CKLA Second Grade! What about it?

Hi !

    I have started a new year and started a new program called, CKLA for second grade. This program is interesting to say the least, and I can see the potential benefits of learning and focusing on phonics. The program is enough to provide a core in this area. However, I also think there can be something added to it, to make it more interesting, to cover additional reading standards, and to incorporate more writing.

   So I have created a product that can be used to add a “little something” to help focus each unit for CKLA Second Grade. As of today, I have Unit 1 Cat Bandit and Unit 2 Bedtime Tales complete. I will be adding more throughout this year. Currently, my class is on Unit 2 because we have been in school since the beginning of August. Since I started using these products, I feel the students are more motivated and focused.  They feel more invested in each reader. 

If interested feel free to check them out in my store. Links below.

                                            Cat Bandit Unit 1

                                          Bedtime Tales Unit 2

I hope this helps! I know it helped in my class!

Erin Hansen

Beginning of the Year with Place Value!

I was lucky enough to partner up with Mrs. J's Resources and Kelly Malloy (An Apple for the teacher) to help bring you some great place value ideas!

Place Value Ideas to Start Your Year!

As the beginning of the year approaches (or has started for some), we look at lessons and units to help start off the year. One of the units is place value. Why? It helps students understand the meaning of the numbers they are writing and using. Without this foundational knowledge students can struggle in regrouping, understanding expanded notation, speaking, and writing the word form of standard numbers. Included below are some collected ideas and units to help strengthen students place value understanding.

Place Value Houses Project Idea – Mrs. Hansen’s Helpfuls

One strategy I use to help build the skills for a strong place value foundation is to create Place Value Houses. This project allows students to visually see how numbers are grouped into “threes” and allows students to practice number formation, speaking, and writing. They are simple to make. Just draw houses with three bedrooms a piece. Label the house bedrooms ones, tens, and hundreds. Then name the houses hundreds, thousands, millions, etc. Students even love to make it look like a neighborhood. Students can also make number cards to fit into the houses.

Other practice is also available through self-checking task cards. Students can decipher expanded notation and word form to make the standard numbers. Students look at the task card and then build the number on the Place Value Houses. To check students simply flip over the card. Once the Place Value Houses are built, these task cards can make a great center!

Interested but don’t want to make them from scratch? No problem, try these products:​

Place Value Houses Project

Place Value Task Cards – Self-Checking

Math Mysteries – Mrs. J’s Resources

Revisiting and building on place value knowledge is a necessary task to set up students for success to learn new math concepts later on in the year. The place value math mystery “Case of The Puzzled Pirate” has been built as a fun activity to practice and consolidate a variety of place value skills in one. Its design for different levels allows for you to choose the best option for your students. Choose an earlier (or easier) grade level to refresh students before starting a new Place value unit, or choose the level that meets your standards to review content learned at the end of a unit. The added factor of the mystery will help students try and persevere with challenging sections, and will help you gauge just how much your students know (or don’t!)

Click the link to view the bonus free video hook that comes with "Case of The Puzzled Pirate":

Video Hook Link

Place Value Mysteries

Practice Makes Perfect! – Kelly Malloy

Once your students have mastered the place value skills required for your grade level, you will want to make sure to practice and review them so that they don’t lose them! I Have, Who Has games are a great way to practice skills in the classroom. They are a great whole group activity that can be used for review, test prep, fluency, listening skills, and mental math. My students and I love using these games to review our skills and place value is no exception.

I have a special freebie Place Value I Have Who has game that you can download here.

I Have, Who Has Game

I also have Daily Math Review Resources for 1^st through 5^th grade that not only review place value, but other skills as well!  You can find them here:

Daily Math Review Grades 1 - 5

Geometric Shapes

This week we have been working on 2D and 3D shapes. I think the biggest challenge was getting students to understand the different attributes for each shape. Between understanding that a polygon can also be a quadrilateral and that quadrilaterals can also have pairs of parallel lines, I was tired of looking at starry eyed students.  Students had to apply this information if I was going to get true understanding.

So this last week we built many different shapes. Materials needed are wood sticks or toothpicks (I chose wood sticks because they were $1 at Walmart) and gum drops (I chose these over marshmallows because they are a little stronger).

Each student was in a partner group and could build 4 different shapes of their choice. The students then took pictures of their shapes and created a Power Point to present about their shapes and attributes.  This lesson really helped students have a better understanding of attributes and geometry as a whole. Below are some pics of my students during the process.

Geometric Success!
Erin Hansen

Giveaway!

Who doesn't love a giveaway? I am excited to announce I have joined with other collaborators to provide this giveaway opportunity.

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:  

Prize: $25 Teachers Pay Teachers Gift Card

Giveaway Organized by: Kelly Malloy (An Apple for the Teacher), 

Co-hosts:   An Apple for the Teacher, Mrs Hansens Helpfuls, A Place of Story, and Kathryn Watts.

Rules: Use the Rafflecopter to enter. Giveaway ends 11/26/16 and is open worldwide.

Are you a Teacher Blogger or Teachers pay Teachers seller who wants to participate in giveaways like these to grow your store and social media?  Click here to find out how you can join our totally awesome group of bloggers!

<a class="rcptr" href="http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/c396cb38157/" rel="nofollow" data-raflid="c396cb38157" data-theme="classic" data-template="" id="rcwidget_e203t32f">a Rafflecopter giveaway</a>

<script src="https://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js"></script>

Permalink to the Giveaway

http://applefortheteach.blogspot.com/2016/12/weekly-25-teachers-pay-teachers-gift.html

Attachments area

Differentiated Time Lessons

Hi!

I have been working on time, elapsed time, and adding and subtracting of time for a while now. Teaching third grade and others, we get stuck with several different levels of where students are when telling time. We can go from the basics of counting the clock by 5’s to adding and subtracting time easily. I have created a product that can help scaffold telling time and more, a little easier.

There are four differentiated sections in this product for telling time. Each section is scaffolded or differentiated into varying levels of difficulty. When I first used this product, I copied each section and as a class we scaffolded to the more difficult levels together.

The first part of this product includes the basics of telling time with quarter of the hour, five minutes, and to the minute. This section increases with difficulty.

The second section is for beginning elapsed time while using a number line. In this section, students will have to be able to tell time (decipher the beginning and end time) and then be able to show how much time has elapsed using a number line.

The third section is adding and subtracting time when given the amount of elapsed time. Students will also use a number line to figure out each time measurement as well.

The fourth and final section, looks at elapsed time a little differently. Students have to complete charts to discover the missing time variable.

Overall, I felt my students really did well with this approach. I was able to go back and use the different differentiation levels with the appropriate math group for reteach if necessary.  This lesson also provided a challenge for those needing an extension. Finally, each section also provides a quiz.

If you are interested in this product click ---> Telling Time

Enjoy!

Erin

Race the Wild: Savanna Showdown

Hi All!

    Race the Wild: Savanna Showdown is the last book in the Kristin Earhart ecosystem series. Similar to the other books in this series, this book delivers ecosystem and animal interactions in a great way.

    This book series is most appropriate for students in grades 2 – 4. A brief overview of this last book includes the last leg of the four-leg race. The Red team continues its journey through the African Savanna. The team comes across many different animal species but also shows an inner conflict amongst the characters. This story is great to use for character development and problem/solution.

The main ideas students can take away are:

1.     The greatest migration on land.

2.    The African Savanna food chain interaction.

3.    Wildlife facts on the aardvark, cheetah, leopard, giraffe, termite, wildebeest, Nile crocodile, and more!

4.    Ngorongoro Crater and how it supports life in the savanna.

    This book is worth the read and I highly recommend this series. If you are interested I did complete a literature unit on this book as well as the others. The literature unit focuses on comprehension, character traits and development, fact journals, maps, persuasive writing, and more.

    These are some pics from the unit. If you are interested please click on this link: Race the Wild: SavannaShowdown.

Thanks,

Erin Hansen

Types of Apples

Hi!

I have been up to a lot lately.  I wanted to try tying in more into my annual Johnny Appleseed unit. So I decided to focus more on different types of apples and integrating it into the different subject areas.  I came up with a simple theme of small research on 10 of the most popular apple types and use a timeline to sequence when they surfaced on the mass-market.

For the other subject areas:

Paragraph writing tie-in: Students taste tested six different apple types and then wrote about their favorite type of apple and why. This turned into a craftivity.

Poetry: Students taste apples and then write a triante poem about an apple.

Math tie-in: Students measure different apple types with measuring tapes, spring scales, and a balance. (This I did as a teacher led center). Pic below.

Science tie-in: Students conducted apple experiments to look for solutions to stop the oxidation process.

Overall, this theme has created a lot of motivation, learning, and great writing results.

For the first two days I have decided to post the product as a FREEBIE for FOLLOWERS, as a thank you!

Types of Apples Link

Enjoy!

Erin

Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan

Hi All!

One of the books that over the years I felt has made an impact on understanding differing cultures and immigrant struggles includes Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan.  I have read this book several times and even created a reader’s theater play to accompany the book and literature unit.

This book is about a young girl named Esperanza who grows up a wealthy child living on her family farm in Mexico. When unexpectedly her father is killed, leaving the mother in a difficult position. She must either marry her cruel brother-in-law or sneak away.  Esperanza and her mother chose to flee to America leaving the grandmother behind to follow later. The book follows Esperanza through many difficulties and shows how she matures, including how she starts to understand the enormity of her new life situation.

The main ideas students can take away are:

1.     A drastic character change from the beginning of the story until the end. Showing how Esperanza goes from being a girl of privilege to a migrant worker.

2.    It demonstrates the struggles immigrant workers face when coming to America and how people slave to make pennies.

3.    Introduces what striking on a picket line is and what Esperanza felt like in the choice to cross or not cross the picket line.

4.    It demonstrates to be proud of who you are no matter your life situation and more.

Overall, I wholeheartedly recommend this book. I feel it is best suited for grades 4 through 6 where students can pick up on the more difficult concepts.

Esperanza Rising Reader’s TheaterPlay and Literature Unit.

Thanks!

Erin Hansen

Integrating Character Traits

Hi All!

Something that I have been working on since last year has been integrating character trait lessons throughout the year.

By doing this it has improved student learning by:

1.     Increase the learning of new vocabulary

2.    Looking at book characters in a different way

3.    Making connections between character traits and their motivations throughout the book

4.    Applying character traits to their own created stories and analyzing other stories to see if they can recognize the traits

5.    Discovering their own character traits

After teaching the basic lessons about character traits to students, I had students implement it into their writing.  I did this by giving students 2-3 character trait cards.

Character Card Example

Character Card Example

Depending on the student’s challenge level, depended on the cards I gave them. For example, a student that struggles might have received the cards, friendly and stubborn (basic character traits). A student that needs a bit more of a challenge would receive the cards, obstinate and ridiculous (more thought provoking character traits). Another difficult challenge is to give students opposite traits such as selfish and generous.

Students take their cards and have to create a story with a main character that holds ALL trait cards that were given. I also give students a graphic organizer to show the character traits and how they will or were represented in the story.  This makes them accountable to plan out the story and integrate the character traits.

Here is an example of Harry Potter:

I hope this is an idea you can apply to your own classroom. I truly believe it benefited my students in their reading and writing.

I do have a character trait card PDF Presentation and Card/Activities product. If you are interested please click on this link: Character Traits.

Thanks!

Erin Hansen

All About Me Poster and Activities FREEBIES

Hi Everyone,

I just added a new freebie for my shop. It is for the beginning of the year and is All About Me Posters and activities. Here is a quick peak.  If you like it, please consider following my shop for more freebies and great products to come!

 All About Me Poster Freebies link - then just click on my free download button.

Thanks,

Erin