Happy Literacy!: A Thankful Friday Flashback

Going to school this week was different. I was so thankful to get to see my little second graders on Monday. I was thankful when they were sweet, hyper, not listening...just really blessed to still have the opportunity to go to school each day and be their teacher. Here's a quick look back at our week before Christmas break.

During reader's workshop we worked on inferring character traits and comparing and contrasting characters. We read The Gingerbread Boy and The Gingerbread Girl. You can click on the pictures below to check out both books.

First we read The Gingerbread Boy and recorded character traits on a chart. The sticky notes are our evidence for why we inferred each character trait.

Here's my favorite character trait they came up with: overcooked! :)

After finishing the first story, we read The Gingerbread Girl and compared her to the gingerbread boy. We used a great freebie from Danielle at Carolina Teacher. Students worked with their turn and talk partners as a I read the story aloud to record their thoughts.

In writing, we had a publishing party today to celebrate their growth as writers. The unit we just finished was from Lucy Calkins and was called Writing for Readers. It was all about making their writing easy for other people to read...aka conventions. So, for the celebration, they had to look through their writing folders and choose their hardest to read piece and their favorite easy to read piece. I stapled them on a large piece of construction paper so they could share how they have changed as writers.

We also finished up snow globes to go with their snow globe writing. They turned out really cute!

Check out the Batman snowman.

Last but not least, today we made snowmen inspired my Mrs. Carroll at The First Grade Parade. I really don't usually do a whole lot of artsy stuff with my kiddos but the week before Christmas break is an exception. Who could resist? To make it math-focused, I gave my kids a start-unknown story problem where they got to choose the other known part. Start-unknown problems are the hardest type for kids and the Common Core Standards state that second graders need to be proficient at them with numbers through 100 by the end of second grade. So, I thought this would be some fun, extra practice.