FREE Center Labels

Hi Everyone! I was curious to see if anyone needed some center labels for their classroom. I posted a few weeks ago how I needed to change my centers, which forced me to make some signs for a rotation board. If you are interested, you can follow this link HERE to get the center labels for FREE.

Folktales, Fairy Tales, Fables

After we finished with Author's Purpose a few weeks ago, I realized my kiddos needed practice with the differences between fiction and nonfiction. They kept getting the terms confused, and it was making our reading time pretty difficult. I spent an entire week working on fiction/nonfiction, and now we are working on specific forms of fiction. 

I decided to make a little book with my kids to help them keep these three genres together. I LOVED how it turned out, and it is nice to have everything in one place! So here is what the week looked like:

Monday I introduced fables, and we read The Tortoise and the Hare. I called them to the carpet, and we talked about all the features we would find in a fable. After I read the story, the kids took a short quiz over the book, and filled out this page:

Tuesday, we talked about features of a fairy tale (magic, royalty, "once upon a time," good/bad characters, etc.), and we read Jack and the Beanstalk. (I actually found a really great website that read the book online.) We had a lot of discussion, and then the kids filled out this page:

Wednesday we talked about folktales, and we read Little Red Riding Hood. We read a few different versions of the story and then the kids filled out this page to sequence the story:

Thursday I gave them a cover page for their book, and they began to put it together:

Front:

Inside...left side.

Inside...right side.

Back:

Friday, I passed out the pieces that you see on the bottom of each page shown above. They had to write down the features of a fairy tale, folktale, and fable and glue them under the correct book title. I used this part for a quiz grade. 

Their books turned out SO CUTE, and I was really pleased:) If you would like to use this book in your classroom, you can download it FREE HERE.

Author's Purpose

Sorry I have been a little M.I.A. lately! I miss my blogging world, and all my blogging friends! I guess you could say I have been a little bit of a rut lately in the creativity department.  Changing grade levels was more of a challenge than I ever dreamed, but I'm finally getting my groove back:) This week we have been working Author's Purpose! Since I've been swimming in my "rut," I've taken a lot of my ideas from Amy Lemons at Step into Second Grade. Seriously...could this girl be any more creative??!! I'm so grateful for her blog this year while I'm on this new journey into second grade. She just has so many great ideas and units that I'm soaking up as a new second grade teacher. So here is a little look into what's been going on:

We started the week with writing to entertain. I read Where the Wild Things Are, and the kids wrote on this CUTE paper why they thought the story was entertaining.

You can get this activity for free at Amy's blog HERE!

In the same file you find on her blog, Amy uses the book I Wanna Iguana to introduce writing to persuade. There is a great test and activity you can use with that book. I, however, do not have that book, but I do have I Wanna New Room. SO I just adapted.

This is a great book to use because the little boy is actually writing letters to his parents trying to persuade them to get him a new room. It's also pretty hilarious and my kids laughed all the way through. When we finished with this, I gave my students a quiz I created for comprehension:

Then they did Amy's activity where they try to persuade their parents to get/give them something. Here is a picture of her example. You can get this on the link above to her blog.

I kept telling them over and over again they had to tell their parents WHY they thought they deserved what they wanted. They came up with some really great and creative ideas! 

Finally, we wrote to inform. I began by reading them an informational book on spiders. It was a great thing to do because spiders are a high interest level for kiddos for some reason. I think you could have heard a pin drop while I was reading:) We talked about spiders for a bit, and all the information we learned from the book. I had them fill out a short paper to write down their thoughts, and then they made these spiders with their information:

This is the example I showed them to get them started. 

As they finished up their projects, I slowly added them to our door:

I just need to add their writing to inform spiders at the bottom, and we are all set! 

On Monday, I'm going to review what we learned this week by asking them to look at a character picture and write a story to entertain, persuade, or inform. Here is the example we will do together:

We will decide if we want to write an entertaining story about a firefighter, an informational piece, or persuade someone why firefighters are the best/persuade mom and dad to be a firefighter when they grow up. (I hope that makes sense!)

Everything I created this week for Author's Purpose, you can get HERE for FREE!

I hope everyone has had a fabulous fall so far! It's crazy how time is flying:) I hope everyone has a great weekend! 

Fiction and Nonfiction Poster Freebie

Hey everyone! Sooooo my kiddos are REALLY struggling with fiction and nonfiction! For some reason this surprised me a little bit, so I whipped up these posters the other night to hang in my room. I'm thinking a fiction/nonfiction mini-unit will happen very soon:) You can get these posters for FREE if you just follow this link. Let me know if you download it, and how you plan to use it:)

I have been pretty overwhelmed this week with TRAININGS! I was out on Wednesday for a district training, and we are also in trainings all day tomorrow. I'm ready to have a long stretch of time in my classroom with my kiddos:) I hope you are all having a fantastic week, and I will be back to blog with you this weekend! 

Behavior Chart Freebie!

Hello! I just wanted to post a freebie for you!  I created these to use for my behavior chart, but then I decided to have a pirate theme in my classroom this year. SOOO I'm not using this anymore, but thought someone else might be able to. This is for one of those charts where the kids clip up or down depending on their behavior! One thing I didn't like about my chart I used last year was that red, yellow, and orange were technically "good" colors. This really confused my parents!! Ha! So I made this one where the positive colors are green, blue, pink, and purple. The negative colors are yellow, orange, and red. Print these out, glue to cardstock/construction paper and attach all the pages together!

If you want to download this, just follow the link HERE. Let me know if you use it! 

Story Map

I was piddling around today, and I decided I wanted to add a new worksheet to my Reading Workshop response station. I thought about it for a while, and then I decided I would create a story map for kids who have finished an entire chapter book!  I pulled up one story map I created a while back, and just made it cleaner while adding clipart.

 I put a map for the background to go with "story map." However, when I showed it to my colleague to preview she asked me, "Why do you have a flag in the background?" Hahah....SO it might come across looking like a flag:) You can just decide for yourself if you would like to use one!

I posted the two that I made...one being simpler than the other! You can download them both FREE here. Have a great night!!

Book Buddy Freebie!

You can check out my post on how I use book buddies in my room here:

Book Buddies

I wasn't completely happy with the book buddy packet I had, so I decided to a make new one! I liked the idea of the kids filling out a packet as they read the book, but I wasn't fond of the questions. I wanted more from them, you know? So here is the page they fill out before they read the book:

I also realized they might need more than just five meetings for one book, so I just made a page where they could fill in which meeting it was. I put a place at the bottom for the kids to write their thoughts, or place their sticky notes they made while reading. 

This page will be the last one in their packet, and they will fill it out once the book is completely finished!

You can get these worksheets for FREE here

graphics by scrappindoodles.com
fonts by kevinandamanda.com

Graph of the Week

  We are on spring break, and I'm SO GLAD to have this time off with my two boys! It's been great hanging out with them at home the past 2 days, and we have had a lot of fun playing inside/outside/upstairs/downstairs...I'm just loving every second! Until last night. Sitting in the chair late at night, I felt a huge pull in my lower back. Since then I have barely been able to move! I have tried to rest on the couch, but having two active boys makes it VERY hard...especially when one is teething and just wants to be held:)

  However, the nicest part of being laid up on the couch is all the blog hopping I get to do! I've loved reading tons of teacher blogs this morning, and I feel so inspired! So while my boys are napping, I have decided to post about how I do my Graph of the Week with my kiddos.

  Graphs are in my curriculum, but I usually don't have to spend too long on them because we work with them every single day! I can't explain it, but the kids LOVE graph of the week. Every year they get so excited when I announce it's time for our graph. Here what our schedule looks like:

Monday: We choose the title for our graph. The graph always begins with "Favorite..." Some ideas to use are ice cream, fruit, author, character, vegetable, cookie, movie, sport, subject, etc. At the beginning of the year, I give them the topic for our graph every week. As the year goes on, I let the kids have more input (this can turn into some pretty interesting graphs!).  We also gather information this day. If the title is "Our Favorite Fruit Graph," they tell me as many fruits as they can think of while I write them down on chart paper.
  Once we have all the fruits listed, they lay their heads down on their desk and close their eyes to vote for the fruits they like. (I have them close their eyes because I find they will vote for any fruit their friends will vote for, and our graph will not be accurate). With their eyes closed, I call out the list of fruits, and they raise their hand if they like the fruit. At this point, it doesn't have to be their favorite fruit, they just have to like it, and they can vote as many times as they like. Once I've gone through all the fruits, they are allowed to open their eyes, and we cross off the fruits that have the lowest votes. We will cross off information until we are left with about 5 or 6 fruits for the graph. I know this is long and sounds confusing, but it is really easy!!

Tuesday: This is our "quick day" for the graph because for some reason it always turns out to be a pretty heavy Language Arts day, and time is short. On Tuesday, they put their heads down and close their eyes again to vote for their favorite fruit from the list we created Monday. They may only vote ONCE, and whatever they choose is what they will be drawing on the graph.
  In the picture above, you can see where the final list is written in red, and I put tally marks next to the names of fruit. I try to keep Monday and Tuesday's information on the same chart. It doesn't look very nice, but it's a great reference for the kids to see how we got from point A to point B.

Wednesday: We create the graph! I draw the outline, and the kids draw a picture representing their vote. Even though oranges did not receive any votes, I believe it's still important to include it on the graph! The kids always copy the completed graph onto our Graph of the Week worksheet, or in their math notebook if I have accidentally run out of copies (this happens more than I would like!! haha)!

Thursday: The kids write down two questions about the graph. They turn these questions in, and sometimes I use them to create the quiz for Friday! Here is the paper we use for writing the questions, and copying the graph:

**Get a copy of this paper (free) here

Friday: The kids take a quiz on the graph. I create it very quickly based on questions from the kids, or questions I think are appropriate. As the year continues, we will expand our graph and quickly poll other classrooms on their favorite fruits. When we do that, I will ask questions that compare the graphs on our quiz. Sometimes I will ask them to create a bar graph to match the pictograph's information, and other times  I will create questions where each piece of fruit represents more than one student. I basically just add more things in that will be asked of them on their benchmarks and state testing.

I know this post is long, but Graph of the Week never takes up more than 10 minutes at the beginning of the math lesson, and the kids truly love it!

Lucky Writing Paper

You can find this writing paper here. Enjoy! 

graphics@scrappindoodles.com

Rounding Poem Freebie

Every year, I use this rounding poem with my kids. We spend one week saying it over, and over, and over, and OVER again:) All the practice pays off, though, and they usually remember the poem the entire school year! It also makes rounding SO easy because it works on rounding to tens, hundreds, thousands, etc. Here is the poster I give my kids to keep in their math journals:

Get the rounding poster HERE for free!

graphics for poster are from scrappindoodles.com
font from kevinandamanda.com