Five for Friday {Linky Party - April 18th}

Hey everyone!  It has been a super-short school week (read: 2.5 days), but I have been super busy...  Read today's Five for Friday to find out why!

We came back from Spring Break, taught for two weeks and then had our spring conferences.  We only had a 2.5 day work week and then got five days off of school.  Not bad, right?  Silly me thought I had to squish a whole week of learning in those two and a half days though.

My kids were real troopers though and we got through it.  Worked until 7:30 on Wednesday night, but got off at 11:00 on Thursday and don't go back until Tuesday...after report cards and conferences I am happy for the days off. 

Conferences went really well though -- I have really great families and I am ready to stuff as much learning as I can in these last eight weeks!

If you follow me on Instagram (bittybilinguals) or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/BittyBilinguals) you have probably already seen this pic, but it was how we started the week.   The kids studied different types of rocks and we came up with a list of adjectives that describe rocks.  This was a totally kid created list...  I love, love "cementosa."  The student totally used what he knew of adjectives and tried to turn a noun into an adjective.  Alas it didn't make the final poster.

We use University of Chicago's Everyday Math program and we were finishing up unit 7 this week.  We learned about median and mode by graphing the data of our long jumps.  We went to the hallway for this activity.  After we recorded their jumps, the kids wrote their longest jump on the back of their paper.  They then put themselves in order from shortest jump to longest jump.  To demonstrate median, the kids sat down, one from the beginning of the line and one from the end of the line, at a time.  By the time we took the end of the unit test on Wednesday, the kiddos were pros!

Each year the second grade team gets together and the kids make pointillism pictures.  We split all of the second graders into four groups (rainbows, flowers, suns, and kites) and they work with one of the teachers to create a painting using pointillism.  I was in charge of rainbows.  I am so proud of how these came out.  We just used Q-Tips and paint to fill in a shape (the kids traced from a template ahead of time).  I told my group that they picked the coolest of all the designs, but the hardest too.  After a couple of rows their hands are going to hurt and they are going to want to start 'brushing,' but it only looks cool if they keep on making dots...  haha, they just rocked them.

The kids then paired their paintings with an acrostic poem using 'spring.'  In a bilingual classroom we have all levels of English, so the poems ranged from single words to full sentences, but I think the whole class brainstorming really helped support all of the kiddos.

I have been trying to revamp my Teachers Pay Teachers Store (graciefacelearning) and a lot of my older products.  Last weekend I tackled all of my Gira y haga una gráfica (Spin and Make a Graph) packs.  They went from this to this...

I am so proud of these little packs.  I am planning to put them at our math stations this week to help with graphing skills.  I would think that a lot of my students would have how to make a graph down at this point of second grade, but there were a few that surprised me at this last test, so I think these are needed.

There are a variety of topics to choose from:

 Gira y haga una gráfica - los colores - Click Here!

 Gira y haga una gráfica - las figuras - Click Here!

Gira y haga una gráfica - las figuras 3D - Click here!

...and I added a new pack to the Gira y haga una gráfica family...¡las monedas!  Click here!

I am so excited!  I also decided to bundle all of these for 20% off!

Gira y haga una gráfica Super-Pack - Click Here!

My plan is to work on revamping the English versions this weekend, so stay tuned!

Phew that is it for my "short" week!  Go on over to Doodle Bugs to see others' Five for Friday!

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!?

Saturday Snapshots - Shopping Edition

I am linking up with Michele from Run! Miss Nelson's Got the Camera for another Saturday Snapshots.  This time, it's the shopping edition (for me)!

So I was reading my Facebook feed when I came across this picture from Mrs. Stanford's Class and I thought, I must.get.to.Michael's.now!

So I went...and our Scentos were 30 cents each and another 15% off for teachers.  I am itching to go back to get more...

Do you see those cute bird and superhero awards and stickers?  I love them!!  Okay, so then I found this cute owl box:  I don't know what I am going to do with it, but for $2, I had to buy it!

I feel like I give out pencils for everything and I was looking at my stash the other day and it is slim pickin's for "boy" pencils, so I had to buy a bunch for a $1 a piece.

These are what I consider my deal (even with the Scentos being so cheap).  These packs of erasers and pencil toppers were 75 cents each (there are 100 in a bag).  My kids were crazy about mini-erasers last year (they named them, made little houses for them...), so I jumped at buying these!  Then the paper and bookmarks: more birds and superheroes!  I should explain here.  I did a superhero theme last year and there was nothing out there for superheroes and now they are everywhere, so I am snatching it up for when I repeat the theme.  Then the birds, even though I haven't made the official announcement, my theme is birdy chevron this year (aka, birds mixed with chevron).

So that's it for my Saturday Snapshots -- I will be at Staples tomorrow morning for one cent folders - I need them for the kiddos, but I am also making a project with them!!!

Have you found any good back to school deals?

I have been busy...and I found a cute owl!

This week has been very crazy (and it is only Wednesday!).  I have had some family stuff going on, I had class for my masters, and I finished summer school!  The last one is definitely something to celebrate!!

I also have been busy making products for my teaching store...

Superhero Themed CAFE Posters for the Bilingual Classroom

I had a superhero themed classroom last year and I had these CAFE posters up, but I decided to revamp them and add them to my TpT store.  I think they're pretty cool (am I a bit biased?):  I made the chalkboard ones and the colorful ones available in one pack.  They are available here in Spanish and here in English.

Superhero Themed CAFE Posters

THEN!  I made this Encuentra la letra page for every letter of the alphabet.  It could be cool as a independent worksheet or a center, but I was thinking it would be cool to do it on an interactive board and have the kiddos come up and circle the letter.  Of course, I had to do it in both languages!

¡Encuentra la letra!

Find the Letter!

I will have to post all the goodies I have been making for my classroom at a later date...I think I {might} have found my theme!

One last thing before I go...my owl.

So I went to Target this afternoon to get cat food, $101.57 later I walked out.  I found this little guy in the dollar spot.  I got one for Grace's playroom, one for Grace's bedroom, and one for my classroom. Hey!  They were a $1 each!

Off to St. Louis and Some Back to School Thoughts...

Well, hubby and I are off to St. Louis for an overnight getaway...I have never been there!

I didn't want to abandon my little blog so soon, so I am writing a post to be uploaded in my absence!

Now that July has come, the back to school sales will start next weekend and that means I am already thinking of Back to School.

Every year I have a theme in my classroom.  I don't think it costs that much more money and it makes it fun for me!  Yes, I said {me}. Think about it, these kiddos are coming back to school and everything is new to them: new classroom, new teacher, new grade level...  Me?  I am still teaching in the same room, same grade...I need to change it up a bit.  So that is where the theme comes into play.

Over the past seven years I have done everything from sports (my first year) to Superheroes (last year).  I have the kids make something on the first day of school so that they can feel part of the theme and classroom decor. Here are my kids from last year making their superhero shields on the first day of school:

One tip of advice is that I sort out the letters for their shields before the first day of school.  It makes the process so much easier.  We hang these up in our classroom all year and like I said, it makes the classroom theirs': to walk into the classroom and see their names, they know they belong.

I will talk more on themes later (I STILL cannot decide on what my theme is going to be for my upcoming year), but I am curious: What kind of first day activities are you planning for your kiddos?