Hi Friends…. The past two weeks we have been working on Prefixes and Suffixes in our second-grade classroom! My kiddos were having such a good time brainstorming words with prefixes and then figuring out the meaning. They really had a strong grasp of the concept… I was pretty impressed. After our whole … Prefixes, Suffixes and a FREEBIE Just for YOU! Read More »

Second Grade Blog

Hey everyone! I hope you had a great holiday and if you're like me you're definitely enjoying your time off school. Yes I love and miss the ...

It’s been several months since my last blog post. But, no excuses! Just happy to share again… We just started really getting into non-fiction in my class. Although my students have been exposed to non-fiction texts all year, I am now on a mission to make them “Non-Fiction Know-It-Alls”! My district will be adopting the…

I love teaching author's purpose...maybe it's the cozy PIE image it conjures up, or maybe it's the fact that for most kids, this is a concept that they "get" for the most part (with a little bit of explaining and some hands on practice). It's kind of the opposite of long division that way, if you know what I mean! Read more about Author's Purpose and how to teach it in this post by The Teacher Next Door.

As writers, our class is in one of two categories - comma kings and queens or Nate the neglectful. So we, as writers, decided to make a ple...

Here are ten things you need to know about teaching writing in grades K-8!

It amazes me how much class size affects my teaching and my students. I started the year with 31 students. I just lost my second one at the beginning of this week, so I'm down to 29. I've had 2 kids out all week on long vacations and 2 more out sick. So I've had a class of 25 ALL week!! It's been a big difference. Even though the ones gone are little angels and I still have all the hard ones, it really makes a BIG difference!! Our district and researchers keep telling us that class size doesn't make a difference but I have to beg to differ with them. It makes a HUGE difference in first grade. With a smaller class I can spread myself out more- work with more kids, more often, for longer periods of time. We can get more done- 25 kids take less time to finish an assignment than 31. With all the activities we do in first grade through out the day it can really add up. With less kids, fighting for my attention, I can give more attention to those that really need it. During class discussions, there is more participation by more kids. The shyer kids start to open up. It just feels more like a close knit community rather than a big city. I can hardly imagine what it would be like to teach less than 20. What a dream!! Back to reality. Our school has been doing training in SIOP this year. It stands for Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol. You can find out more HERE. It actually is training in teaching English Language Learner but our school does not have a very high percentage of ELLs. We actually have only 3 out of 180 in our grade level. But the SIOP model is really best practices and a great review in how to teach better. With the new common core our principal thought is would be a great help. We've had to do lesson studies and just finished one yesterday. Our team did ours on Synonyms. It's great to collaborate and work together as a team developing and analyzing a lesson. Here's a practice page we used and a cute song we found. I don't know who to give credit for the song but our kiddos really liked it. Click HERE if you'd like to grab a copy. Hey, believe it or not but it's FRIDAY tomorrow- again! Gotta love FRIDAY! I hope you all have a GREAT one.

Learn about prepositions for kids with these fun and free printable Preposition Worksheets. No-prep exercise for grade 1, 2, and 3.

Use these free Writing Folders and freebies to give your writers support during their independent writing time. Find all our FREE Writing Printables HERE. If you are a subscriber to my newsletter, you can download all the printables that go with it for FREE! Not a subscriber? Simply subscribe HERE! NOTE: If you are already a ... Read More about Writing Folders – for K-5 Learners

Last week I shared my lesson idea for teaching prepositions and prepositional phrases. The follow up lesson is what I call the "Prepositio...

Literacy Block, What’s in it? This is by far, the most important (and my favorite) part of my day. I love all aspects of teaching reading, from our whole class lessons down to individual conferences. The literacy block will look a little different in everyone’s classroom. I’d like to share how it looks in my classroom. My literacy block has three main parts: whole class instruction, small group instruction, and independent students activities. All three are important and all three were part of my daily literacy block in some way. Whole Class During whole class lessons, every student is engaged in the same activity. This is the time when new strategies or skills are introduced. Every student is hearing the same information at the same time. Whole class lessons set the foundation for small group and individual student activities. You could call this time the starting block for your reading instruction. Here’s what can be included in your whole class instruction time: -Guided Discussions: The text could be a story from a reading anthology or textbook, a literature study, or informational text. You don’t need a copy of the text for every student. Sometimes I had one text for every two students. At other times my lesson had one text that could be seen by all students, such as a big book or a text projected on a whiteboard. Like the heading says, the teacher guides the discussion, based on the reading skill or strategy focus for the day. -Read Aloud : It’s no secret that this is my very, very, very favorite part of the day. This is one whole class activity that I do every day! It’s not only a great bonding time with your kids, you can do so much instruction when reading aloud to your students. -Introduce new skills or strategies: Introducing new skills and strategies is something I always do during whole class lessons. I want to make sure that all of my students, no matter their reading level, heard the same information at the same time. The practicing, reviewing and reteaching of the skills and strategies might happen during small groups and individual student activities. -Spiral Review of skills: Throughout the year I made sure to review previously taught skills and strategies. The skills can be directly reviewed with an activity or it could be incorporated in the guided discussion. Small Group Instruction Fountas and Pinnell, in the book Guiding Readers and Writers in grades 3-6, called this time Guided Reading. They described it best with this statement: “In guided reading, you bring together groups of students who are similar in their reading behavior, their text-processing needs, and their reading strengths. Your instruction, then, is specific and focused, finely tuned to the needs and challenges of the particular group of students with whom you are working.” In other words, small groups are when you can have focused lessons to meet the needs of a specific group of readers. Here’s what can be included in small group instruction: -Guided Discussions: Once again the text can be from the class reading textbook, a literature study, or informational text. Another common source is the ancillary books often included with a reading series. - Focused skill review, reteaching, or practice: Small groups are formed with a specific purpose in mind. It might be to reteach a skill the students haven’t mastered. It might be to practice a skill presented in a whole group lesson. Review is also important to make sure the students are continuing to use previously taught skills and strategies. Bonus! I've put together a few planning pages to help you keep track of your small group lessons, mini-lessons, and centers. Click on the image to get this goodie! Independent Student Activities The third instructional time is when students work on tasks, without the teacher. These activities happen when the teacher is working with small groups or conferencing with individual students. The students are engaged in tasks that review and practice skills and strategies that have been presented in either whole class or small group lessons. These independent activities may have students working on their own, with partners or in small groups. Options for independent activities: -Literacy Centers: Centers are the most common way to have students work independently. The centers have hands-on activities or games that focus on previously taught skills and strategies. They may cover reading comprehension, phonics, word study, grammar, fluency, or any other literacy area. - Independent Reading: Students need time to read books at their independent reading level. These books can be self-selected or assigned by the teacher. For accountability, journals are a good way for students to write about their reading. -Completing Assignments: After whole class or small group lessons, students will often need time to complete any written or reading task that has been assigned. -Assessments or Progress Monitoring: This is the only activity that involves the teacher. I put it in this category because it is done with individual students. Throughout the year, student achievement will need to be assessed on an individual basis. This is only a broad overview of what I include in the part of my instructional day I call the "literacy block" The time I spend on each piece of this block varies from week to week, even day to day. If I have a 90-minute block of time, I generally divide the time into thirds. In the next few months, I'll be sharing more ideas about the literacy block.

hold students accountable while they independently read with these easy to implement reading tips and tricks and strategies

I have no idea where to start with writing tonight. I took one day off and now I'm thinking, "Oh, my goodness! Why do these people all want to follow me?" I keep trying to think of a funny story and honestly, I can't think past the football game in the background. I'm a Georgia fan at heart (sorry Dad - it's not my fault), but ultimately I'm an SEC fan! I like the guy from Hawaii on Notre Dame, but I have to say, I hope Alabama slaughters them. Now, changing directions, this week we are working on types of sentences, so I threw together a quick sheet. If you guys are anything like me, we have the new common core standards, but our old resources don't align. At the beginning of the summer, I took apart every resource I had and realigned all of my notebooks. It took 4 days to do, but they are a work of art and MUCH better than a filing cabinet. However, many times there are only 5 problems on a page or the page is too easy or too complex. So, now I'm obsessed with creating my own sheets. Anyway, I'm saying all of that to say I have three new freebies for you. The first one is a rounding sheet. Honestly, I'm not sure it's a first grade standard anymore. I thought it was when I created it, but I've looked through all of the standards and our first grade teacher's guide and I can't find it, so I'm not sure. I do know the other two sheets are in our standards. One of them covers true/false addition problems and the other one covers declarative and interrogative sentences plus punctuation marks. If you like them, CLICK HERE to get them. Oh, and for all of my cat lovers out there (See Saturday's post), my hubby has changed my picture on his phone to that picture. Now, every time I call him, the picture of the cat pops up. That's okay... I'm sure I deserve it. I did sneak a boiled egg into his work boot a few years ago ;) Hope you guys are off to a good week!

Boost your first grader's reading comprehension by using a story map to outline a story visually.

My son has been known to forget end punctuation. Hence, the run-on sentence occurs. To give him a little grammar lesson on why run-ons are bad, I grabbed a roll of register tape and an Easy Reader Level 1 book. I copied the words from the book onto the register tape omitting end punctuation and capital letters. I stuck with a fairly short book, as the text gets kind of long regardless. When my son got home from school, I was ready with the register tape, scissors, pencil, and the stapler. Before he did our language arts activity, though, I pulled out a Grammar Tales book to help me explain just why run-ons are so troubling. This is our third experience with a book from the series and The No-Good, Rotten, Run-On Sentence didn't disappoint. It's the story of Kevin Crabtree whose great idea for a story became the longest run-on sentence in the history of writing (okay, I might be exaggerating just a bit). The first sentence ran and ran, right off the page and all over town. Finally, after many feeble attempts to catch the sentence, dear Miss Bartlebine comes to the rescue with her red pencil. The ridiculously long run-on was finally tamed into perfectly polite sentences with punctuation or by adding words like but, yet, for, because, or and. Now it was time to apply what he'd learned. I handed him the run-on story I'd copied and reminded him that sentences contain both subjects and verbs and always have complete ideas (i.e. no fragments). He worked his way through reading the register tape, stopping to analyze where adding punctuation would make the most sense and capitalizing the first word of the new sentences. Snip! He cut the register tape into shorter sentences that we kept in order and stapled together when he was done. This was a fair amount of reading since it often required rereading passages again and again until fixing the run-ons made sense. My son hung with it and when he was all done, I had him check his work by handing him the book from which I'd copied the text. He did a GREAT job!

A blog that shares tips, tools, and free resources for teachers to use in the elementary classroom.

Teaching children to make a mental image as they read is a critical step in developing fluent readers. Debbie Diller says that "when readers create mental images, they engage in text in ways that make it personable and memorable to them alone" (from Reading With Meaning). Children use all five senses to make a vivid picture in their minds of what they are reading. Sometimes when we are teaching young children to read, we get so caught up on the accuracy of reading - we can easily forget that the reason we read is to enjoy what we are reading and understand what we read! If we spend so much time on the mechanics of reading, it could burn a child out to reading. Sad. :( So, we had our first lesson in imagery today using a poem by Jill Egglton. I love using her poems because the language is easy for children to understand, they often rhyme, and they use many high frequency words. I saw a friend do this in her classroom and thought it was a really great idea. I started the lesson by connecting to a book that we had read earlier this week (Plaidypus Lost -- more on that tomorrow!). Before I read that book, I asked them to picture something that they had lost. I told them when they were doing that they were creating mental images. I read the poem, "Ding-A-Ling" to the children - they love this poem, and it's so easy for them to picture the man in the poem. I read the poem 2-3 times, and asked the children to close their eyes and make a mental image after each time I read it. I then asked them to create a picture of the man that was in the poem. We later discussed the things that were similar in our pictures (the hair, the nose, and the bells) and what was different. The children came to the conclusion that the pictures were different because they all created their own mental images! Here is a portion of Debbie Miller's Reading With Meaning book if you would like to read more about mental images and comprehension.

Want MORE idioms like these? Try my MORE Idioms PowerPoint or save by purchasing my Idiom PowerPoint Bundle. This interactive idiom PowerPoint slideshow is a two-in-one lesson. It teaches students the meaning of various idioms and teaches them about the word literally. SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER for a FULL LENGTH freebie! This slideshow features common idioms with fun creative pictures to illustrate both the figurative and literal meanings of the idioms. The students can play a guessing game and will love the fun pictures. Then they can use the provided worksheet to create their own. I promise your students will be talking about it long after you give the lesson. This, and all my PowerPoints, are thoroughly tested on groups of students and tweaked until they're just right, and are sure to stick with them for a long time. Includes: 22 Slide PowerPoint Presentation 1 Fun Idiom Worksheet Thanks! Eve Coates If you liked this, you may also like these: Story Elements: Problem/Solution Making Inferences Main Idea and Details Standards Addressed: Common Core Standard L4.5: Recognize and explain the meaning of common idioms, adages, and proverbs Common Core Standard L 5.4 Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 5 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies. Common Core Standards L 5.5 Recognize and explain the meaning of common idioms, adages, and proverbs. *******Let's Connect!******* Follow me on Facebook! Learn about new products, enter giveaways, and offer suggestions for new PowerPoints. If I use your idea, I'll send it to you FREE :)

Whole class novels are still an important part of an English curriculum. Check out this blog post about Teaching Whole Class Novels.

Is it just me or do second graders can not write sentences? These activities are the perfect way to teach your students how to write better sentences!

Ask children to think of things dogs do, such as bark, chew bones, wag their tails, and run.

Friends~We have been using our Patricia Polocco books this week as mentor texts for our narrative writings in Writer's Workshop. We have spent many mini lessons focusing on vivid words and how they can bring a story to life. We read the book Hairy, Scary, Ordinary by Brian P. Cleary. My students always love this book and get a huge kick out of the illustrations. It is perfect for introducing adjectives to young learners. We spent tons of time this week reading and rereading our writings to make sure there were great adjectives to bring our stories to life. I told the class that writers paint our visualizations with their words. This can be a very hard concept for students because they have their own visualization going on in their mind while they write. It is difficult to remember to paint it on the page too. I decided that I needed to model this with my class. The first thing I did was to tell my class a simple small moment from my life. I asked a student to come up front and sketch their visualization I purposely gave little description. We then looked at the illustration and generated questions about the illustration. I retold the story and another student came to add to the visualization in another color. I asked them to do this so they could see when I added more description, the illustration became more vivid. I then challenged them to do the same. I buddied them up and sent them off to read their favorite part of their story. I had them sit back to back and sketch what the reader was saying. They took turns and then exchanged papers. I then instructed the students to look over their illustrations. They added more detail with colored pencils. I asked the students to then look at their stories again and add to the part they read. Using the illustration to guide them. What they drew in color told them how to extend their story so they were able to paint everything they wanted their readers to know. Watch them in action! It was really interesting to hear them discussing the illustrations with each other. They were a bit disappointed that their partners did not create as vivid of an illustration as they wanted but it was a great for them to see how important word choice is. Grab a copy of the poster that will be hanging in my Writing Center on Monday! Click the poster below to download:)

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Do you remember Merry-Go-Rounds? I used to love getting on them and just spinning around and around. I think we always chanted, "Faster! Faster! We need another master!" We would run as fast as we could and lean back with our heads inches from the ground holding on for dear life. Yet, we were fearless. It never occurred to me that I was on a piece of metal more dangerous than a bike, car, or tank. So where am I going with this? That's how I feel lately in this excited world of blogging, Pinterest, TPT, Facebook, etc. It is fun and I love every second of it, but even when I'm sleeping I'm dreaming of hitting refresh buttons. I feel like I'm yelling "Faster! Faster!" and I'm leaning back loving every second so much that it never occurs to me that I need to probably slow down a little. I can't tell you how many times I have thought if God had made 36 hour days instead of 24 hour days, I could come much closer to accomplishing everything running through my mind. Anyway, if you are on this crazy Merry-Go-Round with me - welcome!!! It's definitely more fun with some friends, especially my first grade team and my blogging friends. I think you guys understand this crazy combination of teaching, blogging, and creating better than anyone. So, since you took a few minutes to read my "I probably should go to bed early" paragraph, I'm going to give you two freebies. Two of my teammates requested these, so I whipped them up tonight. I hope you like them :) If you do CLICK HERE to get them. Don't forget to check out my other freebies on my blog and my TPT freebies and new packets on TPT. You can CLICK HERE to go to my TPT site. As a head's up, if you need fairy tales, you may want to get my bundle instead of the individual sets. The bundle will save you $4. No pressure! Just wanted you to know where you could save a little :) Also, I know this is a Wednesday post, but I'm linking this item up to Manic Monday at Classroom Freebies on January 28. You may want to go check it out. This site is loaded with some awesome stuff for every grade level. Have a great night!

Welcome to part 4 of the series, Teaching with Tomie dePaola books: Responding to Literature. In this post I’ll walk you through some of the ways I have my students write about what they are reading during our Tomie dePaola author study. As we transition to Common Core and implement new writing frameworks in my district our […]

My oldest {just finished 3rd grade} has struggled to read longer words for some time now. He’s the reason I designed this organizer for reading longer words. And while we spent a little bit of time talking about prefixes and suffixes, we never camped on it for very long…until lately. I created a bunch of ... Read More about Learning About Prefixes and Suffixes {FREE Pack}

Do you teach upper grades? These strategies and tips for using Daily Five are perfect for grades 3-5. Learn how to make Daily 5 work in your classroom.

Teaching point of view and perspective can be difficult, but with the perfect read aloud and activities, students get it.

Question or Statement Unit (Posters, Activities, & Games) Kindergarten/1st/2nd Help your students tell the difference between a question and a statement with this engaging packet! It includes 6 colorful and informational posters to help you introduce the concepts for whole-group, practice activities for independent work, and a game that will surely encourage reading aloud while helping students learn to tell the difference between a question and a statement! Includes: Cover Page Explanation of a Question with Graphics Sign Examples of Question Starters Sign Let's Practice (Making Questions) Activity Sign for Whole-Group Explanation of a Statement with Graphics Sign Examples of Statements Sign Let's Practice (Making Sentences) Activity Sign for Whole Group Question or Statement Cut and Sort Question or Statement Fill-in the Blanks Question or Statement Color to Differentiate Question or Statement Card Game- 24 cards total-(Each student will read a card aloud and tell if it is a question or a statement. Perfect for small groups or whole groups.) Activities are easy to differentiate as they include Kindergarten, first, and second grade activities. Using this unit is EASY! ✅Differentiated ✅Print and Teach ✅Fun and Engaging Click on the preview to take a peek inside and see what's all included! What are teachers and caregivers saying? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️"Lots of activities included in this resource! I really like the Practice pages that give students a word to start their question or statement with." - Kathryn C. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️"I used this packet for so many things as we talked about punctuation. I used the anchor charts during instruction, centers, sent an activity home for homework, and used one of the pages as an assessment. Great resource!" -Kelsey S. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️"Absolutely amazing resource filled with a lot of activities!!" -Samantha B. BUY IN BUNDLE TO SAVE: ENTIRE STORE MEGA BUNDLE ___________________________________ Products You May Also Be Interested In: Making Sentences/ Writing Sentence Activities (Kindergarten and 1st Grade) Question or Statement Unit {Posters, Activities, & Games} Kindergarten/1st/2nd Reading Comprehension Activities Letters, Words, & Sentences (Sorting Activities, Teaching Posters, & More) Copyright © Happy Days in First Grade, Ha Dinh Permission to copy for single classroom use only. Please purchase additional licenses if you intend to share this product. ___________________________________ Tips for Customers: Get Credit for Future Purchases: To receive credit for future purchases, go to the My Purchases page and click on the Provide Feedback button beside each purchase. Once you have rated the product along with a brief comment, you will receive TpT credits which you can use for future purchases. To receive UPDATES ON NEW PRODUCTS, DISCOUNTS, SALES, and FREEBIES, click on the GREEN star by my store's name to follow me! If you have any questions, please feel free to email me at [email protected].

This upcoming week, our curriculum begins covering homophones & homographs again. Although I made this anchor chart when first introducing h...

Search this puzzle for animal onomatopoeias. An onomatopoeia is a word that imitates the sound that it's describing. These words are sounds made by animals!

Kids are reluctant to write for many reasons. They can learn to love writing, though! Find out how and receive a free writing lesson and printable organizer.

Writing Station Suitcase is a year long writing center all-in-one solution. Keep students excited and learning at the writing center.

We are very excited to share our Must Read Mentor Text with you today! About two weeks ago we were contacted by Vincent Mastro, the au...

I've got one more summarizing idea to share with you! Did you see my other posts about writing summaries HERE and HERE?

Tips for Primary Teachers.

Close reading, broken down with a FREE planning page that works for any text