Fossils!

We are working on animal life cycles in Science now.  We have been discovering all different kind of animals and how their life cycle work.  We even explored more and found that some animals have been preserved over time and they became a fossil.  We even acted out animal life cycles and they had a lot of fun acting out the pupa stages!

In our reading story, If You Find a Rock, there are all different types of rocks.  We all decided that fossils were our favorite.  We read stories about fossils and all kinds of rocks.  We learned that a paleontologist is a person who searches for fossils.  We all wanted to be a paleontologist, so we got to dig to find our own bones (chocolate chip cookies make great artifacts). We learned that we had to be so patient to dig out the bones.  They had a great time doing this activity and they liked it so much they didn't even ask to eat the cookie!  They wanted to break it apart to see how many bones they could find!  I love their determination!  These are pictures from the different types of rocks and fossils I had and ones of them breaking apart the rocks!  Now at recess, instead of playing, we are all searching for rocks and seeing the many different types we have around us!  Their love of learning is so awesome! 

Fossil

I love the focus on his face!!!



Classroom Bronco Buck Party

Have I mentioned how much I love my sweet class?  They have been working so hard trying to save up our class Bronco Buck to have a classroom party.  We are a PBIS school and I also incorporate Whole Brain Teaching and that works so great with my class.  We get points every day for making the right choices and we are saving them to get a classroom party.  Well, guess what?  We earned our $50 Bronco Bucks to have our party! They decided that they wanted to have a donut and dance party.  They had a great time and enjoyed themselves.  It is so easy to do to take a few minutes to reward good behavior.  They work so hard the rest of the day, taking a few minutes out each day to reward their good behavior has such a positive outcome that they want to do well for our classroom!

Whole Brain Teaching

Can I tell you how much I love Whole Brain Teaching?  It helps my day go so much smoother when I don't have to stop and redirect that negative behavior...  Well, I love to sing to get my kids to follow along or repeat what I sing.  What 7-8 year old doesn't love to sing?  Well, this class does a fantastic job of getting it together when they hear a few words of me singing.  I love singing too, so this works perfectly for me.   Let me say that WBT does not tell you to sing, that is something that I like to do to get my students to listen without having to raise my voice.  WBT is all about routine and incorporating in your daily schedule throughout the day, not just once.  We repeat our directions before each learning activity at the beginning of the year.  As the year goes on, you only do it in the morning and as needed.  I love the fact that they can be the teacher as well.  When they work in groups, they don't just play around, they really restate facts and teach each other.  It is an awesome "AH HA" moment when they are really teaching each other and they are learning from each other!  I LOVE IT!!!

Every morning I start out singing "Good Morning to You" and they sing back to me.  Then we do our daily rules.  A student comes up and leads the class.  They love to come up and be the teacher.  When they do a great job or are staying on task, I say, "Cha-Ching" and they repeat and they get a point towards their classroom party.  They already earned one party, because they are so awesome!

Here is a video of them doing our daily expectations.  It takes about a week for them to know it without looking, but when someone isn't following them, all I have to do is point to #2 and say, "Did you raise your hand?"  They automatically remember and raise their hands.  It is such a great tool!  If you haven't looked into it, you should! 

Welcome Back!!!

Welcome back to second to second grade!  I have been away for awhile, but now I am back and looking forward to a wonderful new year!  We have been in school for 4 weeks now and this time has flown by!  First of all... let me just saw that my class is awesome!  I only have 19 kids this year and they are all Super Stars!  We have been doing so many things and learning new things everyday!  We started off the year with Common Core and it is going great!  We have been working on our first unit in math extending base tens and I do believe my rock stars can break down a number in any way I want them to.  We worked on expanded form and we make a neighborhood by breaking down the numbers by using hundreds, tens and ones.  Then we broke it down and wrote it in expanded form and then we put them on the wall by even and odd numbers.  They did a great job!

We did so many fun activities in math, but they really enjoyed playing our hundreds chart game.  I gave each group a hundreds chart and they got some money to cover over numbers around the board.  They had to then guess the covered number by guessing 10 less, 10 more, or 1 less and 1 more.  They really enjoyed it and they worked so well together.  No, they weren't sleeping, but they had to cover their eyes so they didn't see what their partner was covering up!

Multiplication Super Stars

We finally got around to starting multiplication.  We do Rocket Math in our class and I have one student on multiplication and the rest of the class is trying so hard to catch up and be there too.  I keep telling them that they have to master all their addition math facts before they can really understand multiplication.  They just looked at me and wondered why they need to know addition facts in order to do multiplication. 

Well, they finally understood once we did our activity.  We wrote everything we knew up on the board before starting.  Then I gave an example of how to solve a multiplication problem.  I showed them how to do repeated addition.  "OOOHHHH, AHHHH!"

They seemed to understand that when we multiply numbers we add "GROUPS" together.  So I got out my dry erase boards and somehow I am missing some, so the ones that didn't get the boards used their desks.  They love writing on either, so it didn't bother them too much! 

I found jelly beans on sale after Easter, so I bought those to use.  I usually use M&Ms, but I love a good deal!  So using the problem 5x3, they drew 5 circles on their desks for the groups.  Then they put 3 jelly beans in each circle.  They then had to write the addition problem under the circles to show me they really got it!  Well, guess what?  They seemed to get it!  I had a cute multiplication activity that I also did with them, but I can't figure out how to import my Google documents onto my blog.  Another thing I will have to learn!  Next, we will be working on our flashcards and studying multiplication!

Seeds, Seeds and More Seeds

These last couple of weeks have been a blur and as much as I love Spring Break, it is a pain preparing for the Master's coming to town.  I love it, but our town and my house revolves around The Masters!  It turns into a beautiful city during the spring and the azaleas are so beautiful everywhere!!!

Anyway, I only have 4 days before our Spring Break comes and it will be over just as soon as it began, but I will take it!  With Springtime in full bloom, our Science unit goes hand in hand with what we are teaching... PLANTS and SEEDS!  I know the curriculum is kind of boring when it comes to what we are supposed to teach, so of course I have to add to it by doing FUN stuff! 

First we started with a K-W-L chart of what we know about plants.  They seem to know a lot about plants so far, so teaching them will be easy... If I haven't mentioned, my class is super and smart!  :)

After that we compared two Lima beans, one that was hard and the other one was soaked overnight.  They all tried so hard to peel the seed coat off the one that wasn't soaked, and they couldn't believe the difference between the two.  Not only were they easier to peel, but they doubled in size because they soaked up the water like a sponge!  Then we took another soaked Lima bean and put it in a zip lock baggie with a wet paper towel.  I then hung them in the window (luckily my window gets great sunlight all day long) and now the observing begins.  They are going to keep a journal of what they see every day.  I wish I had more than 5 days to do the plants, but hopefully it will start to grow some before Friday.

I also purchased a kit from Wal-Mart that had those disc that you soak in water and they expand to fill the pots... well my kids LOVED that and thought it was cool!  I love the little things that seem to amaze them!  These worked out great because we planted different seeds in each pot and watched them grow.  I was surprised at how fast they did grow, but like I said, I wish I had another week so we could really watch them grow!  The coolest thing happened, when I was cutting them apart, there were no stems growing, but underneath the roots were coming out of the bottom.  What a cool learning time to see that just because the plant didn't grow on top, it was growing under the ground!  So cool! The kit came with tomato seeds and a neat watering system you set on top.  I labeled the sticks with their names on them and the kind of plant they planted.

Fast forward 2 weeks!!! I am now finally learning how update my blog from my phone and insert pictures!!! Yay me!! I think I might just get this whole blogging thing down after all!!

I also want to mention that we wrote in our daily journal and drew a picture of how our seed changed and on the last day, they wrote, "what do you think the seed will become?"  As you can see in the pictures, they did grow quite a bit for just 5 days!  They were so excited to see the different stages that the plants went through.

 They did awesome with them!!! Check out the pictures!

Dry seed and the soaked seed. 

Our Seeds

Our Window

We get full sunlight most of the day, so that helped a lot!

This is always one of my favorite Science activities to teach.  I don't have any fun activities that I do other than the hands on stuff you see here and the journal, which was a simple word document.  I hope they enjoyed as much I did!

Spring Break 2012

I hope you are all having a wonderful spring break and much deserved rest! I am lucky enough to be spending my time at the beach which has been wonderful! Thankfully I am surrounded by some of the best friends a girl could ask for! They are watching out for me while my darling husband lives his dream and works at the Masters. The only downfall is that we can never have a real Spring Break together as a family! He loves it, so that makes him happy, which makes me happy!

I am sorry that I haven't updated any posts lately, but at my school they blocked it so I can't update my posts from school anymore, which I only did on Sundays.... So I am going to have to find a way to do it from home now! I was looking forward to updating my blog this week while on vacation... But NO INTERNET CONNECTION!!!! Yikes!

I am dying to get on the computer and blog and I feel lost without it! I guess it is a good break for me... But I cannot wait to get back home and work in my classroom! I am having withdrawal! I am able to post from my phone but don't have any good pictures... Except one that I took of my babies on the beach! I hope you don't mind if I share!

I know this week is going by too quickly and I am enjoying it... I hope you are enjoying your break as well!