handwritten on December 12, 2014
It certainly has been a while since I have had the opportunity to blog about my second grade experience. The past three weeks I have been taking over full-time in the second grade classroom. Luckily, my mentor teacher set this experience up in such a way that I was completely ready to take over the classroom when it was my turn to do so! During my third takeover week, I had the opportunity to conduct a small, yet "fun" writing piece with my students. I decided to create a prompt that had to do with the huge snowstorm Buffalo, New York experienced during the middle of November. I showed a small news clip that demonstrated how high "8 feet of snow" would look like in the classroom. The...
handwritten on December 8, 2014
Durng the past few weeks, I begin teaching double-digit addition with my second graders. With the Common Core Curriculum, teaching double-digit has become much more challenging. Students no longer have to just memorize the procedure (as I did in school) but they must understand the concept behind the procedure. Needless to say, I found this unit rewarding but challenging to teach in some ways. Before allowing the students to solve the problem procedurally, I required the students to solve the problem using base ten blocks. We used the following steps to complete our problems.
1. Add your ones together
2. Ask yourself: Can I make a group of ten with my ones? If yes-regroup! If no-move on to...
handwritten on December 4, 2014
During my takeover weeks, I had the opportunity to teach Social Studies once again. This particular unit dealt with landforms (mountains, volcanoes, valleys, The Grand Canyon, river, lakes and oceans.) We began the unit discussing the different landforms through real-life pictures found using google maps! Then, I introduced a partner-project that the students would be participating in. The partner pairs were each assigned to research a specific landform. I had hunted for 30-40 picture books that represented each individual landform we would be learning about in class. For two days, students were required to write down 8 different/unique facts about their landform to share with their...
handwritten on December 2, 2014
I am writing to remind myself that telling time must be the hardest concept to teach to a group of second grade students, or any student for that matter! It is amazing to think that, at the age of eight, students are now required to be able to tell time to the neart half hour, hour and quarter hour before Christmas! Surprisingly, my students are doing fairly well making progress with this skill, but it is certainly not easy! In addition to telling time to the hour, half hour and quarter hour, they must write the time using words as well as numbers! For example, I had to teach that 3:15 is also considered "quarter after 3" and 4:45 is quarter to five.
Overall, the mistakes...
handwritten on November 19, 2014
Three weeks ago, I began a Realistic Fiction Unit using the Benchmark Curriculum Series for Reading and Writing. I was unsure exactly how to start this unit, but I soon realized it would be quite the adventure. Although our Benchmark Series gives us mentor texts to use throughout each unit, I decided to abandom the mentor text and come up with some of my favorite Realistic Fiction books of all time. I began the unit with Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Many of my students loved this book and had also seen the movie, which added to their interest. Before reading the book, I introduced the term "Realistic Fiction" to my students as "something that could have...
