Making Predictions

Ahhh, weekends... they're so wonderful. 
As much as I love them, Jeff and I still decided to go into school today. Ruxin face. (Side note: Anyone else watch The League? 

It's grimy - very, very grimy {i.e. offensive, boundary-pushing, adult humour} - but it's also hilarious.)
Anyway, I feel ready for the week, so that's great news.

In the last few weeks we have been focusing more on making predictions. It's one of those skills that I feel should be so super easy peasy, but it's surprised me more than once how tough it can be for some wee ones to wrap their heads around. 

I like to do a lot of I Do-We Do-You Do activities in my lessons, because, well, it's just an awesome philosophy... so I showed this simple graphic organizer on our Smart Board, modeled thinking about a book I grabbed randomly from our tiny class library, and the rest is history. Actually, it's more of an ongoing skill, so not really history at all, but you know how it goes. Feel free to grab the Making Predictions recording sheet by clicking below.

- Amanda

"Pass," not "Scoot"

This week we are starting to learn about time. We got past all the "chunks of time" measurement stuff pretty quickly (they do lots of this in grade one here) and we are gearing up for telling time with clocks.
First, I thought a fun little diagnostic activity would help me understand more about my little time-tellers.

Everyone knows the game "Scoot" by now, yes? It's super fun - but a little too fun for my class this week. So instead, we played "Pass." I dug out these soccer time cards (just the clocks) to play the game - I just had to add a Y (Write the date.) and Z card (What time is lunch?).

1. Pass out a card to everyone.
2. Students write A-Z along the side of their page. (Or do this beforehand.)
3. Assign a person to each student to which they will pass the card - they ONLY pass to that person.
4. Say "pass" and have students pass the card in their hand to their passee.
5. With their new card, they write the time that the clock displays beside the proper letter.
6. Continue.


I learned so much about my kids this way: a couple know how to tell time to the hour and half hour perfectly; several know almost nothing about analog clocks, and some need instruction in telling time to the half hour. Now I know where to start and how to group my kids. Voila!


And now it's TIME for lunch :)

Freebie poster

Here is just a little something I've been working on today. Pick it up as a little freebie in my TpT or click the picture to find it in Google Docs.

I've also been working a bit on our school yearbook - it's a lot of work but it's fun work :P

Here is one page I created (don't mind the Publisher boxes around each element):

Happy weekend!

- Amanda

Reading!

I like reading. I used to like it more. Or maybe it's just that I used to have more time for it. This school year, it has been a ginormous struggle for me to actually sit down with a book and read. I'm a busy lady, what can I say? 
But then, I thought, "How can I encourage and expect my grade 2s to read when I barely make time for it myself?" And then I felt majorly ashamed. 
Enter: reading program the second. We call it "Rad Readers" - alike in name, yes, to our "Awesome Readers", because hey, there can't be a shortage of adjectives meaning wonderful, amazing, captivating or super-duper important before that word "reading". So now, I have one of these fancy new things hanging out in our classroom with my name on it!

It works like this: I read a chapter, I get a bead. And, uh, of course, you know, the kids read a book, the kids get a bead.  (I literally JUST introduced this to my students this morning, hence the lack of beads.) So far, I have two. Go me! I'm reading Lonesome Dove, and am actually loving it. It's so far removed from my real life (it's very cattle country in the southern US) and I just love the characters.

Speaking of cowboy books, I've also read and really liked it, too! If you think you might have a penchant for gritty vengeance, cowboy hoopla, or old country hardships, give it a shot. (Even if you don't, maybe you do but just don't realize - which is how it seems to have gone down for me. I guess it's the farm girl still trapped inside me, even after ....oh, 15 years off of the farm!) 

Here's hoping my kids love this little bit of encouragement as much as I do so far! On a similar note, our Awesome Reader program is going swimmingly! I'm so loving how excited the readers get each day. I made a schedule and sent it home to parents with the fluency rubric to, you know, keep all parties involved. Good times!
Happy reading, all!
- Amanda

Digraph craft for "wh"

It was a super short week for us - we had three days off for Kuwait National Day and Liberation Day and the break was nothing short of amazing. Don't get me wrong, I love my class and yeah, Kuwait can be a tad boring, but nothing beats sleeping in and lazing around! Also, because we only had two days of school this week, many {and I mean many!} students did not show up at all - so it was pretty lax. Which means that lesson plans were shuffled right on over to next week. 

So next week we will finally get to making these super cute WHales to celebrate our spelling focus, the wh digraph. I can't take credit for this, though, as I found the idea at this super awesome site, Krokotak. 

I only made up a quick pattern, which you can grab right HERE.

Character with Henkes

Hello hello,
Just a quick share tonight. I've adapted this lesson I found on Read Works to continue discussing Characters as we explore the story elements next week. We will be referring to this poster, 

charting the personalities of Lilly and Mr. Singer, then writing about why we like or dislike a chosen character. It's definitely a simplified version, but I teach ESL and only have 80 minutes for Language Arts everyday. Feel free to grab the two pages in my TpT here.
- Amanda

Photo Friday

It was a crazy busy and exhausting week, so I'm keeping it light:

Now to enjoy a {much-deserved. So much-deserved} three-day holiday!

- Amanda

Subtraction on a Number Line

Hello!
One of my buyers requested I make a subtraction file to match the Addition on a Number Line worksheet set. It was an immediate, "Why didn't I think of that?" So without further ado:

 On TpT here and TN here. This one includes answer keys for each sheet!
- Amanda

Photo Friday

Goyambokka, Sri Lanka 2012

Some classroom photos

First up, congratulations Kayla - I'll be sending your fraction posters set right over! 

Finally got my "Genius Ladder" up to help students expand their ideas. I'm really looking forward to introducing this and using it together as I really have some awesome ESL writers in my room. So proud!

We finished our descriptive writing unit by writing all about the drippy monsters we made way back in October...

We have a brand new {unfinished} Math board complete with my fractions posters!

International Week is coming up... This year we're studying Mexico, so I made up a cute little cube net with facts all around. Next up: learning the Macarena. haha - brings me back.

Fractions + giveaway

We've just started learning about fractions in grade two, and this year I decided to make some simple, super bright posters to add some flair to our Math board!

Find this pack in my TpT shop or in my TN here.

I'd love to give a set away - 

if you're interested, just comment below with your email and I'll randomly select a winner!

Off to enjoy the weekend {much-deserved this week}!
- Amanda

International Job Fair

If anyone is interested in learning a little more about our International Job Fair experience with Search Associates, Jeff just wrote a great post that's a little more detailed:

It really was such a positive experience! I definitely feel we have a unique opportunity as educators to get out and see so much of our world - Jeff and I are really looking forward to seeing more countries and gaining a better understanding other cultures. Again, feeling so thankful and loving life!
- Amanda

Awesome Adjectives

We are working on descriptive writing in Grade Two right now. We've spent several lessons learning about adjectives. For ESL students with limited vocabulary, this is a ... difficult ... concept. Well, maybe not difficult as a concept, per se, but more difficult in the sense of I-just-don't-know-the-English-word-for {insert adjective in Arabic here}. At any rate, while I was in London I had my students complete a creative worksheet with my so-wonderful EA that I think really helped them.

Has anyone ever heard of Scholastic Grammar Tales?

I was lucky enough to find this set in our library so I nabbed it! It's a set of storybooks that teach grammar skills, including nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs... So the class read "The Bug Book (Adjectives)" to start thinking about what bugs might look like, feel like, be like, etc. I made a fancy sample {I'm clearly not an artist!} of the worksheet to be completed to help them out with some ideas.

Click below if you'd like the blank template for your own class!

Finally, I got a wonderful surprise from my wonderful husband yesterday:

Love him!

- Amanda