Human Shapes

Students used their bodies as line segments to make human shapes.

We are really good at making triangles!! It was the hexagons that really got us!

Math Mosaics

The students learned about mosaic art during our math lesson on area.

What a beautiful addition to our "art gallary"!

Each student gave their mosaic a title and counted the square units used.

Reader's Theater

These students are doing a reader's theater called "Stone Slop" based on the original story Stone Soup.

Students worked in groups to prepare a Reader's Theater that we presented to Mrs. Brown's second grade class. It takes a lot of practice to read clearly and use voice inflection while acting out a scene at the same time. The kids did a great job!

Try My New Candy!

Willy Wonka isn't the only candy inventor around. My class did a great job coming up with some of their own candy inventions!

These are the finalist that our class voted on. Everyone did a great job!

We are reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Students invented their own new candy and made advertisements to try to "sell" their creation!

Morning Meeting

Morning meeting is an important part of our day. Everyone is greeted by their classmates. This helps everyone feel like a special part of our class.

Morning meeting sets the tone for a great day of learning and respect for one another.

This morning we are demonstrating how to practice spelling words with a clapping game.

FYI or Just for Fun?

We used newspaper clippings to learn about author's purpose. Did the author want to give me some information or persuade me to buy something?
Maybe the author wrote this article just to entertain me!

Can you explain how to do a proper push-up? Will this article tell me how to grow a vegetable garden?

Eric Carle Author Study

In our Author Study of Eric Carle, students became authors and illustrators inspired by the "Picture Writer". My teammate Megan Bates and I worked together to teach this unit to both of our classes. We read a selection of Eric Carle books and discussed what characteristics make his work unique. In my class students worked to brainstorm an idea for a story using the framework of "The Very ____ ____". The students wrote rough drafts and did peer editing before completing their final drafts.

In Miss Bates' room, the students used a variety of painting techniques learned from Eric Carle in his biographical video, "Picture Writer". They first painted papers and then cut shapes to make the animal featured in their story.

The stories and illustrations make a beautiful addition to our "art gallery" in the hallway outside our rooms. The kids have really enjoyed sharing their writing and artwork with their peers

Math Centers

Students practicing rounding to the nearest ten by placing numbered sticks in labeled cups.

Place value is another math skill students practice using base ten blocks.

Math centers give students an interactive way to practice important skills.

And the Survey Says...

How did you get to school today? Would you rather visit the mountains or the ocean? These are just a couple of questions students asked each other while gathering data for their surveys.

Students learned why people take surveys and how to organize the data into tally tables.

Plan Do Study Act (PDSA)

PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act) is a way for our class to set a goal, monitor our progress, and reach our goal.
First, we made a plan that all students would make a passing score on the Reading TAKS test.

Next, we thought about what we would have to do to meet that goal.
Then, we looked at our data each time we took a benchmark to see how we were doing. The students loved seeing how well we did as a class! Way to go on the Reading TAKS! We had a high passing percentage!

Finally, we decided what actions needed to be changed or continued to meet our original goal.

Reading Buddies

Friday mornings are so much fun! Our class is reading buddies with Mrs. Trinka's first grade class. Mrs. Trinka and I are always amazed watching the students enjoying their reading time together.

It's great to watch students so engaged while readng to their first grade buddy or sometimes as they listen to their buddy read to them!

Human Graph

As an introduction to graphs, our class had fun "becoming a graph" with each student representing the number of children in their family.

The students then created a graph on paper to represent our data.

Genre Study

Is this book historical fiction or fantasy?

Students worked together to sort our classroom books according to genre.

COW in the classroom!

We brought the COW (Computer on Wheels) to our classroom to do research on planets.

Students looked up facts about the planet they chose to research.

My team

Here we are! That's me on the left, then Megan Bates, Stephanie Lewter, Karen Brown, and Arden Prucha. What a great team!

We are ready!

We've worked so hard and now we're ready for the Reading TAKS test! Students wrote notes of encouragement to each other to get pumped up for the big day!

You can do it! You are so smart and you've learned everything you need to know!