Super Biographies

For the past couple weeks, we have been taking part in a biography unit in my classroom. After reading a variety of different biographies and learning about their characteristics, I shared with my students that they would each be writing a biography of their own.

I took an idea that I found from Amy Lemons over at Step Into 2nd Grade with Mrs. Lemons in which her students worked in groups to write biographies on various teachers in the building, and tweaked it a bit to work for my kiddos! My students interviewed the dual language and bilingual teachers in our building, as I wanted the project to be done in Spanish. Also, I thought this would be a great experience for them to get to know the teachers in the program that they have already had or will have in the future!

Before our big "interview" day, we worked to brainstorm questions that we felt fit into the 4 key parts of a biography- (childhood, adult life, how the person has influenced others, other interesting facts). Then the students were presented with their "interviewee". My- how excited they all were! I wrote the name of the teacher they would be interviewing along with the time of their interview the following day on a post-it note. I had the students stick the post-it notes to their tables to be left on as a reminder for the following day.

I will say that interview day was a little nutty- simply because students were in and out of the room all day long. The staff members came for the interviews on their individual planning times (which was so wonderful of them all), and took about 15 minutes with the students to complete their interview. I would say if you plan to try this, make sure you make no big plans for the day in regards to teaching something you want all of the students to be there for! We did a lot of reviewing/projects, etc. The post-its were extremely helpful, too, as the kids were very aware of when their special time was a comin!

After the interview day, we spent the next week using the information we had gathered to write our paragraphs on each topic. We spent one day working on each paragraph as a class (4 days in all), then on the 5th day, we had a big ole' peer editing party!

This leads us to this past week in which we have been working on our final drafts. The students had to rewrite each paragraph for their final copy as well as create a picture to go along with their bio. To make the picture, I had our tech. teacher print out all of the teachers' school photos and then the kids used construction and scrapbook paper for the bodies. They turned out super cute!

(I'd totally wear this outfit to school ;))

(Love this one. She made her such a fashionista. Look at the bow and belt!)

I apologize there is a glare in some of the pictures. I think some of them may have been a little glue happy :).

Here is an example of one of the paragraphs inside. We just used your run of the mill notebook paper!

Hope you guys have a great rest of your weekend! Don't forget to make sure to enter my giveaway as well! Click on the link to go to the post!

First "Super" Giveaway!

That's right a giveaway in honor of my super "cincuenta" (that's 50 in Spanish- I liked the way it flowed better!), followers!

So here's the scoop ladies (...and possible gent or two...):

The SUPER winner will receive...

* A $25 gift card to Barnes & Noble (purchase something for yourself or the kiddos)

* A copy of one of my favorite "super themed" books- "Dex: The Heart of a Hero" by Caralyn Buehner 

Now how do you enter you may ask? Simple!

1.) Follow my blog (The Second Grade Superkids), and comment that you did so or already do.

2.)Follow my brand new TpT store, and comment that you did! (I will preface this with I just opened it, so there is nothing to look at yet, but I intend to post my first item this weekend. So if you follow you will be the first to know about it!)

3.) Blog about my giveaway with a link to this post! Leave 2 comments that you did. (It's a double entry folks!)

Get your entries in by 12:00a.m. (CST) on March 15th! I will announce the winner the following day!

Good luck, super followers :)

50 Followers and Fractions...O my!

To my delightful surprise, I signed on today to see that I have reached the 50 follower mark! As all of us new bloggers (or for those who once were) know- this is a very auspicious occasion to be celebrated! I can't tell you all how much I appreciate your support! I am just jumpin in my jeans over here!

To give back to all of you and to undoubtably celebrate a bit, I believe my first GIVEAWAY, must be had! Check back tomorrow for details (and to enter of course!). Thank you ladies! I feel that I have grown so much as a teacher by being part of this wonderful, crazy, blogging world with you already!

Enough of the mushy gushy now...and on to fractions. We are wrapping up our Fraction unit this week, and my kids have been working on solving fraction number stories. Today, I thought why not amp up the fun and write some of our own. And while we are at it, lets do a literature tie-in to Dr. Seuss...after all it is his month. Thus, I present you with "Our Fish Fraction Stories", inspired by Dr. Seuss' "1 Fish, 2 Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" (or in my class "Un pez, 2 peces, pez rojo, pez azul").

We started our lesson today by reading the story and discussing the ways that Dr. Seuss used different adjectives to describe the different types of fish (and other pets) in the story. I shared with the kids that I wanted them to use this understanding to develop a "fish fraction story" involving 2 opposite types of fish. For instance, they could pick slow fish/fast fish, or skinny fish/fat fish, etc. Some of them ended up using ideas from the book, and some of them got creative. It was a great lesson in practicing adjective placement in Spanish for my Spanish language learners as well, as the adjective comes after the noun in Spanish you see. 

After the kids wrote the stories, they had to draw the picture that went along with it. Then we put all of their stories in page protectors and each kid got a Expo marker and an eraser and we had some fun! The kids left their stories at their tables and walked about the room then solving one anothers' stories. I am going to put them all in a book now so that they can use them for further practice during their independent math work time! Here are some of the finished products:

(The translated version- There are 9 fish swimming. 7 are strong and 2 are weak. What fraction of the fish are strong fish?)

(There are 9 fish swimming 3 are green and 6 are yellow. What fraction of the fish are green?)

(There are 6 fish swimming. 4 are red and 2 are yellow. What fraction of the fish are yellow?)

Cute right? (Sorry for the glare...page protectors.) I can't wait to put our book together!

Here's the freebie if you are interested! Graphics by the lovely The 3am Teacher and my friends over at Scrappin Doodles.

(No worries- it is in English too!)

Thanks again to my AMAZING followers. Don't forget to check back tomorrow for a GIVEAWAY in your honor!

The Sneetches

Just a quick little post for a quick little cross-curricular activity we did today. We finished up our unit on Black History Month last week, so I was looking for a way to briefly review the key ideas from this unit. Furthermore, we have been focusing a great deal on making deep connections, and I love to tie in this reading strategy whenever I can. AND....March is the month of "Seuss" therefore, I had to make sure he was involved as well. And where did this all lead me....to "The Sneetches"

This book helped me create a short, 20 minute lesson, that incorporated all three of these things!

First, we read. I asked the students to share any connections they were able to make with the class orally while I read aloud! I can tell you that within seconds they were all connecting it back to what had taken place in the all the biographies we had read during our Black History Month study.

After reading, the students had to decide upon one of their deep connections to write down and reflect on how it helped them to better understand the story. Here are some examples (one connected it to Martin Luther King Jr., one did her own thing!:

You can download the connection sheet I created here for free!

(Border is by Scrappin Doodles :))

To finish up the lesson, I created a poster with the heading "How to (NOT) be like the Sneetches". We briefly brainstormed different things we could do to be the opposite of the Sneetches. For example, talk to someone/play with someone new, go out of our way to help someone, make sure we include people in the games we play etc. I told the kids that throughout the week I would like them to try to do some of these things. After they do, they can come to the classroom and share what they did to be "NOT" like the Sneetches on a small post it note and attach their post-it to the poster. At the end of the week, we will read and reflect on what we have done/written. I'll try to remember to post a picture of our completed poster at the end of the week for you guys, so you can see how it turned out!

Happy Monday! Whoo!

Super Sunday with a "Top 10" Award

While I have officially deemed Sundays, "Super Sundays" on my blog, and promised to share something super themed from my classroom, I thought this Sunday, I could make a small exception.

I am just so excited about the "Top 10" award I recently received from Ms. T over at Second Grade Math Maniac. (Thank you very much! And if you have not already, you should go on over to her blog as it is top notch as well :))

Thus, I thought that instead of sharing something "super" in my own classroom this week, I would send you all over to some other bloggers blogs who do "super" things as well in their classrooms each day. Without further ado, I give you some "Top 10" (SUPER) blogs :):

1. Jessica at Glitzy in First Grade
2. Señora Allen at Dual Kinder Teacher
3. Gina at A Chocoholic Teacher
4. Miss Decarbo at Second Grade Sugar and Spice
5. Laurie at Chickadee Jubilee
6. Monica at Mommy Maestra
7. Heather at Second Grade Perks
8. Pattie at Patties Classroom
9. Sheri at 1st Grade Rocks
10. Becky at 2nd Grade Rocks

Please take a moment to check them all out, as I can attest I have found many a great idea from these ladies.

Before signing off, I just wanted to share with you all "Permission to Pin" from my blog. I love Pinterest as much (if not more) than the next person, and I know that I have gotten so many wonderful ideas from this site from the sharing that goes on. Sharing is caring, right? :) (Pin away!)

Super Seuss Day!

Busy week! We had report cards due this week, which as I am sure you all know is just oh so much fun! I can't believe there is only one trimester left in the school year...times a flyin'...

Thought I'd share a few activities we did during our Seusstastic Day yesterday with you all! Don't worry- there will be more throughout the month ;).

We started off the morning listening to Justin Bieber read "The Cat in the Hat".
Here is it below if you are interested (although I am sure most of you have seen it!)




After this, we created the lovely little Seuss hats we would be sportin' the rest of the day. But of course, I had to tie them in to the story we just listened to somehow, so the kids did a retell of "The Cat in the Hat" on the white stripes of their hats.

For independent reading time, all of the kids were asked to bring a book or two from home written by Dr. Seuss (if they did not have any they borrowed one of mine). We spent 20 minutes dedicated to reading Dr. Seuss' work! So much fun, and some of the kids brought in books that I had not read yet myself!

On Thursday, we had read "Huevos verdes con jamón" (Green Eggs and Ham) and discussed Dr. Seuss use of rhyme, word families, etc. I alternate spelling units in English and Spanish, and I was looking for a lesson I could do to introduce the suffixes "-ísimo/a" in Spanish to kick off this new unit. Thus in an attempt to be creative (and use my students schema from the Seuss book we had read the day before), I created a short story I entitled "Feliz cumpleaños Dr. Seuss", all about how he does not want a cake for his birthday (no matter where or what kind), similar to how the character does not want the green eggs and ham in the story. Instead of "Sam I Am", I had it refer back to "superniños" (superkids) which is what I call my students. After reading the poem, I asked my students if they noticed anything about the words I chose to use. They immediately share that similiar to "Huevos verdes con jamón" there were a bunch that rhymed. We then identified the rhyming words and the suffix that they contained.

To conclude the lesson, each of my students had to select one of the items from the story for instance "un hombre viejísimo" (a very old man) or "el pastel sabrosísimo" (the very tasty cake) and draw and illustration of it for us to add to our poster. For those who don't know- your little Spanish lesson for the day - when you add "ísimo/a" to a word it is as if you add "very" to it , or make it "more so" that the original meaning.

In social studies/Writer's Workshop we have been studying and working on a biography unit. So of course we had to read a biography on Dr. Seuss. One of my students found a book in our school library  actually that was a wonderful English biography (we used the pictures from this one), but of course...no Spanish. Wikipedia in Español to the rescue- it wasn't quite as exciting, but I read the key facts I thought would be relevant to them. Ahh the joys of a dual language teacher.

While I read, the students each had to write down three facts they learned about Dr. Seuss on a birthday cake activity sheet I created.  I am going to put them up on our "Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss" bulletin board that I will be creating next week. They turned out pretty cute! (We used tissue paper for the candle flames.)

Super Sunday tomorrow- and I have a Super award to deliver to some well deserving blogs!

Super Helpers!

To go along with our theme of being "Superkids", each month my students take part in a service project. I share with them (and their parents at the beginning of the year), that just like super heroes it is our job as superkids to help better the lives of those around us in our classroom, community, and world.

We completed our February service activity this week. As ISATs (our state's standardized test) are coming up next week, we thought it would be a great way to show our support of our upper grade level peers and work to boost their morale by making them a few "super"cards to share how we feel about them!

The students each made 4 cards- (80 in all) that will be distributed to the boys and girls in the 3rd-5th grade dual language classrooms.

I would encourage everyone to include a service learning component in your classroom! I have found it so incredible to see kids at such a young age (still in that egocentric phase you know...) truly learn the meaning of giving and being compassionate to others. Because this is one of my favorite things to do with my students throughout the year, I'd thought I'd share with you some other projects we have done this year if you are ever searching for any ideas!

- We wrote letters to our Veterans.

- We collected cans as a class before Thanksgiving, and donated them to a local food pantry. (This also turned into a great math graphing activity.)

- We donated our spare changes (mostly pennies- boy do those add up) during December to raise money to fund the education of a child who could not afford to go to school for Christmas through World Vision. This was a great lesson in learning how fortunate we all are to have the right to go to school! Also, I bought one of those money counting jars (you know the one where you put in the coin and it adds it up for you). Wow, did they ever love watching their total go up and what a great way to practice counting coins!

- I went to Honduras this past summer as a translator for my mother who is an oncology nurse. She was going to train nurses in the hospitals. I visited the children's cancer hospital (which was hard to see...) and got contact information for the on site teacher. So this year, we made get-to-know-you cards and drawings, in Spanish which was perfect, and sent them to the kids in the hospital to brighten their day.  (Once again...good tie in to letter writing.) You could do this with any hospital or nursing home even too!

-Last month (this was one of my favorites) we took a morning to chat about all of the great things our custodians do for us as at school. I don't know about you all...but our custodians rock and help me with just about everything! After brainstorming, we created a giant "Thank You" poster in which the students wrote one way they help them, and then I printed out their photos and we created "Super Custodians" to hang in their doorway to remind them how "super" we think they are. So cute.

These are just some of the things we have done so far this year! To wrap up, I wanted to share a quick story with you all that has inspired me more than anything to ensure that service learning is a part of my classroom. Two years ago, when the huge earthquake in Haiti hit, I was teaching 1st grade dual. I had done similar service projects with my students that year, and we had just finished donating our spare change to World Vision in December. When I heard about the earthquake, I knew I had to at least share with my kids what was going on (in kid friendly terms of course). The day after it happened during our morning meeting I asked any of them if they had heard about it, knew what an earthquake was etc. After this, I told them that I just wanted them to think good thoughts for the people of Haiti, but that we would not be collecting money because we had just done so in Dec. and I knew their piggy banks were empty.

The next day to my surprise, I had several students come in the morning with spare change, dollars, etc. telling me that they wanted me to give it to Haiti. I had goosebumps and nearly teared up that they had come up with this all on their own, and clearly wanted to make a difference in their own little way! At our morning meeting that morning, I spoke with them again about what was going on and they reiterated to me that they really wanted to help! I could not resist of course and thus began the "Lend a Hand to Haiti" compaign. I got in contact with our local Red Cross and got canisters for not only our classroom, but all of the rooms in the school. My students brought them to all of the rooms, and collected them at the end of the two-week campaign. They made posters sharing how you could help to hang around the school, wrote and brought in news articles about what had happened to share with others, and we took some of our science time to study earth quakes and how/why they occur. In the end of it all, the director of our Red Cross came to present a giant check to us at an all school assembly thanking all of the students for their hard work. I cannot express how elated my students felt, in knowing that they did something so wonderful for another. I encourage you to take those little teachable moments any chance you can get, because for my kids it turned into a life changing experience and I can honestly tell you they will never forget what an earthquake is or where the little country of Haiti is located.

I actually had the opportunity to go to Haiti with my church the following summer. I must say it was so it was so near and dear to my heart after all that we had worked to do.

Tell me this shirt doesn't crack you up?

Does anyone do any service learning in your classroom. I am always looking for new ideas so please share! I would be so very appreciative :)