Stripes, Polka Dots, Safari, O My!

Happy Summer Lovely Bloggers!

Hope you all have had a chance to relax a bit! We have had an over abundance of rain and flooding here...so I am hoping for some serious sunshine in the coming weeks!

However, with all my time in doors I have had the chance to work on a new product for you all!

Introducing: Dual Language Classroom Jobs...in a variety of pack options!

Click on the spread to take you to my TpT store to see each of the options!

Some of you may be stripes folk...

Others perhaps prefer polka dots...

...or maybe some of you have a jungle themed classroom and would prefer the safari print!

I tried to cover a wide variety of bases here! Each pack does of course have all 24 jobs in both English and Spanish and comes with larger and small print options for use in creating a clip chart, popsicle stick pockets, a bulletin board, you name it!

Super Informational Writing!

My kiddos finished up some truly SUPER informational writing pieces during this spring. I wanted to finish translating the template and getting the pack ready to share with you all before I posted them...and now that I have a little more free time with school out...it is finally ready to go!

In creating their pieces my kids worked hard to select a topic of interest to them, research the topic in a variety of ways, and go through the writing process from beginning to end to publish a piece of informational writing in English. I am seriously honored to share some of their work with you today. I am so proud!

After immersing ourselves in a variety of informational texts and learning the why's and how's of how authors select their topics, each of my students chose a topic they either knew a great deal about and/or were dying to learn about!

Here are just a few they came up with:

My students were each required to create at least four chapters for their pieces as well as an introduction and conclusion. Here are some examples of the chapters written from the pieces above:

As you can see some students chose to print images from home to add...and others created their own illustrations! I left it up to them :)!

The voice of this student in this piece on volleyball just shines through. I love it! Check out the second page..."You should not wear any type of jewelry or braces".  Too funny! You can see this one used a marker to bolden "jersey" and "braces" as well as they were part of her glossary of course!

Each of the students were also required to add at least one "extra" in the publishing process. They could do this through including a Glossary, Index, Table of Contents, etc. 

Here are some completed examples that go with a book titled "How to Take Care of a Puppy":

I love her dedication page...just perfect for her topic!

I seriously wish I could share all of their work with you all! They were so excited to share them with one another!

If you are interested in creating informational pieces with your students, my newest pack includes all of the pages shown here and more for your students use! Of course, they all come in English and Spanish as well! Click on the image to take you to my TpT store!

First Free Friday!

That's right...it is my first free Friday...and by that I mean first Friday of summer! Our last day of school was Wednesday of this week...and while the weather has not quite been cooperating (60's in June?)...I am glad to finally relax a bit! Especially after such a busy week...check out what we did over our last few days as I link up with Doodle Bugs for "Five for Friday!"

1. On Monday we received a package from some very special friends in Spain! Paula from Learning in Spain and her students have become our class pen pals this school year and my students are thoroughly enjoying it. I was so elated to see their final letters arrived before we left for summer break! It has been such a wonderful experience for my students to see how valuable their Spanish is in communicating with kids from different countries and cultures! 

2. On Tuesday we prepared for our Super Second Grade Graduation! We had some reflection time and discussion surrounding our favorite activities and events from second grade. Then each student decorated our grad background poster by adding a statement sharing their favorite part of 2nd grade.

3. All of the parents came for our grad ceremony in the afternoon! Each student was presented with a cape in liu of a diploma as they graduated from "super" second grade ;)! They were also given a copy of a DVD we watched pre-ceremony with photos from our year! We also did a fabulous hat toss (which we practiced thoroughly with "eyes in the direction of the floor" ahead of time so there were no eye injuries!). So much fun!

Plus, my fabulous class and their families presented yours truly at the end with a scrapbook they secretly put together with a page completed by each student with photos and messages for me...SERIOUSLY ADORBS.

And...I mean common...the cover is too perfect!

And not only did they spoil me with this beautiful book...my class parents chipped in to buy all of the decorations and graduation treats. Check out what we got to dig in to post ceremony! Delish!

4. As a thank you to some of these wonderful volunteers who have worked with us in particular with reading in our classroom all year the students and I had a little something we put together for them as well!

Each envelope contains a few stationary cards put together with ribbon and with messages from the kiddos along with a Barnes & Noble gift card for our volunteers!

5. Finally, we finished out our week on Wednesday morning with a little yearbook and memory book signing. These fab memory books were created by Mynda Rivera and you can get a copy here. As second grade is the first year we really dive in to cursive, I took advantage of the opportunity for a little extra practice for the students with this handwriting style. Each one had to sign their name in cursive...in true signature fashion. After the 27th time, I'd say they had it down!

Such a fun week. Kind of bittersweet as I will not be in my own classroom next year. However, I am thoroughly looking forward to my position as a dual coach to get into all of the classrooms and gather and support our staff with a variety of great ideas to share with ya'll in the future! Happy beginning of summer!

Currently and Father's Day Freebie

We finished up our Super Father's Day activity this morning for the kiddos to take home and share with their padre's mid-month! 

We talked about similes and read the book "I'm Quick as a Cricket (Veloz como un grillo)" by Audrey Wood. Then we got to work writing a few similes and other statements about our super dads.

Here is one completed in English...

In Spanish...

(He even cut out a photo of Dad to make it more authentic ;))

And one even made for a brother :)!

Snag this quick Father's Day freebie in both English here (Created by Little Miss Glamour Goes to Kindergarten). And in Spanish (my translated version) here.

Now to link up with Farley @ Oh' Boy 4th Grade for this month's "Currently"!

And finally....duh duh duh...this year's class t-shirt revealed! We received them just in time to sport them on Field Day this past Friday! You def. couldn't miss us! Love it!

English Word Work Review

It is hard to believe but the end is drawing near! A week and a half left!

This being said, each year at the end of the year I like to take some time to reflect with the kiddos on all we have learned. One of the tools I utilize to do this is the "My Spelling Reference Book" I have created to review all of the key word study patterns in English we have covered throughout the year. 

Each day for the last couple weeks of school we review a key concept and complete a page of our reference book. I tell the students they can then keep this book to utilize during the summer and in third grade as it now contains a smaller version of all those key anchors we created in class!

Here are some of the pages we completed this week!

You can get these and much more in my "My Spelling Reference Book" pack in my TpT store! Click on the image to check it out. Also, for those of you who are in a dual or bilingual room you can check out the Spanish equivalent "Mi Libro de Consulta de Ortografia" here. (We will be doing that one next week!)

Also, just for fun...our jam packed English wall that my kiddos used throughout the year as a resource- Take it in while ya can folks..down it comes tomorrow! I can't believe how time flies!

Plant Overload!

We are wrapping up our unit on plants this week and have had so much fun carrying our theme throughout all subject areas!

We wrote plant part cinquain poems to complete our "Poemas Es'plant'aculares" bulletin board for spring! 

I printed out several strips of paper each relaying one of the five main parts of a plant and placed them in a bin. Each student had to close his/her eyes and select one for their poem topic so we had a variety of all!

Here is one of their creations:

I got the cinquain writing paper from Cara Carroll here.

We also reviewed long e patterns this week through completing a hunt for "seed" words and "leaf" words. (I noticed after snapping this photo that my little one here left "seed" out of the dictation after the word "peach" which was a key link to the sort below!)

After writing the words it also led to a great discussion about how some do not follow the rules!

Grab yourself a copy of this activity with/without the dictation portion here.

We also continued our practice with finding area by creating and measuring plants! The students had to find the area of their flower, stem, and leaves!

Grab a copy of the measurement labeling sheet in English or Spanish here.

We continued by reading about those crazy "Meat Eating Plants" and then organized strips of sentences in order in groups to complete an organized retell/paragraph of this non-fiction text.

And...we also spent the week doing some fun exploration activities such as labeling the parts of flower...

Each group added the names to strips of paper and used push pins (post a safety discussion ;)) to place them where they belonged!

Finally we investigated how water moves through a stem. Day 1 we made our predictions as to what would occur, and Day 2 we followed up!

This stem investigation activity page among others we completed throughout our plant unit this month that are not pictured here are included in my "A Little Dirt Never Hurt" pack pictured below if you are looking for more activities!

It has been quite the "Plant"tastic past few weeks!

On a final note, my plant pack above, as well as all other items in my TpT store will be on sale tomorrow and Wednesday in honor of Teacher Appreciation week. If you have been waiting to purchase something- now is the time to do it folks ;)! Receive 28% total when you enter code: TAD13! 

Click on the link below or on my plant pack above to take you to my store! I'm looking forward to doing some serious shopping tomorrow too!

Open House, Animal Teeth, and other Random Things!

Linking up with Doodle Bugs for "Five for Friday Saturday"! I have a good excuse for being late though- we had Open House last night until 8pm...and if you all can imagine how it feels to be at school until 8pm...you can imagine my bed was the only place calling my name when I arrived home! 

So here goes...5 randoms from my busy week!

1. Alphabet Countdown - We started our annual "Alphabet Countdown" as a school on Tuesday. "A" was for "Show your Appreciation" to you teacher!

I love the "From one princess to another..." card. Too cute! (We are on "E" Monday!)

2.) We have been working on main idea/details all week. One of my students bought me the most adorable book at the book fair last week called "What if You had Animal Teeth?" which I thought would be perfect for practicing this concept.

Each kiddo created their own little "mouth/teeth" organizer to retell the important parts of the text!

3.) "Super Gallon Man" arrived to teach us all about equivalent units for capacity!

4.) We wrote acrostic poems for addition adjective practice!

(And to answer your question, no it is not a crack in his tooth, it is shining!)

You can grab a copy of the acrostic poem template here.

5.) And we set up our poems in our chairs and cleaned our room on Friday to prep for Open House that night!

I must say...they were the most well-behaved students I have ever had!

I even "hung out" for the evening at my guided reading chair to man the "class books" area ;)!

Feel free to check out other "Five for Fridays or Saturdays" and link up your own from the week!