This Week with our Interactive Notebooks II

So last week my students worked on adding details to simple sentences and to be more specific in their writing. The week before that, the kids learned about ideas and "juicy details."

Ideas

Juicy Details

Adding details

Be Specific

This week we took our knowledge of "being specific" and used a graphic organizer, called a funnel, to move from a broad topic to something more specific. 

funnel

Broad to specific

I showed the students a "photo album" (PowerPoint) of our pretend trip to the zoo. It showed the San Diego Zoo, some animals, a giraffe, a woman feeding the giraffe, and a giraffe's tongue. So we took a very broad topic (a trip to the zoo) and made it much more specific (feeding a giraffe at the zoo). I tell the kids that finding one specific part of a trip, day, birthday. . .makes your writing more interesting.

Now that we've covered the important components of Ideas, I will read various mentor texts to the class so students can see how authors use the trait.

On Thursday, I read Enemy Pie by Derek Munson.

The story is about a little boy with an enemy. His dad comes up with a plan to get rid of his enemy, which is to make an enemy pie.

There's so much  more to this story, but I was just getting to the point of the activity. It's a really cute story. I recommend it like I do every mentor text I suggest in the Interactive Writing Notebook.

After reading the book, we discussed the ideas the author used is his story. The story gets kids' imaginations going thinking about the ingredients in an enemy pie. So, the activity I created gets kids using their ideas to come up with the ingredients in the pie.

Usually my students put gross things in their pies. For some reason these kids didn't. Hmmm.

Next week we will begin a narrative using everything we've learned. I will expect students to choose an idea, be specific in their writing, and add details to make writing more interesting. Now that they have some tools, it should be fun!

The Sunday Scoop

I'm linking up with The Teaching Trio for The Sunday Scoop.

I've been traveling a lot lately and really have more housework to do than I can handle, so this whole scoop should read something about cleaning. But it doesn't because that would be boring!

Have a great week!

This Week with our Interactive Notebooks

This week our class was able to put together two pages of our Interactive Writing Notebooks. I created this notebook to get kids excited about writing. Kids enjoy writing when we give them the tools to become good writers. They also become more excited about writing when we free them of being perfect spellers. The number one question I hear while students are writing is, "How do you spell . . ?" I just tell them not to worry about it and just get your ideas out.

So this week we practiced using details to describe some animals. Often we read I saw _____ from our students. I figured, why not spruce it up with some detail. And so they did.

Now I know there's no writing for you to read. That's because, after taking ten pictures, these were the best ones. So many cute sentences. So many blurry pictures. 

The sentences said things like. . . I saw a green and red owl. Or I saw a stinky gray raccoon.

One of my favorite activities is Be Specific. A few years ago I told students they need to be specific in their writing without explaining what that meant. What was I thinking?! So after realizing I should probably explain that word, I told a little story.

It goes like this:

Sam wanted a dog, so he asked his mom for one. 

The next day Sam's mom brought home a big, white dog with floppy ears.

Sam said, "No mom. I wanted a small, white dog."

The next day his mom brought him a new dog. It was a small, white dog with floppy ears.

Sam said, "No mom. I wanted a small white dog with tiny ears.

The next day his mom brought home a small, white dog with tiny ears.

Sam said, "No mom. I wanted a small, white dog with tiny ears and brown spots."

At this point his mom was frustrated and she said, "You should have been more specific!"

This story might not be pet-friendly, but the kids love it. I have little pictures I show them. I explain to them that being specific, or exact, helps your reader understand your writing better.

Here are some of their specific dogs.

We'll do more activities, which include the kiddos being more specific so they can gain a deeper understanding of the word. This is just to get them started.

These activities can be found in my product at TpT. Your kids will love it!

Freebie Friday

Thanks for stopping by! 

Teaching young learners to work in cooperative groups and to share responsibilities can be a JOB! These cooperative group cards enable kids to take responsibility and to be a contributing member of the group. 

I start off teaching one job at a time, usually the group leader. I allow the students  to become familiar with the  responsibilities of the leader then I introduce another job.

Here you go! Hope you like it!

Monday Made It with Some Help

This week I'm giving a shout out to my kiddos. With their help, I have had a great couple of weeks. I have one Made-It and my sweetie pies have one they'd like to share.

It all begins with the simple sentence in 2nd grade, but quickly progresses into expanded sentence. Practice is important so after a week of writing simple sentences, I have set up the Write a Sentence Station. The kids can manipulate subjects, verbs, and adjectives to write simple sentences and expanded sentences.

My kiddos started their Interactive Writing Notebooks last week. This week we added our Juicy Details page, which helped them write expanded sentences using adjectives.

After making our notebook pages, we wrote expanded sentences about the foods we described. Lastly, we revised our class narrative by adding "Juicy Details." I love how things just fall into place!

First Week of 2nd Grade

It's back to school! Back to the rules and procedures and back to waking up REALLY early! 

Our first week was like most. We spent time discussing rules and procedures. We talked about manners and my favorite, tattling. OK tattling is definitely not my favorite, but talking about what tattling is and is not is my favorite. Why? Because once we talk about it, I rarely hear tattling. It's a miracle! I used this freebie by Kelly Witt from TpT. I highly recommend it.

On Tuesday I pulled out the base ten blocks. Of course kids look at them and want to play. So I give the kids time to play with them. Once we've played, they are no longer toys, but tools for learning. I'm so mean.

At the end of the day on Tuesday, we pulled out the magnets and went to work, or play. It's so funny to watch kids discover with magnets. They are probably the coolest thing ever!

 

We used The Recess Queen throughout the week to identify story structure and to discuss how to handle those not-so-nice kids on the playground.  

 

I used this writing unit to get students started. 

 

The kids worked with their groups to identify the characters. 

This is Mean Jean. I love it!

 The next day the kids worked to identify the setting.

I think it's pretty awesome this guy spelled too correctly.

We also got started on/reviewed how to write a complete sentence. The real plan was getting kids started on an activity that could be done for homework and for a station. I used the ideas from this TpT product.

The kids made flip books to write some silly sentences.

All in all it was a great week. I have some really cool kids. I love my job. Teaching is one of the most challenging jobs out there, but I wouldn't want to do anything else. And it takes a pretty awesome person to do it!