Super Sunday

First of all, Happy Easter everyone, and God bless!

Second, it's "Super" Sunday! Just have a quick super activity we did during the week to share with you all. It has been quite the busy weekend, and still have lots to do tonight to prepare for the week!

This week we culminated our unit on conserving natural resources by creating "Recycling Superheroes". To kick off this activity, I always read one of my favorite stories with my students that just ties in absolutely perfectly- "Michael Recycle", by Ellie Bethel. It's a story about a super hero (decked out in recycled goods) who goes to a town and encourages them to be more "green". After, I read the story each year, I share with my students that they will be creating "Recycling Superheroes", like Michael, out of recyclable goods, and will then write stories about the adventures of their "green" heroes. I will note that I usually read this story the day before spring break or before a weekend to give my students the opportunity to collect recyclable materials from their houses to bring in. I usually also send a note home that day explaining our activity to parents or stick it in my newsletter too! I would def. give yourself a little time to collect enough recyclable items to create the superheroes- because the more available to the students- the more creative they tend to be!

Here are some of the "Recycling Superheroes" my students created this school year!

One of my groups even created this skateboard for their superhero to get around! haha. I love second grade creativity!

This activity is included in my "It's Good to be Green" supplemental unit along with corresponding writing paper used to write about the adventures of the "Recycling Superheroes! Click on the image below if you'd like to check out our whole unit!

Earth Day Bag Project, Last Day for Giveaway!

So I went shopping yesterday. It's possible certain I may have gone a little overboard in the new shoe department. However, as I know you all can appreciate (as I have seen some of your fantastically fashionable posts as well), I got a good deal on all of them- and the zinger....I can wear all of these sandals to school, because they are not technically "flip flops". Is anyone else as obsessed with wedges as I am? Being a soaring minute 5 feet tall myself, finding shoes that give me some height and that are comfy enough to wear to school all day is A-mazing!

Alright, thanks for letting me share my tangental (not sure that's a word) shoe excitement. On to the educational business...

Has anyone else ever participated in the "Earth Day Groceries Project"?  If not, here is the "quick" lowdown. At the beginning of April, when you are on your weekly grocery store visit, take a moment to ask the store manager if they could donate paper bags for this project. You snag enough for just your class or if you really want to do it up- get your whole school involved. I have done both in the past. Once you have all of your paper bags (I would get one for each student participating) then you bring them back to school and all of the students decorate one bag with an earth friendly message or picture. Then, you simply return the bags to the store, and on Earth Day they will use them to bag up all of the customers items. The kids absolutely love going to the store that day with their parents to see all of the bags! It's such a simple way to send a positive message and get the kids involved in a short and sweet service learning activity. Click on the icon above to learn more!

Finally just a reminder that this is the last day to enter our "Dazzling Double Giveaway"! It ends tonight  (March 31/April 1) at midnight! I have had so much fun reading all of your $100 classroom shopping spree responses thus far, and I want to thank you guys for taking a moment out of your day to share your thoughts and participate in our giveaway! Casey and I super excited about it, so if you haven't entered yet (and you still want to), don't delay, do it today! (Because like I said...it ends tonight!) 

Click on the button to take you to our giveaway post!

Measurement, Paragraphs, and Green Kids!

This week we have been focusing on measuring area and perimeter and nailing this concept down! Today we had a little fun with it. I gave all of the kids a piece of centimeter graph paper and they had to create their name out of the paper. Then they glued all of the letters to a piece of construction paper and had to find the area and perimeter of each of the letters in their name. I must say- I was a little nervous as to how difficult it would be for them to visualize the letters in "square" form. But i was beyond impressed- most of them could do it better than me! Here are a few examples:

During "Writer's Workshop" today we did a bridging activity. For those not familiar with the "dual" world, after each unit, in a dual classroom, one may do a bridge to connect the concepts already learned in one language to the next. For instance, I just finished teaching a unit completely in Spanish about the 4 types of sentences and how to use them to write great introductions and conclusions. Thus, today, because I had finished the unit, we did a bridge lesson in which I connected the content they already knew to the English language. First, we bridged the vocabulary ie: declarativa/declarative, imperativa/imperative. As you may notice, the words appear very similar. Those are cognates- words that sound the same and mean the same thing in two languages. My kids love finding those during our bridging lesson, and they are so important to point out as it helps strengthen that linguistic connection!  

After bridging the vocabulary and concepts, I usually do a little activity to go along with the vocabulary we have just bridged in the other language. To do this today, I gave each of students a strip that had a sentence on it. The sentence was part of a 5 sentence paragraph on a specific topic. They had to locate their friends around the room that had the other sentences in their paragraph, and then work together to put them in order. 

After all of the groups had put their paragraphs in order. We took an in depth look at the intro and concluding sentences of each paragraph. The groups had to read them aloud and then as a class, we determined which type of sentence it was using that new vocabulary we just bridged in English! If you think this activity could be useful for your class, click on the image below for a free copy of the paragraph strips I used!

Finally, we spent all this week learning about what it means to be "green" as part of our science/social studies combined units on goods/resources and natural resource conservation. At the beginning of the week, we discussed what it meant to be "green". I had the students do a little schema writing before hand and asked them to write down what they thought it meant.-whoo hilarious! Had everything from aliens to wearing green clothes and dying our hair!

Needless to say now I think/hope they have a much better idea. Each day I read them a different book about a way in which we can be more "green". After reading they completed a reflection sheet to add to add to their "How to be a "green" Kid" poster we created the first day. Here are some of the finish products. (They don't look quite as cute because I had to block out their photos...but you get the idea!)

I plan to finish getting this combined unit (in English and Spanish) up for you guys during my break this week! Just need to add some finishing touches!

And Spring Break has officially begun! Anyone else off this week? Have any exciting plans?