Tag Archives: second grade

Dot Day 2015

A  little while ago we celebrated a special day along with many thousands of other kids and teachers around the world: Dot Day. The idea is simple: read and enjoy the book The Dot with your class and then explore the story creatively–in any way you want.  Easy peasey, right?  Sign us up!!

Screenshot 2015-10-11 20.25.47So we read the story, and talked about what it meant to “make your mark.”  And since we’re Roadrunners, kiddos brought up the ideas of grit, growth mindset and making mistakes.  Who knew there was so much to learn in a story about a girl and a painting?  Ok, so I knew it was all in there. Hee hee.  I’m just super impressed that my students came up with it before I even told them.  Way to go, Rm. 202 friends!

After we were done reading and talking, I set them loose to work their magic.  With paint.  Or markers.  Or colored pencils, or crayons–whatever they wanted to use to show their creativity was fine by me.  And show us they did!

Check it out:

We weren’t done there, though.  Nope.  Had to do some writing about it, of course!  So kiddos were given a sheet to help them think through how they would explain their work.  Basically I wanted to give kiddos the support with sentence starters (if they needed it), as well as the structure of understanding what they could actually explain about the process (sometimes 2nd graders just want to tell you one sentence and be done).

Kiddos were instructed to complete a rough draft (which was made of four parts: When I read The Dot, it made me think of….; So I decided to make…; I used…; and I want to make my mark by…).  On the second day of work we had to have a conversation about what it meant to be “done,” because like I mentioned before, some kiddos thought just saying “I used paint” would be a thorough explanation of what they did.  I showed them my sheet–all filled out–and we discussed the thinking I did in order to decide what to say, as well as how to use the organizer correctly.  The lesson here was simple: if you are given 4 lines to write your ideas upon, then you should write 4 lines of words.  Well, it seemed simple at least, but was not so obvious as you might think.  Once they finally had a rough draft, they were then to work by themselves or with their elbow partner to revise and edit their work before creating their final draft on special “Dot” paper.  This was perfectly tied into the writing cycle we were working through and was a nice picture of how writing doesn’t just happen during one set time of day.

It took us a week to all finish our writing, and then we were ready to share.  I was happy to see how well it all fit in our hallway, using the windows and the one vertical part of the wall.  Perfect space-wise, and perfect because we (and everyone who walks through our hallway) get to be inspired by our dots every day!

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Tiny Notebooks: Where Do Writers Get Their Ideas? (Part 2)

Ok, so as I got to #3 on the list of places where writers get their ideas, I figured I should write the story in 2 parts.

Here’s the EQ and the list, for a reminder:

Let’s get back into it:

4.) Heart Maps: This strategy has to do with how writers can sketch pictures to give them ideas, as well as how thinking about what’s in your heart (things that are important to you!) can help give you ideas.  These hearts are added to kiddos’ “real” notebooks as they get them.  They can be added to and changed as kiddos change, but here they are for now.  Look at all of those ideas waiting to be written about!

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5. Books and Each Other: While this was not officially one I put on the list this time, it came up in our conversations and we couldn’t let it go.  Often you get ideas just from hearing what your friend is writing about!  We are learning how to have meaningful conversations with other writers.

6. Lists: This one is so easy!  I shared lists in my notebook that I have written of characters, ideas for settings (really it’s places I saw on signs while I drove to Nashville), smells I like, smells I hate, lists of lists, lists of ideas for things I can write about in the future.  The possibilities are ENDLESS here!

7. Senses: Sound: For the example of this one, I shared an entry I had written in my notebook one day while I was at the pool.  Back in 2005 before I had kids and could actually RELAX when I went there (LOL, love you Riley and Allie!), I used to read and write in my notebook.  One day I heard the sounds of two birds in a bush next to me and imagined their chirps and coos as a conversation.  When we tried this one, we were able to go outside and enjoy the beauty of the new and improved Robinson Naturescape as we listened for interesting sounds and described them with our words.

Our first time in the Robinson Naturescape for this year!

8. Senses: Sight: I had another one in my notebook that I entitled “Santa in St. Croix,” where I described a guy with who looked like I imagined Santa would look like if he was on vacation.  I wrote about his “bowl of jelly belly” and how he was wearing tiny red shorts and black flip-flops instead of a red suit and boots.  I also read an entry describing clouds on a sunny morning and shoes I was wearing.  We ventured outside again, hoping to find something beautiful and inspiring in our backyard woods.

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9. Fierce Wonderings:  This is perhaps the one that is most transferable to other areas of learning.  Once we get kids wondering (which is really pretty easy), and then recording their wonderings (which for us was a little trickier), we can start to DO something with those wonderings.  it could be starting a research project, helping a kiddo find just the right book based on their interests, getting kids to imagine and create possibilities based on the unknown, or even a genius hour project.  We have them in our notebooks and on our Wonder Wall.  We’re hoping to do great things with them, and continue to wonder about the world around us!

The best part of all of this thinking and writing is that it’s just the beginning!  I hope you’ll stay along for the continuing journey! 🙂

Tiny Notebooks: Where Do Writers Get Their Ideas? (Part 1)

I think that probably the most hated heard phrase from writers (kids and adults alike) is “I don’t have anything to write about!”

Yep, I have heard it countless times, and maybe I’ve even said it before.  But that was a long time ago.  It was at the very beginning of my writing journey when I thought that everything I wrote about had to be a big deal.  A monumental story that would blow everyone’s minds. Or that it had to be made up–a fabulous fiction story that would be a bestseller if I just finished it.

Then I actually learned about how a Writer’s Notebook works and how what real writers do is not try to collect the most amazing things ever, but that they learn to look at the world differently so that EVERYTHING is interesting.  They see the normal, ordinary things of life in a new way and begin to find things to write about in their everyday lives.

And so that is my goal as I interact and teach writers in Rm. 202–regardless of what grade they are in.  Writers are people who collect their ideas and thoughts for later, and often times mine those ideas for a diamond in the rough that the can polish into a shiny piece of writing to share with someone else.

Ok…in 2nd grade we talked about another essential question on which we will chew and return to over and over:

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I mean really, in many ways, this is the key to unlocking the writing mystery.  It’s the way that we get past the “I can’t” and see towards the “Maybe I can…”  So we’ve been working hard to learning about and then trying out many ways that writers get ideas for their writing.  And I’m super happy that many of my own entries have been the mentor texts we’ve been using for examples.

While there are TONS of answers to this question, I’ve narrowed it down (along with the help of some very smart teacher mentors like Ralph Fletcher who know way more than me) to a list of things that a) 2nd graders can do and b) can be used over and over.  Remember: these are strategies, not prompts.  I’m telling kiddos WHAT to say, but instead helping them think about HOW to say it or the STRUCTURE it could take.  The topic is whatever they wish.  Nice!

We’ve been working with this list (and again, please excuse the “ugliness” of the draft!):

Screen Shot 2015-09-20 at 8.51.09 PMI am not sure that I have pictures of everyone of these things, but I will try my best to show each of the ideas we’ve tried.  Here we go!

  1. Meaningful Objects: Writers get ideas from OBJECTS that are important to them, often which are also linked to a strong memory of a person, a place, an event, etc.

I shared this image with the class and then my thoughts about it:

Screen Shot 2015-09-20 at 8.57.23 PMEach kiddo then used their own meaningful objects (many of which we took pictures of so they could add them to their notebooks) to share a story!

Check out some of our writing:

2. Memories: The best part of memories is that anything that is from the past that you want to remember technically counts here!  A memory can be something from today, or something from years ago!  Recent or ancient, they are worth saving for the future.  This was one where I linked kiddos into the “What do you want to remember when you go off to college?” question.  It seemed to help them understand the importance of how they’d be using their notebooks to save things. 

3. Artifacts: Ok, so technically, meaningful objects, memories and artifacts are all related to each otehr, but I taught them as 3 separate ways to write because they can also be used individually of each other.  Often you’ll find that an artifact IS a meaningful object that reminds you of a memory.  Triple win!  And again, like with most of these ideas, there are multiple ways to interpret an “artifact:” a photo, a ticket stub, a card, a candy wrapper, a flower petal (yep, I have those in my notebook!), a hair bow (a 2nd grade friend put one of those in her tiny notebook!), ANYTHING that makes you think of something else. 🙂

Here are some examples of artifacts we’ve been saving:

This one was shared in a previous post, but Peyton wanted to save a photo of me so he’d remember me in college!
Ella Marie found some important photos at home and wrote about what they made her remember.
This one is a picture from a magazine that reminded a 2nd grade friend of a memory of cookies!
Another food memory sparked by a picture!
Birthday memories!
Jacob was inspired to write a creative post about his love for puppies when he saw a picture in a magazine!

To go right to part 2 of this story, click here. 🙂

Second Grade Math Warm-Ups: Week of 9-14 to 9-18, 2015

We are in the middle of a unit on place value in second grade.  The warm-ups this week took on a little bit of a different spin, as a couple of times kiddos were expected to finish up work from the previous day’s Math Workshop.  That then became how we started math groups later in the day (I hope that last sentence wasn’t confusing…).

Monday

On this day, we were working on modeling numbers in bundles of 100s, 10s and 1s, like we had done during our place value challenge the week before.

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Lesson 2 Problem Set:

Tuesday

Pretty exciting question, huh?  See the example of what this page looked like below the picture.

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Thursday

On Tuesday during math we had been focusing on representing a number in many ways, so I gave them a quick one to remind them of word form and expanded form.

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Friday

Another one….we also practiced the word numeral for number form, as well as focusing on making sure our numbers go the right way (as we still have some friends who forget. 🙂 ).

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What’s On the Agenda?

The beginning of the year brings with it many things: new faces, new clothes, new experiences, new books to read, and assessments.  Lots of assessments.  Luckily for me, I know many of my students really well already, since we were together last year, but even still I need to learn the “2nd grade version” of them.

One particular assessment that I have a love-hate relationship with is the F&P (that’s just what we call it because it’s from Fountas and Pinnell; it’s a reading assessment).  I love it because of the deep, rich information it gives me about my kiddos as readers and how it helps me tailor my instruction to just what they need.  I kind of hate it, though, because it takes FOREVER to administer.  It involves a student reading a book to you aloud and then answering the comprehension questions to demonstrate their understanding of the text (there are both fiction and non-fiction titles included).

Sounds easy, right?  Well it is relatively easy to administer, but when you add in the fact that there are 21 students in my class and sometimes you have to read 2 or 3 stories until you find the student’s instructional level, you can quickly add up to a lot of time necessary to finish the job.

So, that’s where the idea of the agenda comes in.  It’s my attempt at having my students working on meaningful, important learning activities independently so that I can spend time 1-on-1 with students to finish my assessments.  Win-win, right?

We did this kind of thing on a smaller scale last year a couple of times, which gave me the courage to try it again now that we are 2nd graders.  The difference this go-round was that the time frame was longer (two school days instead of a morning) and that the assignments were on a little bit bigger scale (last time it was mostly finish-up work).

Now, before I gave it to my students I ran it by one of my most important helpers–my son, Riley, who was a 2nd grader last year.  Even at 8, he’s really good at looking at things I’m considering and thinking about them in terms of what other students would say.  And he did have some thoughts.  He suggested that there was TOO MUCH on the page and that many kiddos (him included) would be overwhelmed by the number of things they had to do.  I appreciated this insight, and actually had a plan, then, for how to modify the list for those that might need more support.

Wednesday morning came and it was time to share my crazy-cool plan with my students.  I was SUPER excited with how enthusiastic they were about the whole thing.  They were blown away with how they could make so many important choices, with how they got to decide when they would do each thing (meaning we’d have all different subjects and projects happening at the same time!), and with how fun the opportunities sounded!

So here’s what the agenda looked like:

Students could choose to do them in any order and spend as much time as they needed to on each one, with the goal of being done by the end of the second day.  We had a conversation before we got started about different ways to tackle such a big list, as well as how we would have to work responsibly and respectfully so that everyone could complete the challenge.  At several points throughout the days we stopped for check-ins, to have students share insights they were having, ask questions about things they may have been confused about, or make suggestions for how to make the work more manageable.

Overall, I was SUPER impressed with how things went!  I would have to say that the way they were able to manage their time and materials was even beyond what I expected.  Before we started, we made a big deal about how the important part was that they were able to work independently, freeing me up to finish my reading interviews with everyone.  It was great to hear how they problem-solved together, sometimes asking multiple classmates until they found their answer.  I do have to mention on conversation I overhead that I thought was particularly funny (and helpful!).  Someone was asking what they were supposed to do on a certain assignment, and a friend’s matter-of-fact response was “Well did you read the directions yet?  That’s why she wrote all that on there for you–so you’d know what to do!”  Hee hee.  Yes, I giggled a little at her answer.  But she was right. 🙂  And yes, she did offer help when the kiddo came back because he had a question about those directions. 🙂  Many times I heard friends reminding each other not to bother me or even asking “How can I help you?” when they knew their friend needed something.  Nice!

Having done this once, and getting really positive reviews on it from my students, I will definitely be doing it more regularly this year.  Ideally, I’d have some version of this happening all the time, with me having time to pull small groups and do 1-on-1 teaching as often as I could to help meet individual needs.  I feel like there are structures in place already in our classroom that allow for that focused attention, but anytime I can add more student choice into the mix, I’d say that’s a good thing.

So as I go into it a second time, I’m considering these questions:

  1. Were there too many things on the list?  What students may have been overwhelmed by the sheer length of the list? How can I better modify the agenda to meet the needs of every student?
  2. Were the activities the “right” ones?  What else could we have done (with content or with product) to push thinking and challenge kids to dig deep with their learning?
  3. Is it necessary for students to complete everything on the list?  Would a “must-do” and “can-do” type list be more ideal?  Is there a way for students to be more in charge of what was on the list?  Could they be given a learning target or essential question to investigate and then plan the activity they’d do to address that focus?

Regardless of what we decide to do next time, I’m excited for how this first attempt went.  Kids were focused, they had fun, they got things done, they made decisions, they solved problems, and I got some assessments completed.  And I even had a couple of teachers visiting from another school who happened to pop in while we were doing this and they said it was working.  Gotta love outside eyes to help you make sure it’s not all in your head!  Way to go, Rm. 202 kiddos!!

Math Place Value Challenge

I mentioned on the math warm-ups post that we had been working on place value, and that mathematicians had a challenge to figure out how many sticks were in a big ‘ole pile.  They were given a small group (their partner plus another partnership) and two questions: How many sticks do you have? How can you count them in a way that will be easy to show someone else what you’re doing?

Each group was given a pile of popsicle sticks and they got busy!

A group collected bundles of ten in their box as they went along.

As I went around to each group, I asked how they had decided what to do, and how they were determining how many sticks they had.  Most were bundling in 10s (yay!) and I nudged them to make an even easier way to see how much is in a big pile.  Could they continue to bundle and make a bigger group?

In the end, most groups ended up with bundles of 100, some 10s and–if their pile had any–some leftover 1s.  They put their collections back in the tubs, and marked how many they had with a post-it note.

Then we worked for a bit on how to model the numbers we had made.

IMG_5304The next step was to figure out how many we had altogether.  Many suggested that we could put our bundles together, but weren’t (at first) sure how to do that.  We talked about how they had made their 100s bundles–with 10 10s–and then guessed that we might be able to make some more 100s from the loose 10s in everyone’s tubs.

Left with a massive pile of 100s, that eventually led us to thinking there must be a better way to show how much that pile had in it.  I asked if they thought we could bundle any bigger numbers and honestly most of them thought I was crazy!  I just began collecting 100s in my arms and counting: 100, 200, 300, 400….and they got the idea.  They going until they got to…10 100s!  That was a great conversation next about what number we had just made.  10 100?  We figured out that it was a 1000, and that when we said “10 100” that helped us know about how many bundles were inside, but that it wasn’t the right way to say the number.  We stretched a big ‘ole rubber band and made a 1000 bundle!!  We counted the whole thing and agreed that we had one-thousand, four-hundred twenty-six sticks!

IMG_5288But how in the world do you WRITE the number one-thousand, four-hundred, twenty-six?  We gave it a go.  Many of us remembered that when we went from 2-digits to 3-digits it was a 100s number, and since we had 4 groups of sticks, maybe that meant our number had 4-digits…

IMG_5287 Our model of this number–1,426–looked like this:

IMG_5306Many minds were blown as we figured out how many 100s and 10s were inside that big number.  We figured out that it was actually than just what the digit said, because of all of the groups inside of groups.  I loved how many kiddos kept saying, “Wow, this is fun!” and “Man, we’re learning so much today!”  Definitely lots of great mathematical thinking happening here!

UPDATE:  I got this email after the first posting of this story.  Love this stuff!  Thanks for sharing, Shannon. 🙂

Hi Jennifer!  
You had so many math posts on the blog this weekend, that I wanted to share a story with you.  We have a Curious George story CD in the car that we listen to a LOT and in one of the stories George gets 10 dozen doughnuts.  The other day when this story was on, Millie asked me if 10 dozen was 120!  I was so surprised!  I said that it was and asked her how she knew that.  She told me “5 2’s are 10, and then another 5 2’s makes 20 and 10 10’s is 100 so, 120”.  It took me more than a minute to follow the math just because it wasn’t how I was used to thinking of problems, but she was totally right and I saw this “new” math stuff in action :).  It was kinda cool!  She was doing multiplication and didn’t even know it.  Thanks for teaching her such great foundational skills that allow her to do these kinds of problems in her head!

Second Grade Math Warm-Ups: 8-24 to 9-4 (2 weeks worth!)

We’re in the swing of some things in 2nd grade.  Math warm-ups are one of those things–just I’m not yet in the swing of writing about them!  Here are last few warm-ups we’ve been working on:

Monday

Even though we worked on this last year, many kiddos had a hard time with the answer to this question.  We’ve since been doing many things (games, two-pen tests, conversations) to help us remember (or learn!) our doubles, near doubles and combos of 10.  They all form the basis for the bigger things we’ll do with numbers later on.

IMG_5294Tuesday

While I’m not entirely sure about the order of these next few warm-ups, the concept that is highlighted in them all is certain–the importance of place value.  Here was another that many had a hard time with.  Most of their answers were “I don’t know yet...”

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Wednesday

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Thursday

IMG_5297Tuesday, 9-1

This one was an easy connection to the essential question (EQ) I had asked earlier.  They had to think about place value to answer this one, knowing which numbers to add to each other.

IMG_5300Wednesday

Although not related to place value, this warm-up was related to a conversation we had had in math workshop the day before, and is definitely something all 2nd graders need to know how to do–tell time!  Often I will spiral older concepts into math warm-ups to keep them on the front of our minds!

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Thursday

This warm-up, although badly worded, gave kiddos a little peek into a task I would have them do later that day in math workshop.  The question was really about the most efficient way to count a big ‘ole stack of something, which they’d have to do with a pile of popsicle sticks in a group that afternoon. I was happy to see how many of them were already thinking about bundling into 10s and 20s (rather than counting them all by 1s).

IMG_5303Friday

The warm-up on Friday was actually the end of the lesson from Thursday, and mathematicians completed their thinking with their learning partner in their math journal, which is different from how they MWU normally works.  I love how we can adapt this structure to work for our needs!  Since many of us have been doing this for a whole year now, it was easy to make that little tweak and still have them know what to do.  In this warm-up, kiddos were asked to model the counting we had done together the day before.

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…yet

Last fall, when I was doing my final project for grad school, I came across the idea of “the power of yet,” which goes nicely with all of the work of growth mindset we’ve been introduced to by Carol Dweck.  We began using that word all the time, and I helped my friends learn to add it to the end of many sentences they spoke to me and to each other: “I can’t do this yet...”; “I don’t know yet, but what I think right now is…”; “I’m not sure yet, but I’m going to keep trying!”  At first it was just me, but slowly and surely, I started to hear kids saying it to each other when they’d hear their friends discouraged about something that was challenging them.

I knew it was something that I would incorporate again (and continue, really, since most of us remember it from our 1st grade together), but wasn’t quite sure how I’d bring it up again.  And then I found this book:

IMG_5072I was first intrigued by the use of the ellipsis, since I knew it was something I thought I kids would remember learning about last year.  Ok, and I have to stop and give a shoutout to JK right here for TOTALLY remembering what we talked about.  Before we started reading, we were discussing the title and cover and trying to figure out what we could learn about the story–as well as why the author would choose to use that particular punctuation mark like that.  Well, JK totally whipped out–all casual-like, “Well, that’s an ellipsis, and an ellipsis means that you’re waiting for something, and the mice are always waiting for Nick.  So …and Nick means there’s suspense and you’re trying to figure out what happens next.”  I was TOTALLY impressed, and TOTALLY proud.  And yes, other kids knew it, too.  YAY for first grade punctuation studies!!

Well, while the part about the ellipsis was exciting, it wasn’t all I had up my sleeve with this activity.

My team had copied these blank butterflies for me, with the idea of using tissue paper to decorate them and then make a goal for 2nd grade, and I found them to be a great place to apply this “yet” idea for us this year.  Instead of tissue paper, though, I decided to get out the watercolors.  (On a side note–can you believe we’ve never painted together before?  NEVER.  We got all the way through 1st grade paint-free.  And now we’re going to change that.  Big time.  So paint it was for our butterflies!).

Ok, back to the paint for a second: the thing I noticed when I put a paintbrush in some of my friends’ hands is that I saw work I’d NEVER seen before.  The creativity, the focus and the engagement was beautiful.  Don’t get me wrong–I’ve seen it in other ways, but this was eye-opening for me in many ways.

So after they painted their masterpieces, they were to think of something they don’t know how to do. Yet.  And then they wrote that as a sentence: “I don’t know how to __________yet.”  This was put on a label, and stuck to the front of their butterflies.  These are now flying high on our walls where we are 1) reminded of …yet by the title, 2) encouraged by how if we work hard we’ll be able to do those things, and 3) given something beautiful and colorful to look at.  Fly beautiful butterflies, fly!

And then today, I found a video, that I will incorporate to our yet conversation.  It’s a song and it’s catchy, so I’m sure we’ll be singing it for many days to come!

Weak side/Strong side

Much of the first days of school is spent learning routines and procedures for how to make the classroom run smoothly, and learning how to be a good learner is part of that.  In second grade, we use the idea of weak side/strong side to illustrate how kids can (and should) make good choices that benefit both themselves and their classmates.

As with many lessons, we began with a book.  We read Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon.

IMG_5074I explained the idea of weak side/strong side by talking about how everyone has two voices in their head.  You know, that one that encourages you to do your best, think happy thoughts, follow the rules–the shoulder angel.  There’s also that other one that whispers and tells you how great of an idea it is to pinch your sister or blow bubbles in your milk or slide down the banister on the stairs–the shoulder devil.

In order to make the concept a little more concrete, and move visual, we created a class chart (which I will later make a little neater and hang on our anchor chart wall) with our ideas of things we could do or say that would fit under each side.  Students started with partner thinking–where many of them recorded thoughts using a t-chart–then we put our ideas together.  As of today, our chart looks like this (but it is ever-changing–I think we’ve added to it every day!):

IMG_5057It’s definitely sinking in, too, because I am hearing kids use the language of their chart when they speak to each other.  🙂  We’re by no means working perfectly all the time, but we’re on our way!

Getting Started with Reading: Second Grade Reading Museum

I hope that like writing, it’s no secret that I love reading and books.  And getting great books in the hands (and ears!) of kids so that they can have the feeling of losing themselves in a good book.  One way we do that in 2nd grade (ok, in all my classrooms no matter what grade they are!) is read A LOT, and talk A LOT about books.  This year, since our kiddos are older and wiser, we also added in a Reading Museum, like I’ve written about with bigger kids.

It started out much the same, with this invitation:

Screen Shot 2015-08-18 at 8.41.43 PMI changed the criteria for choosing books a little from when I taught 4th and 5th grade, but really the goal was the same: bring your favorite books to help us learn something about you as a reader.

When Friday finally came, we got ready by setting up our “exhibits” and discussing the etiquette for visiting museums.

As kiddos circulated through their friends’ exhibits, they were expected to be thinking about these questions:

Screen Shot 2015-08-24 at 9.31.49 PMWe turned on some soft music and got busy with our museum:

I was very impressed with how quietly they were focused on checking out all the books on display.  It became very clear, though, that most kids were not thinking about making connections with friends.  They were instead focusing on just the middle question:
Screen Shot 2015-08-24 at 9.35.49 PMThey were reading new books and finding new favorites, and you know what?  That’s amazing!  The goal of the museum (and in general) is to get kids excited about books and reading and see that it’s for them.  When we shared at the end of our museum time, I was reassured that they actually were paying attention to whose books they were looking at, too, as they shared where they’d seen some of their new favorites.  YAY!

I should have expected that they’d go about it in a little bit different way, and but I shouldn’t have been surprised that they still accomplished the goal I had set out.  These kids are super amazing, after all.  So glad we did this!