Plastic Egg Word Work

With so many plastic eggs around, why not use some to make learning a little more fun?
This could work as a fast finisher or as a word work center for this week.

Each Egg has a different set of letters in it so that the students can do the activity multiple times. Have them see how many words they can make and record them!

Get the recording sheet and 8 sets of letters here!

Have a great week!

Katrina

Jeopardy

Testing is coming up and reviewing is about to begin.

Jeopardy is a great way to review! I didn't like any of the Jeopardy games that I found online, so I made one up last summer when I had a little time. We have used it to review different concepts we have learned this year. My students always get excited when they see that we are playing Jeopardy. (This was created in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007. If you have that it should work perfectly, otherwise I'm not sure, you might have to play around with it a little)

Get the jeopardy PowerPoint for free here!

Once you open the link click on the options button and download the document as a PowerPoint. You will be able to go in and type your questions and answers right into the boxes that say question and answer!

My students LOVE when we play Jeopardy, and seeing as we are coming up on review time and end of the year tests they are about to be happy campers. Time to make some Jeopardy reviews!

Enjoy!

Miss Paul

Art Project!

Thursday night we have Second Grade Arts Night. All of the second graders will be singing and performing(either a play or a dance), students will also have their artwork displayed. Our original class play "Puss in Boots and the Three Little Ninjas" is coming along! The students have had a lot of fun with it and I think that is what really matters. For our art piece I found an idea here that I loved and thought my students would enjoy, so we gave it a try.

I let the students draw a picture of whatever they wanted (they are always so much more motivated when they have a choice). After their pictures were done they traced over the lines of their picture with black Elmer's glue (Elmer's glue mixed with black acrylic paint). When the glue was dry they used watercolors to finish it off! The final products are pretty great! Enjoy!

Trash or Treasure?

Water bottle caps are definitely treasure! Save them and have your students save them too!

I have seen some different bottle cap activities floating around, but here is one that I made for my students to do during centers this week.



Contractions! This is a picture of one set (I made three different sets each with different contractions so that the students can do the activity up to three different times). Just write the contraction on one bottle cap and then the two words that make the contraction (each on their own bottle cap). Students grab a bag of bottle caps and match the contractions with the two words that make the contraction!

You could do something similar with pieces of paper laminated for durability, but bottle caps are very durable and you can probably round them up for free : )

Most people see trash, a teacher sees treasure!

Have a great week!

Miss Paul

Prefixes and more

Yesterday I was working one on one with a student during Recess. Normally I don't like to keep students in during recess, but this particular student had chosen to play all during centers instead of do his work so he got to do his work with me during recess. He was working on an I am poem. One of the lines said "I worry..." I asked my student "What do you worry about?" His response was "nothing". When I asked him again he said "nothing, hakuna matata, it means no worries. I learned it from a movie, it taught me that hakuna matata means no worries." What a great reminder this was to me! In the end everything works out how it is supposed to, and chances are it will all work out better than I ever could have imagined.

Funny note: Today I wore a shirt that buttons down the back. As we were walking to lunch one of my students said to me "Miss Paul, are you wearing your shirt backwards?" Made me smile, oh how I love kiddos!

Happy note: Yesterday we made our multiplication monsters! Today we were doing some more multiplication. I put 3x5=15 up on the board and had the students discuss with their table groups what it meant. I heard one kid say "It's like 3 monsters with 5 eyes each!" YES! He got it! 3 groups of 5! Multiplication Monsters = success! I absolutely love it when I see or hear kids applying things that I have taught in previous lessons.

Prefixes -

Today we talked about prefixes un-, re-, and mis-. I came up with the idea of "prefix pockets". After watching a video about prefixes and talking about what the different prefixes meant I had the students work with table groups to brainstorm words with prefixes. They shared their words with the class and then I wrote the words and pt them in the corresponding prefix pocket! We just did this as a whole class activity, but you could make it an individual assignment. For younger grades you could turn it into a word sort where kids have to sort words with prefixes into the correct pocket. Anyways, just thought I would share!



Enjoy the rest of the week!

Katrina

Multiplication Monsters!

There was no school today because our term ended yesterday! I ended up going into work for a lot of the day just to get caught up a little and to prepare for next week. It was nice to have a day to just get some things done. I did some lesson planning and thought I would share a multiplication idea with you!

We are starting some basic multiplication concepts in math this next week. After looking through a PowerPoint and practicing seeing "groups of",and understanding how multiplication works a little bit we will do this activity to go along with the saying "I see how multiplication works!". We're making multiplication monsters! Each student will get three monsters with no eyes. Student will have to decide how many eyes to put on their monsters. They must put the same number on each monster (equal groups). After putting the eyes on they will fill in a paper to help them understand the different ways we can look at multiplication.

Here is a picture of what a final product will look like:



If you want to use this activity you can download the monster here and the writting portion here

You can extend the activity by having students tell you the repeated addition problem or multipliction problem for how many horns,tails, spots etc. there are!

Have fun!

Katrina

St. Patrick's Day Writing

This week in writing we wrote about how we would catch a leprechaun! Since I couldn't find any ideas that I liked on pinterest for displaying our writing pieces I was left to my own devices. I came up with the idea of the students using paper to make "boxes" that the leprechauns would be trapped in. inside the box we put their writing pieces. The kids loved making the boxes and they turned out pretty cute : )



Outside:



Inside:



Have a Happy St. Patrick's Day! Enjoy the fact that it is on a Saturday : )

Weekend News

This is an idea that I got at a workshop over the summer. I have been doing it this year with my class and I love it. You have a sheet that says Weekend News at the top and then a spot for a picture and a spot for writing. Each Monday at the beginning of the day you give students a little time to do their Weekend News. You keep them all, and then at the end of the year turn it into a book for the students (I might just have mine be a section of their portfolios instead of binding them all). In the end these serve as a type of journal of the students school year. It is also fun to see how their writing and drawing improves over the coarse of the school year : ) I can't wait to see them look back on all of their weekend news papers at the end of the year!

Here are a couple of examples:




Cute right? Sometimes the kids get really into it and write on the whole front and back and ask for more paper. I love to see my kids excited about learning like that!

Miss Paul

A thought for the week!

This is a quote from a talk titled "Precious Children - A Gift from God" by: President Thomas S. Monson of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I hope that you enjoy it!

"There is no more important aspect of public education than the teacher who has the opportunity to love, to teach, and to inspire eager boys and girls and young men and young women. President David O. McKay said, “Teaching is the noblest profession in the world. Upon the proper education of youth depend the permanency and purity of home, the safety and perpetuity of the nation. The parent gives the child an opportunity to live; the teacher enables the child to live well.”"

As you love, teach, and inspire your students you are helping to give them the opportunity to live well and preparing them to be leaders! What a great blessing it is to be a part of such a profession!

Have a great teaching week!

Katrina

Comparing Words

Friday night and once again I am exhausted. It is amazing how tired teaching can make you. Don't get me wrong, I am so grateful everyday that I am a teacher - I LOVE it! Seeing as I am doing an internship this year I just hope that I find a job next year.




This week we talked about comparing words. I decided that I would make a PowerPoint with some fun pictures for the students to compare. It is AMAZING how much fun some simple pictures can make a lesson. My kids loved it and some of my co-workers said that their kids liked it as well - success! Since it went over well I thought I would post it here: Comparing Words PowerPoint Enjoy!

One of the sets of pictures:


Have a fabulous weekend!

Love,
The first year teacher

Homophones

I haven't posted in a while, and I'm not even going to try to catch up. Things have been crazy busy,always so much to do and never enough time, but I guess that is just life for ya so I shall whistle while I work : )

I love pinterest and I love teaching blogs, but I love it even more when I come up with ideas on my own. I'm sure this has been done before, but I didn't find it on line so that makes me happy : )

We are talking about homophones this week. Today we came up with a list of all the different homophones we could think of. I let each student choose a set of homophones (quiet students frst of course) and then gave them a pair of glasess. They had to write one word and a sentence using the word in one frame and the other word with a sentence in the other frame. They turned out pretty cute! We can spot homophones!




Find the link for the glasses here!

Have a great week!

Katrina