Our Week in Pictures

 My Groovy Back to School board! Love it!

I wanted to share a few activities we did as get to know yous, intro to Daily 5 and Café strategies, etc. We also used lots of activities from Babbling Abby’s Super in Second Grade

and Lesson Plan SOS’s Back to School Bash {wonderful resource} I LOVE these girls! I am doing the kids of smarts next week and cannot wait!
Day one we covered lots of things about Mrs. Lamb and my many stories, but we also used Christina’s Back to School flippy to reflect on the day!
Here are a student-colored rules displayed over the front board. They are from Whole Brain Teaching. Read my post about how we started it last week here.

We also reviewed the rules with a great foldable from Amy over at Step into 2nd with Mrs. Lemons!

 

On Day 2 we read Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon {so sweet}. They LOVED it. I used this book for check for understanding, and ended up using back up and reread because I messed up a little felt they could handle 2 mini-lessons! haha!

After reading this we discussed how Molly Lou beat the bully with smarts and humor. She always kept her head up! I then read a poem shared by Amy Lemons from Scholastic. I typed up 4 on a page so we could make it our first poetry journal entry of the year. We also made sunflowers out of construction paper {they really resembled Black Eyed Susans…} and wrote all about ourselves on the petals

But what really got them was this! a Sunflower! Yep, that’s me with the seeds! It weighed over 6 pounds! This was a great lesson in schema-we live in a very rural area with lots of farms so we could see how the small stem {like Molly Lou} could really stand up to the petals and fruit.

 
We also launched Read to Self this week. I am truly not sure if they were ready-did I mention previously they are extremely talkative and lack self-control!? Well, our first 3 rounds over 2 days lasted a minute or so. But the second round on Day 2 {after I had introduced them to the online stopwatch on the big screen} we actually read for over 9 minutes. It made my heart smile…
For this past week {and next} I am still having them choose books from the baskets I fill at their tables every other morning. We haven’t had library orientation to check out books, and I won’t teach about my classroom library til this week {thanks to the wonderful lessons for the Lesson Plan SOS ladies}. They are actually sneaking books out of my baskets…hilarious! The caution tape it going up for this week though!
 

our I-chart and J reading to Wicket, our mini lop rabbit!

 

great job picking a spot boys!

And here are a few pictures form around the room. They are terrible. The lighting is less than perfect in our room for taking pics! There are still so many areas I would be ashamed to show! Eek!

behind the Guided Reading table-Reading Street leveled readers

Attendance board that will start after Day 10-right now teachers do not take attendance at our school. We do a daily head count for 10 days…Students will move their apple to the graphing question on the white board next to this

My nonfiction area of the library. I split the library into three areas this year to cut down on traffic Monday mornings when we go book shopping. Harriet the tarantula is keeping watch. Though I just found out it’s a boy---Aragog, maybe?

My leveled books still waiting for their bins from IKEA…free shelf someone threw out spray-painted and backed with scrapbook paper. And good ole Einstein watching over us

Our Spotlighted book-signage courtesy of Amanda from One Extra Degree, Target lamp, and Dollar Tree placemat!

Our Word Collector still waiting for it’s border that on backorder…and the sign I haven’t printed! But we did add this word on Friday…hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia! I have a little darling obsessed with this word! I think it’s from Wizards of Waverly Place. Guess what it means..click the link to find out!