Friday, June 20, 2014

A New Start and a New Name

Yep, that's right - if you haven't guessed, next year, I'll be teaching first grade.  Not by choice, but I get to work with some really cool people, so I think it'll be okay.  I'm still kinda in the shock stages since I was told by our new principal on Thursday.  There's a bunch of us moving around.  Why do they always do that?

Anyway, although my heart stays in second, I hope to have a new adventure and become "Wild In First"....as in wild about, wild theme (keeping my safari theme I started last year), and good, "wild", active lesson plans/units.  I'll probably still post some second grade units as well - I mean, after 6 years, this was part of what my summer would be! - so stay posted! 

So, some new changes.  I hope to have a new blog look soon.  It's kind of a work in progress!

Hope to share some new things, ideas, pins, etc. with you soon! :)

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

It's Summertime!

Wow, I just realized I hadn't posted since the last blog hop.  Things have been a bit crazy towards the end of the school year, but as of this past Monday, I am a "free woman."  Yeah, right.  If you're anything like me, you have your "summer to do list" ready to go, not to mention being a stay-at-home Mom for the summer!

So, a few things I've been working on the past few weeks that I wanted "student tested" before I posted them.  My original plan was to get pictures to go with each of these, but that didn't seem to happen.  However, I can say that my students had a blast, especially with our Planet Unit.

We had our rescheduled field trip to the Science Museum in Richmond, VA on May 20.  One of the things we did was to see one of their new constellation shows in the IMAX.  While some of it was over the kids' heads, they LOVED it.  It's what inspired me to do a star-based unit.  Not exactly one of our standards here in Virginia in second grade, except for matter, but hey - it was great to use the last week of school!  While other teachers were grumbling about behavior, my kiddos actually stayed pretty focused and interested in what we were doing.  It didn't hurt we did plenty of experiments and got to see some pretty cool pictures via our wiki page and NASA, either!  However, I had some kiddos this past year that I needed to keep that structure until the last day, so this unit was finished over the 3-day weekend.  Click on the picture below to check it out on TpT.  The preview is my unit plans I created (a 6-day unit).
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Planets-Space-and-Stars-A-Mini-Unit-1265295

The next thing we completed before the end of the year was a review on pronouns.  My kiddos are always begging for I Have/Who Has games with grammar, so I created one (and trust me, it was not easy, so I wanted it "tested" before I posted it) as well as other games to play.  Anything to keep us active!  I ended up creating a Pronoun Packet, but the individual games are sold separately as well (but it's cheaper in the packet if you want several activities!).
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Pronoun-Packet-1265275

Monster trucks - who doesn't love them?  My boys, especially, were thrilled and made a great review with math, writing, and reading!  
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Monster-Rally-Reading-Writing-and-Math-1265301

Last, but not least, was my Introduction to Multiplication packet.  I had a small handful of students who were ready for this so their group was introduced to multiplication and division with these activities and they loved them!  Arrays, dice, fact families, skip counting...it's all there.
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Introduction-to-Multiplication-Packet-1265305
I hope you find something useful, and if you missed the last couple of freebie hops, please see my earlier posts! :)