Are you a new 2nd grade teacher? Here are the best tips for taking on grade 2 and all the fun that comes with it!
It's Spring! So it's time for a fun Spring learning idea. I created a printable set of Fraction Flowers that includes fractions through 1/10. This can now be purchased in my shop. Fraction Flowers are a
Open House ideas. Great activity for students to do to show during Open house.
These 5 fun 3D shapes activities for kindergarten are a great way for students to learn about shape attributes while having a blast.
Our favorite 2nd grade anchor charts for math, language arts, and beyond. You'll definitely want to use some of these in your classroom.
Fun and engaging ideas to get to know your students at the beginning of the school year. Build a strong classroom community with these free resources.
Setting up for small group in 2nd grade can be challenging! This post outlines one teacher's simple center rotation schedule.
First grade anchor charts are great tools for reminding kids about concepts in math, writing, spelling, science, and more! Check out these great ideas.
Here are some great grammar games, ideas, and activities that will help early/middle elementary aged kids enjoy grammar just a bit.
Just found out you're teaching second grade! Here's a quick start guide!
Practice telling time with this free printable time puzzle clock game for Kindergarten and grade 1 - tell time to the hour, half hours, and 15 minutes.
Hi Friends…. The past two weeks we have been working on Prefixes and Suffixes in our second-grade classroom! My kiddos were having such a good time brainstorming words with prefixes and then figuring out the meaning. They really had a strong grasp of the concept… I was pretty impressed. After our whole … Prefixes, Suffixes and a FREEBIE Just for YOU! Read More »
The first day of 2nd grade for pretty much any grade is a whirlwind. Plan for the first day of 2nd grade to keep students engaged, and excited to come back!
I love to see my students work together! So I use a Whole Class Rewards system where students do that. This is a whole class rewards system that teachers...
FREEBIE ALERT Science quiz Dear Friends,there is a lot of panic,confusion and soo much more going on out there as a result of the COVID-19… Schools are temporarily closed for the next one mon…
Kids need lots of practice when they are learning to read! Here...
Using Math Journals. Student created math journals for the entire year! These interactive math notebooks are a great way for Kinder, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade to practice math skills in an interactive way. They cover number sense, addition and subtraction, graphing, shapes, money, word problems and so much more!
Planning to tutor over the summer? Here are tips for quick and easy planning! Hi there! It's Sarah! I've been tutoring kiddos for the last year and have developed a routine that makes my planning easy and my session flow smoothly. All of the kiddos I tutor are grades K-2 and in need of a boost in their reading skills...fluency, comprehension, and phonics. Warm-up I like to start with some reading that is simple or familiar. I'll either have the kiddo re-read a text from the previous session or read fluency sentences. I have my kiddos keep a composition notebook with past passages to go back and re-read. I use lots of guided reader books to find the just right text for my kiddos to read. These are also great books to leave for kiddos to practice between sessions. Fluency sentence strips from The Moffatt Girls are a GREAT help to boost fluency and confidence! They are also super easy to leave for practice between sessions. Fluency Reading Practice My kiddos have all had good sight word recognition and really need fluency work. I switch between leveled readers and text passages. I usually have kiddos read the text themselves first. After reading, we go back through the text and find words that were tricky and read them. Next, I have the kiddo read through the text with me or by themselves if they are confident. Using a leveled reader Using fluency passages and recording words read per minute (the kiddos love to see their growth!) Find these fluency passages HERE! Using text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Comprehension After some fluency practice with the selected text, I move into comprehension work. In our district, kiddos need to do a written response comprehension question as part of their reading assessment. I have my kiddos practice a written response question with every text and in every session. Comprehension with level reader I use these question stems to develop questions based on the text. Grab the question stems HERE! Completed written response, kiddos write in their composition journal Comprehension with text evidence passages. Grab these passages HERE! Here I use a reading passage with several comprehension tasks for a 2nd grade kiddo. Find these reading passage + comprehension packets HERE! Phonics After the reading and comprehension tasks are complete, I work on some phonics task with my kiddos. One of my favorite tasks is doing a word family word splash. I select a word from our text. I like how this tasks shows kiddos that if they can spell a work like bat, they can also spell cat, mat, sat, etc. Writing short sentences with words from the Word Family Splash Word building and sounding out Extras I like to use phonics poems as an additional fluency tool. The kiddos glue them into their composition notebook so they can go back and re-read between sessions, continuing to build fluency with familiar texts. These phonics poems are from Susan Jones. I use our Literacy Bags in between reading tasks. Literacy Bags break up the rigorous reading and fluency practice we do for much of the session. You can find Literacy Bags HERE! I'm working with a few Kindergartners who need sight word practice. I use the K version of our Differentiated Reading Fluency passages. In K, the passages start as reading letters, then sight words fluently. It perfect support for my K kiddos! You can grab these HERE! Additionally, our Print a Standard packs have been a great support for targeting specific skills students need to work on. Each pack contains tasks for one standard and has several activities for that standard, so there are a lot of opportunities to help the student learn, practice, and master standards based skills. You can grab Print a Standard packs for ELA AND MATH HERE! Connecting with students and parents on a more personal level is the best part of tutoring. I love giving kiddos instant feedback and celebrating their successes! I also love that I can give them more choices to foster a love of reading. In the picture above, I'm showing several text selections. The kiddos I'm working with is able to choose the book he'll read with me for the session. I also love being able to help parents foster learning at home. I've found most all of my parents did not really know about their kiddo's reading level or reading abilities. This makes it difficult for parents to find the best "just right" books for reading at home. After I work with a kiddo, I leave the text piece we worked on for that session (a passage or a book) so the kiddo can re-read it with parents. I leave their composition notebooks with phonics poems for the kiddos to go back a re-read. I also leave the fluency sentence strips for practice between sessions.
A lot of people have asked what my daily schedule looks like, so here's a little peek at how things run in my class. I'm starting by explaining how I do Daily 5 since that program gives my day its main structure.
Real-life inspiration!
This time conversions poster will look GREAT on your wall and will help your kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grade students learn converting units of time!
In 2nd Grade, students work to build a conceptual foundation for multiplication, which will prepare them for applying these skills in 3rd grade. Making
Our first week of second grade was full of fun! From learning our classroom procedures, to team building we learned so much!
Make the walls of your classroom work for you and your students! Ideas for planning a Writing Wall that will truly support your little writers.
I wanted to stop by today and share some a few of my “go-to” activities during the first week of school to build our classroom community and set expectations for […]
When teaching narrative writing in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, there are so many writing skills to cover. They range from creating a sequence of events (beginning, middle, and end) to more difficult
Everything you need for a smooth school year.
It’s good to have some online tools in our resource box, so here are the top 8 math apps that are perfect for your 2nd graders...
Which Back to School Activities Elementary can I use for Building Community in my Classroom? Which All About Me Activities are most engaging for my students?
Learn about an easy routine for decoding multisyllabic words in 2nd grade text. Free tools included!
Building community in your classroom is critical to a great year! Students who feel safe, valued and a sense of belonging are infinitely more willing to take social and academic risks in your classroom. So how do you build that sense of community? Well, I have gathered up 10 of my favorite activities to share with you today.
Jenga game cards are easily my favorite way to teach and reinforce basic math fact, phonics, or grammar practice.
If you've been in a primary classroom recently, chances are you've seen a word wall. While I believe they are an essential part of an early primary classroom,
Kids love Math Cootie Catchers as a fun way to practice adding, subtracting, number sense, doubling, & numbers. FREE math games printables!
Searching for the most effective strategies for phonics instruction and intervention? Here's a list of 13 effective and engaging phonics strategies that...
When I started at my new school last year, I came into a new reading program. I was used to doing almost all of my reading instruction WHOLE CLASS, but my school uses a guided reading model all the way up to 5th grade. I definitely had to rethink my reading block! I had done centers in the past, but wanted a really clear way to maximize the time and make the transitions clear for the students. Here's how I do my guided reading block! ROTATIONS We have Guided Reading/Centers Monday-Thursday from about 1:10-2:00 and I rotate through four groups. This means each center is 12 minutes long, with about 30 seconds for a transition. 12 minutes can fly by, so the students have to work on getting those transitions DOWN. I found a FANTASTIC resource by my friend Kristen of Chalk & Apples, and it has made centers SO easy. There are tons of different icons that can be easily swapped out on different days or weeks. I change mine up all the time! In a typical week, I do guided reading with leveled passages on Monday and Wednesday, and we do literature circles on Tuesdays and Thursdays. GROUPS My students are grouped according to DRA levels, because that is what my school uses. You might use AR, Lexile, or another measure. I have four groups: Low, Low-Mid, High-Mid, and High. Each group has a number, but I assign the number randomly so it doesn't match up to skill level in any way. I have 24 students in my class this year, so there will be 6 kids in each group. If you have a larger class, you can still make it work by having your higher groups work on their own while you work with a lower group and just check in! GUIDED READING I LOVE this close reading resource from Fifth in the Middle. I bought the entire bundle so I have TONS of options. Each reading comes in four reading levels, but they are on the same topic and look the same so students don't notice. There is also a paired text that I try to use for morning work toward the end of the week. There are several pages of activities for each passage, and I often have the students start these at the table with me after we've read the passage out loud. When it is their turn for guided reading, the students come to me at our back table with a pencil and a highlighter. I give them their sheets for that day and discuss what we will be looking for while we read (unfamiliar words usually) and we begin reading. I like to make sure each child reads, so however I have to break it up to make that happen. After reading through, I ask them to scan through again to find specific information. This changes week to week, so one time it might be looking for transition phrases, and another it might be looking for dates to create a timeline. Then, we talk about what everyone found and work on putting together the information on the worksheet. I, of course, provide a lot more scaffolding and support to my lower readers, while my high readers are able to do the activity on their own. LIT CIRCLES On the days that we have literature circles, the students still come to the back table with me, but this time they bring their lit circle book (which varies) and their lit circle binder. In their binder, they keep all of their jobs and their reading schedule. I have used about a GAZILLION resources for lit circles (including online blogs), but this one from Pocketful of Primary is my absolute FAVORITE: It is SOO easy to adapt to groups of different sizes and I found it very user-friendly for both the kiddos and for myself! I organize the jobs using a hanging file I found on Amazon. You can find it here: THE OTHER CENTERS So what do the kiddos do during their other blocks of time? Here's some options I cycle through: STAPLES: Partner Reading Each student has a partner from their reading group that they meet up with for this activity. I typically use "I Survived" books or similar short chapter books. I stock up through Scholastic! I have 6 shared books for the entire class, and I place a sheet inside the front cover so the students can write their names and where they ended each day they read. I always have new books ready to go for the students who finish. I do this strictly for fluency, so I don't do quizzes or worksheets. Silent Reading (KBAR) In my class, we call silent reading KBAR- Kick Back and Read. When we do a whole class KBAR, I sometimes take it outside. Spelling (Spelling City) I typically use Spelling City for centers, but sometimes do a worksheet instead. Vocabulary (Quizlet)Quizlet is AMAZING. I love using this for vocabulary! The students really enjoy it as well. Keyboarding (KWT) This is a tough one since monitoring the students' finger placement is so important. I don't do this OFTEN as a center, but throw it in now and again. Writing If we are working on a longer project (such as the state report), I have the students use this chunk of time for that. Otherwise, I sometimes provide a prompt or allow them to free write. Here's one of the resources I use: NoRedInk If you've never used this site, CHECK IT OUT! It's one of the best ways to get some extra grammar practice into your day! Be aware that the initial set up takes a bit of time because the students have to select a bunch of their favorites from different categories: books, tv shows, movies. What's neat is the site uses their preferences and their name + their friends' names when building the practice sentences. The kids get a kick out of it! Task Cards (small group) Students work with their reading group and record their answers on individual answer sheets. I have a huge selection of task cards that I keep in one of these bad boys from Michael's: Cursive (Can Do) I love that my school teaches cursive, but in fifth grade, we don't have a lot of specific time for it. To keep the kid's practicing, I assign pages from our cursive book during centers. Reading Comprehension (Reading Plus) We use Reading Plus, but there are many online reading comprehension sites. Use whatever your district provides or what works for your class! Games I will occasionally throw in a review game for the kids to play with their small group. The key is they have to be short and not too loud! Comment below if you have other questions or want to add some advice on running smooth ELA centers with Guided Reading!
Simple tips for improving writing in your second or third grade classroom. These tips are a must if you want better writers!
Kids will have fun looking for nouns all around them in this Grammar Activity for Kids. Simply print the Noun Hunt printable and head out for fun learning.
Telling time past the hour can be challenging for primary kids but it doesn’t have to be a struggle for you or your students. Learn simple ways and effective strategies to make telling time easier for primary kids.
Over the summer, I redesigned my reading inventories that I use for pinpointing reading difficulties and tracking progress throughout the ...
Discover grammar games that are engaging, rigorous, and fun! These I CAN Grammar Games are perfect for grammar review, practice, and literacy centers!
I have always struggled with spelling, and how to engage students in meaningful activities to practice their spelling words! I have tried just about everything under the sun, from rotating through teacher-selected word work centers, to a free choice spelling menu where students try to complete different activities throughout the week. Nothing seemed to work!
School has officially started! Last week was our first official week with students. I’m so excited to be back in second grade! I love the beginning of a new school year. Don’t you? 😉 Although my room is not “officially” done, I thought I’d give you a quick classroom tour of my new second grade […]
Learning to read and spell silent letter words can be tricky for kids. Learn teaching tips and tricks that make this concept easy and fun!
