Take a Tour Inside my Ocean Themed Classroom!

 

I am linking up with Swimming into Second's Show Off Your Space linky party!

Here is a little tour of my ocean themed classroom.  First stop is my birthday beach.  I attach little crabs (from Trend) to the sand castles with each child's birthday on them.   

Next stop is my word wall.  As we learn our high frequency words we will be displaying them on our "A Whale of Vocabulary" word wall.

I display our learning targets on the front board so they can be easily referred to in my lessons.  It also allows my visual students to see what learning target we will be learning for each lesson.

After I give our spelling pretest, I write the spelling words on the board so my students can use them for their spelling station activities. 

I LOVE my Promethean board!  One of the teachers from my school was so kind enough to donate the cute ocean decorations to make it a little more snazzy! 

I have 14 jobs that I use regularly in my classroom.  My students do their job for the entire week and then get paid five sand dollars on Friday for doing their job.  I give out ten sand dollars if they receive a compliment from a teacher and twenty sand dollars if they receive a compliment from one of my principals. 

On Fridays I open up my "shop" and have students trade in their sand dollars to purchase different privileges and rewards such as a treat from the treat jar, treasure box, be the ocean king/queen for the day (they get to wear a crown), etc... (see below)

 

My class really looks forward to visiting the shop each week.  It also helps them learn how to count my fives, tens, and twenties, since they have to count their sand dollars prior to making a purchase.

Here is a picture of my behavior beach.  Students start on green everyday.  If a student does something really kind or helpful, they can change their card to blue.  If they break one of the rules, they change their card to yellow and then red after that.

 

Next stop is our math station chart.  This tells my students what math group they are in and what math station activity they complete for that day.

 They then choose their math station activity from their basket.  The hermit crabs are from Trend.

The last stop is my reading corner.  I keep this by my guided reading table so I can easily access my different reading comprehension games and activities.  The cute patterns are from Trend. 

We are Fin-tastic at Solving Math Facts!!

This is one of my students' favorite activities to help motivate them to master their addition and subtraction facts. I usually start this in September and continue on until the end of the year.  In second grade one of our common core standards is to be able to add and subtract fluently to 20.  First, I wrote each student's name on a fish and placed them in the last blank fish tank.

During our guided math groups and math stations we used the flashcards to practice our addition facts.  You can start with any number based on the needs of your students.  Below are examples of the + 2 flashcards.  The flashcards can be kept on a ring or in little baggies for each student to use to practice.   

Addition Flashcards

After they practiced their facts, I have them take a timed test.  Each student would have 3 minutes to complete the test.  If they missed 1 or less on their test, they got to move their fish to the next fish bowl.   
 

Addition Test and Award

 

My class loved moving their fish to the next bowl and then finally arriving at the 10's tank!  Once their fish made it to the 10's tank, they receive a "We are Fin-tastic at Solving Addition Facts to 20" award.

 

Once students make it to the 10's tank they have mastered their sums to 20! They are now ready to start mastering their subtraction facts. You may either have them start their fish back at the empty fish tank as before to show their subtraction fact progress or you may have a separate set of fish bowls for subtraction. 

Subtraction Flashcards

Subtraction Tests and Subtraction Facts Award

Click here to get this Fin-tastic pack!


Ocean Themed Classroom Posters from Dollar Tree!

By now you must know that I love my ocean themed classroom so any time I find something that is ocean themed I have to get it!  I found these cute posters at Dollar Tree for only $1.  They even had an ocean themed alphabet!

Incorporating Multiple Intelligences into Reading!

  I wanted to share with you some activities that my students do as part of their independent practice during guided reading.  After I meet with a guided reading group, I have them independently work on a story retelling activity or practice using the reading comprehension skill we just learned so I know if they truly mastered the skill...hence the name independent practice.

This first activity is one of my favorites!  As part of my Master's Degree program, I wrote my thesis on incorporating the multiple intelligence learning theory into reading instruction.  I conducted my study for 6 weeks.  For the first 3 weeks, we read stories and learned reading comprehension strategies in guided reading groups.  Students completed a "traditional" book report worksheet (where students filled out information about their book such as characters, setting, plot, etc...) as their independent practice.  At the end of the first half of my study, I assessed my students using the DRA.  Only 29% of my students had "very good" comprehension, 64% had adequate comprehension, and 7% had "some" comprehension.  I also had my students complete an attitudinal survey and leave comments about how they felt about reading.  Only 2 students reported that they enjoyed reading and completing the independent practice activity.  Students said they didn't like reading and the activity because it was boring, they were afraid of getting a bad grade on the activity, and one student actually said that it stressed them out.  Who knew that a reading worksheet could cause these types of feelings in a second grader?   

During the next 3 weeks, I taught guided reading using the same routine as above except my students were able to choose a Multiple Intelligence reading activity for their independent practice.  Students were given a Multiple Intelligence survey to determine what type of "smart" they are before I conducted the second part of my study.  Students were able to choose a retelling activity based on the type their type of "smart" or they were able to choose an activity that interested them for their independent practice (see below).    At the end of the 3 weeks, 50% of my students had "very good" comprehension and 50% had "adequate" comprehension on the DRA assessment!  12 out of my 13 students reported that they enjoyed reading and completing the independent practice activities on their attitudinal survey.  Under the comment section, students stated that they liked being able to choose their retelling activities, they liked knowing what type of "smart" they were,  they felt proud of their work, and it was fun to present their retelling projects to the class.  With comments like these, how could I stop using the MI theory in my classroom?  Since my study, I continue to incorporate the MI retelling activities into my guided reading instruction.  We usually set aside Friday afternoons as our time to share our retelling projects with the class.

 

The results from my study concluded that when students respond to text according to their multiple intelligence learning style or are able to choose a retelling activity that interests them, it not only increases their comprehension of the story, but also increases their motivation to read as well!  If you are interested in learning more about the Multiple Intelligence Learning Theory, here are some additional resources you may want to check out: Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom by Thomas Armstrong, Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice by Howard Gardner, and Multiple Intelligences: The Complete MI Book by Spencer and Miguel Kagan.  

 Here are some examples story retelling activities my students created.  Click here to get this pack to use with your students.

Tri-orama Story Summary.

Story Box Display

These picture smart students created a "book box" or diorama of an important scene from the book and then wrote a summary of the story on an index card.

Here are some of my other favorite ideas I use as independent practice during my guided reading block.  This leveled book activity box (above) from Lakeshore Learning has lots of different reading activities based on their guided reading level.  My students also enjoy completing the activities from these two Scholastic resources "Instant Independent Reading Response Activities" by Laura Witmer (Grades2-4) and "Ready to Use Independent Reading Management Kit" by Scholastic (Grade 1, Grades 2-3, or Grades 4-6).    

Guided Reading Literacy Stations

 I love using my Literacy Station Signs and I Can Task Cards to help me organize my guided reading and literacy station rotations.  Since I have an ocean themed classroom, I call them Sea Centers. I have four guided reading groups so I have four literacy stations that the students must complete each week.  Each group goes to one station each day. 

Literacy Station Rotations

 The literacy station signs are a great visual to post at each station since they match the border to the pocket chart headers and task cards. My students know exactly where they need to be during my guided reading and literacy station block. 

 Below are some examples of the task cards I put at each station.

 

 

 

Once they complete their station for that day, they can complete an anchor activity.  I have four different colored boxes (I bought them last year from Target) labeled with my 4 reading groups so they know which anchor activities to complete.  Each basket contains extension activities to extend their learning.  I use a variety of anchor activities, but my favorite ones to use are called Activity Cards for Early Finishers from TheMailbox.com.

Anchor Activity Boxes

  On Friday, students have time to finish any station they did not get to complete during the week.  Once they complete all of their stations, they can do Fun Friday!  Fun Friday is an opportunity to play a fun reading game of their choice while I do running records on my students.  I always remind them to do a whisper voice when I am doing my assessments.  This cute voice level chart freebie from Teaming Up to Teach really helps!

Below are some of my favorite items from Lakeshore Learning that I use in my literacy stations. 

My students love these leveled writing activity pockets!  They also make it easy for differentiation.

The partner scripts were a fun addition to my reading center.  Students love taking turns reading the engaging stories and then asking each other questions about the story.

Prefix or Suffix Flower Craftivity and Butterfly Life Cycle

Have you ever had a stressful week at school and you just need a little pick-me-up?  There is nothing like hanging up a cute craftivity that my students made to put a smile on my face.  This fun craftivity is just what my students needed to practice using words with prefixes and writing them in sentences!

 

First, they wrote the prefix in the middle of the flower (mid_). Next, they wrote 8 words with that prefix on each petal (midnight, midday, etc..).  Then, they wrote 5 sentences with the words from the petals on an index card or piece of paper. Next, they colored and cut out the flowers and pot. They then glued their sentences to the flower pot on construction paper. I gave each student two flowers since we were learning about the prefixes mid_ and mis _ the same week.

Butterfly Life Cycle Pasta Activity

Here is another fun activity we did when we learned about the life cycle of a butterfly.  I had my students go on a nature walk to collect sticks, leaves, and flowers to use on their plate to make it look more realistic.  They divided their plate into 4 sections egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly.  They then glued the items they found onto their plate.  They then used dried split peas or rice for the eggs, rotini pasta for the caterpillar, shell pasta for the chrysalis, and bowtie pasta for the butterfly.  

Happy Birthday to My Blog!

 

Happy 1st birthday to my blog!  I am excited to announce that my blog is having its first birthday this month on June 22nd! 

Fun Pictograph Activity!

For the past two weeks we have been learning about different types of graphs.  The first week we studied pictographs.  I had my students create a class pictograph of their pets.  Each student drew their pet or pet they would like to have on an index card and then placed it on the graph in the appropriate row.  We then created different questions that we could ask using our pictograph.