Our week on the moon and Earth

We teach thematically in our K-2 bilingual classrooms at our school.  I used to think thematic units were for pre-kinder and kindergarten, but with the success of last year I am sold!  That being said we are smack dab in the middle of our solar system unit.  The week before spring break we studied the sun, stars, and constellations in Spanish (we are continuing our studies of those topics in English this week).  The following week in Spanish we studied the moon and Earth.

Last week we started off Monday with an anticipatory sort with las fases de la luna (the phases of the moon) to see where the students were at in their knowledge of the moon phases.

Listening to the students work with their learning buddies was quite interesting.  The students all had a reason behind what they thought the moon phases should look like (putting like shapes together; starting off with a full moon and then it 'melts' away to nothing...), but none of them quite got it.

The point of the days activity wasn't to actually teach the moon phases, but an introduction to the idea.  Also, I wanted them to problem solve and figure out the pattern.  We had a lot of good discussions and I think from that point forward, I had them hooked!

 We continued with many more activities throughout our different subjects. Our dictado for the week included a bunch of our vocabulary words (along with our phonics skill - suffixes).  In writing we watched a video on Brainpop Español about la luna and we started writing our textos informativos (informative texts) with the information they we learned.

We did our texto informativo about the moon whole group, but next week they will be writing about the Earth on their own. We started adding their background knowledge for the writing by reading this book from Reading A-Z during Reading Workshop:

Click to go to the book

 (if you have an account, you can download for free!)

It was a really good, "funny," factual book.  The kids were so amazed by what they had learned and were spouting off facts to me all day:  "Teacher did you know that..."  {Um, yes, I was there.  I read the book.} Haha, no...  I was very enthusiastic with every fact they brought me.  Their excitement was contagious!  

Like I mentioned before we have a set of vocabulary that we learn with each week.  My poster isn't pretty, but it gets the job done.  The kids have their own versions in their notebooks. Next week we will bridge the vocabulary into English on the same page (different color).

I really like seeing the kids use the new vocabulary in their writing, so I had them write about what they learned about the moon and the Earth at the end of the week.  I was so surprised at the writing I got!  I challenged them to use as many vocabulary words that they got.   Probably one of my best pieces of the day came from one of my struggling readers...  I was such a proud teacher mama!

I will be honest though, it wasn't all Pulitzer Prize writing -- I had a couple who showed me, La luna es un planeta (The moon is a planet).  And that is fine -- they were showing me what they 'knew.'  It was a great time to have some mini-discussions and redirect their thoughts.  I really like teaching moments like those!

So that was our week in a shell.  This week we are moving on to the planets and astronauts, but we had a field trip on Monday and a half day on Friday - so this is going to be a tight squeeze!

What are you learning about this week!?

What in the What?

It has been over a month since I posted.  I am rectifying that situation right now.  I started thinking that no one was missing this little side project of mine and literally in the last week, I have had five friends at school ask me why I haven't blogged and a few new followers on Facebook.  

So I am back!  I have a goal to try to post at least twice a week and I really hope everyone can give me feedback of what they would like to hear about.

In our district we have been very slow to get to Common Core.  We are all at different stages of the game, but at least at my building I can say that we are very dedicated to really learn it and to learn how it can reach our students.  Last Friday we had an in-service and learned a lot about reading for information (yea Abbie).  

I know that we are supposed to be pairing nonfiction and fiction texts each week.  So in honor of our new theme, I tried to do just that.

This is just the start of our new thematic unit (plants and life cycles) so I hope to find authentic literature to pair with our non-fiction text book.

Since this is our real first taste of non-fiction I wanted to teach the elements of non-fictional texts.  So not to overwhelm my kiddos, I am going to stick with a couple of elements everyday for this week and next week.

I am pretty proud of the kids - especially when my favorite part of teaching happens...wait for it.  The connection!  This was the mini-lesson for our reading workshop time today, so after we learned about these elements the students set off to read their own self-selected texts.  The students were so excited to find labels (rótulas) in their non-fiction books!!  I love it!

Do you have any cool ideas to help the kids get into non-fiction or exploring informational texts?  I really want to know!!!

First Week in Review and Keepin' it Balanced

The first week back is over and done and this week my kiddos are workin' it like they have been in second grade for months.  I am loving it (really, I am), but here it is Tuesday night and I am finally doing a post about last week.  How do you all do it?  I love, love blogging, but...I love naps.  Sweet naps.  Then there is the idea that I said I wasn't going to bring work home and what did I do on my three-day weekend?  Lesson plans.  Sigh.  I really hope I can find a sweet balance this year and be the teacher who can do it all!!!  Any advice is appreciated!

So back to the topic at hand:  the first week of school!  I can't believe how easily I forget where these babies begin each year - these big first graders held their own this week, but at the same time I can't wait until October when they just know what to do without question (routines, etc.).  Just look at their cute faces...

We started off making our foam pieces to hang in the classroom.  I love having the students making them and creating the sense of community once they are hung.  I told the kiddos that when we hang them someone could walk into our classroom and see, wow, this is Alexandra's classroom or this is Omar's classroom...They say who belongs in this classroom!

We jumped into reading workshop right away.  Reading workshop in my classroom is a mixture of Debbie Miller and The Sisters.  Until all the routines are introduced the students are restricted to browsing baskets for the first few days.  These baskets have school-themed books and the kiddos bring one basket to their desks and they read for however amount of time.  I introduced the idea of stamina the first day and we have been working at it. Truthfully, we made it to 7 minutes, 14 seconds the first day and I totally credit their first grade teachers for it!  We made it to 11 minutes, 11 seconds by the end of the week...I am a super-proud mama-teacher!

In math we explored our math tools so that we could be ready to jump into our math series the second week of school.  I got this idea from Amy Lemons, but I needed to adapt it for my second grader needs and of course make it in Spanish.  My students didn't do too badly on it -- some of them needed help understanding what each tool was used for, but I can say for the first day of school, I was impressed!  You can grab this page in Spanish for FREE, here!

We ended the first day back by doing some Jitter Juice fun from Abby Mullin's Super in Second Grade pack!  All of the second grade classes got together to 'sing' the poem (yeah, I made a tune to it), but my kiddos got to make the actual Jitter Juice!  My students had to guess what kind of ingredients went into making the juice and then finally got to try it.  The majority of the students loved it...but surprisingly enough some didn't.

Phew!  That was our first week in a nutshell.  It was exhausting and I was falling asleep on the couch every night, but week two is going well so far.  I love jumping into the curriculum and starting the meaty stuff and I think the kiddos do too.  I have been taking a lot of pictures so I will try to be back later in the week so share more of the happenings in our second grade classroom!