Donor's Choose for My Classroom Library

Hey everyone!  I'm sure many of you know about donorschoose.org.  If not, it's a website for teachers where you can go and create projects for materials you need in your classroom.  Anyone can donate and when it's fully funded, the items are shipped right to your school.

So, it is almost the end of match week.  Through tomorrow 3/19 at midnight, Donors Choose will match any credit card donation.  That means whatever someone donates toward a project is doubled.  If you're interested in checking it out and seeing an example of a project or even donating :), here's a link to my current project.

                                    Mrs. Kerola's Donors Choose Project
    I currently have a project for new non-fiction books and a new bookshelf.  As you can see in the picture below, my shelf space is limited and the small shelf isn't very stable.  And, looking ahead to implementing the Common Core standards, non-fiction is a much bigger focus than it has been in the past.

Our Class Library- This is from the beginning of the year.
We are out of shelf space and have no room for our new books.

So, if you are in need of some new materials for your class, check out donors choose.org.  

More to come later on organizing my classroom library.

Morning Meeting and the Moon!

I love morning meeting!  It is such a calm, focused way to start our day and build community in our classroom.  Beginning on the very first day of school, we meet in a circle on the meeting area carpet to begin our day.  At first, I lead the morning meeting but gradually release that responsibility until the kids are totally in charge!

The morning meeting is part of The Responsive Classroom philosophy of how to build a positive classroom culture.  A morning meeting usually has four parts, ending with the morning message:
                                                   
                                             1. Greeting
                                             2. News/sharing
                                             3. Activity
                                             4. Morning Message

There is a morning meeting book that is a great resource that I've used a lot when planning my morning meetings.  Click on the picture of the book below to check it out.

Ok, so I just wanted to get that plug in for morning meeting.  I will post more about it later with examples of greetings and activities I use.  But, I also just wanted to quickly share an example of how I try to integrate whatever content we are learning into our morning message each day.  We are in the middle of a unit on the Earth, Moon, and Sun (more to come on that unit).  Here is one of my morning messages from last week:

OOPS! I just noticed that this pic has the wrong date in the message.  One of my students noticed right away (of course :) and I fixed it but had already taken this picture before school.

We are learning about contractions right now so I put a line under "it is" and "we will" for the kids to fill in the contractions made from those words.  Also, I usually try to incorporate whatever chunks/word patterns we are learning about.  That day I wanted to review what we learned about how the moon isn't really changing shape but just looks like it so I asked a question that could start a quick review discussion. I make the morning message interactive so that it can serve as a quick review.

Oh, and I also try to change the greeting of the message each day to match something we are working on and help my kids see themselves in many ways.  That day they were strong readers.  Some other common greetings I use are:
                                        Dear authors,
                                        Dear mathematicians,
                                        Dear second graders,
                                        Dear boys and girls,
                                        Dear kind kids,
                                        Dear curious kids,
                                                 (when we are working on questioning)
                                        Dear teachers,
                                                 (when we are working on how-to writing)

During our current unit, I have also addressed them like this:
                                         Dear astronauts,
                                         Dear space explorers,
                                         Dear researchers,

Much more to come on morning meeting!  I would love to hear how you write morning messages or different greetings you use!

Martin Luther King Jr...better late than never!

So, I know that I am almost a month late on this post but I wanted to share a couple of quick and easy ways to teach about Martin Luther King Jr. through literacy.  If nothing else, you can pin it :) and save the ideas for next year.

In my second grade class, we started out by building our background knowledge about MLK Jr.'s life through some read alouds.  Here are a few that I used/would recommend:

During the read alouds, we payed attention to when we learned something new about him and recorded on our graphic organizer.

Finally, we made text-to-self connections and thought about how the stories we read about Dr. MLK Jr. reminded us of our own lives.  We turned those connections into a class book.

Here's the cover of our book.

To get this freebie for your own class, click here.

Here are a few of the pages from our book:

"I am like Martin Luther King Jr. because he likes

to the right thing.  And, I agree with his dream!"

"I am like Martin Luther King Jr. because I care about all
the people in the world and I want freedom!"

"I am like Martin Luther King Jr. because I like love.
I love black people and white people."

"I'm like Martin Luther King Jr. because I love everyone
no matter who they are! Even when they disappoint me.
No matter what!"

Please leave a comment and let me know if you try one of these ideas...or share what you do to teach MLK Jr. through literacy!

They said what????

      We all know that students say the funniest, most random, smartest, and confusing things sometimes.  I am often amazed at what comes out of their mouths (and not always for good reasons).  But, this week, I sat back in my chair in amazement as I listened and tried to frantically write down my students' words so I wouldn't forget the enlightening discussion that was going on.
      Each day, we have a time of closure and sharing at the end of our Daily Five block.  I sometimes step in and ask a clarifying question to get the student to more explicitly explain his/her thinking, but last Wednesday I literally did not say an entire word for five minutes while my students discussed and debated about Nico's inference.  It was a proud moment.  I was so proud of them for having the knowledge and thinking skills that they do now at the end of the year.  I was proud that all of my work trying to set up a climate where my students feel comfortable to share what they know and respectfully discuss with their classmates.  Here's part of the conversation:
      Nico:  I was reading Where the Wild Things Are, and I'm inferring the author's purpose was to teach. 
      Elizabeth: What's your evidence?
      Nico: Well, he's teaching me what the forest is like.
      Anius: But isn't that a fiction book? Usually the author's purpose isn't to teach in fiction books.
     Boston:  Anius, but remember that fables (they're the same as fiction) are fiction books but they try to        teach us a lesson? Remember when we read The Tortoise and the Hare? That's fiction but it taught us a lesson.  
      Anius:  Oh yeah. So Nico, do you still think the author's purpose is to teach or to entertain?
     Nico: Maybe to entertain because there were lots of funny parts.


Never underestimate the power you have when you are silent and let your students do the talking!

      

My Blogging Adventure

        Welcome to my new blog!  This is my first attempt at blogging, so please bare with me as I figure things out.  I am a second grade teacher in southeastern Wisconsin.  In 16 1/2 days (not that I'm counting), I will finish my fourth year of teaching.  For my first two years, I taught first grade in the inner city before I moved to my current district.  My time in first grade gave me a passion for teaching reading and writing to young kids.  So, I plan to use this blog as a way to share my reflections, wonderings, classroom experiments, and findings related to best practices in primary literacy education.  Please follow me as I learn and grow as an educator!