right? You can follow me by searching for username "secondgradesuperkids" on your Instagram or feel free to click on this lil' icon:

 

I added one photo as a teaser of a little retell activity we did this week...more to come on Tuesday!)

Announcing...my new position and a new product!

Well for those who have not already heard about it on my facebook page I have accepted a new position as the "Dual Instructional Coach" at my current building! I know you are all probably wondering what this entails (as am I, as it is a new position ;)), but so far I know that I will be working with our dual language and bilingual staff to mentor, model, co-teach, provide feedback and professional development, help new staff members get accustomed to the dual life, etc. I will be working with K-5 classroom teachers along with any involved support staff as well. I am quite excited, as I know this next year there is going be such a huge learning curve for me as well as will provide me with so many opportunities to grow as a teacher and professional! I still intend to share ideas with all of you as my journey continues and will be looking to you all more than ever for new ideas as well! Thank you for your endless support!

That being said, I have a new product!

My students use these posters during whole class lessons, independent retells, oral retells in centers, you name it. They are quite the useful resource for them!

To celebrate my new position with you all (particularly because networking with my blog family has made me the stronger teacher I am today!), I am giving away this product away for free to the first 5 who comment sharing how you would use these posters or even better, who share one of your favorite "story summary" activities you do with your class! (I need to build my K-5 idea bank ;)!) Don't forget to include your email in the comment so that I can send them to you!

Writers' Workshop Posters/Anchors

Thought I'd share some of our most useful writing anchor charts with you all tonight gracing the walls of our classroom, as well as a new pack I just got up on TpT which includes the posters I use to guide my students through the writing process!

So first off, here is the chart I have hanging on my cabinets (must utilize all space!) which my students use to highlight their current step in the Writers' Workshop process. We have been working as a class to select ideas for our non-fiction writing unit...so as you can see they are all currently working in this step!

This is a anchor chart we have located in our writing area (next to the step posters) which corresponds with each one. My students use this poster as a resource and reminder of what is expected of them at each point in the process. We completed it together at the beginning of the year in both English and Spanish. (The English was in pink...which unfortunately is fading! It may need a facelift.)

This anchor helps the students to remember the key parts of an organized piece of writing. (Yes, it is the ole' familiar hamburger...but it works!)

These anchors share with students some of the "extras" they can add during the publishing stage. For instance, an "about the author", "dedication", "story summary", or "book critiques" may be options for them. Below on the second anchor, we have a list of questions students need to think about in selecting a topic. 

They are:

1. What idea has a lot of importance to me?

2. On what idea can I elaborate more?

3. What idea is going to be the most interesting for my readers?

We use this anchor when sharing our pieces. It includes key phrases students can use in discussing peers' work. There are key phrases to use for "works in progress" as well as "published work".

This punctuation poster is one students utilize a lot during the editing stage. It also serves as a great reminder for them that there is more than one type of sentence they can use in their writing! (PS. This one is modeled after an adorable one I found at First Grade Glitter and Giggles.)

Finally, the kiddos use this one as a tool for adding transition words into their pieces to better organize their writing.

I must say that there are so many more anchors we use that go up and down throughout the year! (Don't we all wish we had more space?) But these are definitely our staples! What are some anchors that are writing "staples" in your classroom?!

If you would like to grab a copy of our Writers' Workshop process posters for your own classroom, feel free to click on the spread below. The pack includes all posters in English, Spanish, or both languages to meet the needs of a variety of classroom settings!

Green Kids!

We just concluded our unit "It's Good to be Green" in which we explored goods, transportation, natural resources, and how we can work together to "be green" and conserve them!

As one of the concluding activities to the unit we spend a week reading a variety of texts related to how to take care of our environment, recycling, saving energy, saving water etc. After reading a text on each of these earth friendly topics my students filled out a reflection page sharing something that they can/plan to do to be "green". 

Then we put them all together with a fancy "green" kid cutout and voila:

Here are some examples up close:

The reflection pages say: 

"Things I can recycle"

"I can save water by..."

I can save energy by..."

"I can take care of my environment by..."

You could have the kids draw a face as I have done, or even glue a photo of each child on the head as well. I have done this is years past too!

The instructions for this activity along with the header and reflection pages are all part of my "It's Good to be Green" unit along with many other activity pages and suggestions to go along with not only caring for our environment, but also, the relationship between our natural resources, goods, and transportation.

Check it out by clicking on the image. AND....in the spirit of "Earth Day" coming up in a week the unit will be on sale for 20% off now until Sunday so that you can snag a copy for the special "green" occasion!