Surviving Halloween!

Personally, I think that Halloween (and the day after) should be national holidays, so we don't have to go to school, but since no one's taken my suggestion, I had to figure out how to make it through the day with some very excited second graders.

I decided the best way to do it would be to cut and paste.  This is from Jen Ross's Spidey Literacy Pack.  We've been talking about spiders all week, so I thought making spiders would be a great way to spend our mornings.  We made quite a mess.

  

But the spiders turned out very cute!!

Pay no attention to the Hispanic Heritage paragraphs that are still up.  We haven't gotten any new writing up this month.

But, I got to go home to these happy trick or treaters!

For some reason, Little Miss doesn't ever want to get her picture taken.  She was supposed to be a farmer girl with freckles.  It didn't work out perfectly.  She did come home with a huge haul of candy.  Guess everyone loves a two year old trick or treating.  

How did you survive today?  And how are you going to handle tomorrow when they're in their sugar induced comas?  :)

My Truth Monday - Creepy!!

It's another My Truth Monday, and I'm linking up with Denise at Sunny Days to share my truth about what creeps me out.  (Perfect for Halloween, don't you think?)

Here's mine!

So, what's your truth about what creeps you out??  Besides Halloween week with little kids, that is.  ;-)

My Truth Monday - Fitness

I'm linking up with Denise at Sunny Days in Second Grade for her series on sharing our true feelings about various topics.  Today's is especially relevant to me, because I went jean shopping yesterday.  (Insert groan here.)  I hate shopping for clothes.  Don't get me wrong, I love clothes.  I love looking nice.  I love having a full closet with lots of choices.  But, I hate shopping.  I hate having to search through racks and racks to find the one thing that fits me.  I hate trying on four pairs of pants of various styles and not having anything that fits.  And I REALLY hate being so short.  When I do find something that fits, it's usually about 6 inches too long.  Can I get an "Amen" from the vertically challenged?  I guess everything clothing designer in the world thinks that all women who are petite are also a size 0 with no hips.  Well, I've had four children, so I definitely have some hips.  :-)  So, I decided that it was time to start getting fit again.  I spent today tracking all of my food, AND I got up early enough to exercise!  Trust me, that was quite the sacrifice since there's a two year old who lives at my house who can sometimes be up in the night.  (Like last night.)

So, here's my truth:

My goal is to lose 40 pounds by the end of the year (which will also be my 40th birthday).  Hopefully, by the summer time, I'll feel a lot more fit!

So, what's your truth about fitness??

So Much To Do!

And so little time!  Isn't that always the story of a teacher's life?  :)  I feel like the last month has flown by, and I haven't been able to get ahead anywhere.  We had conferences, then the end of the grading period, and finally report cards.  Now, it's getting ready for Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and finally Christmas.  Before I can turn around, it'll be the New Year.

So, my goal for the rest of the month is to stay ahead of things, post here regularly, and maybe even get some Thanksgiving activities up on TPT!  (OK, let's not get too crazy.  :) )

Hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Pep Talk to Teachers

If you've never seen the Kid President, get ready. Here's his pep talk to teachers and students. I love it!


 

Replenishing the Fun Circuits

Today is Wednesday.  Hump day.  That day in the week when Friday seems so close, yet so far away.  I'm exhausted from the first two days of the week, yet I know the next days will be even busier (because second graders can sense an upcoming weekend even better than a teacher).  Last week was an especially hard week.  Why is it that four day weeks seem longer than a five day week?  Plus, I had two parent conferences.  One where I was the teacher, and one where I was the parent.  And, I had my crier.  I was TIRED by the end of the week.

And, then I came across this article.  This was written by Nelba Marquez-Greene.  If that name sounds familiar to you, you probably saw her daughter's beautiful face on the news last December.  Ana Grace was killed by Adam Lanza last December at Sandy Hook.  She wrote a wonderful article on Edweek.org as a parent's letter to teachers.  Her letter is a touching reminder about why I go to school every day and spend these long and sometimes exhausting days with my students.  Because they NEED me.  And, honestly, I need them.  I need to see the joy in their eyes.  I need to hear their funny stories and laugh at their corny jokes.  If I had to work in an office, I'd probably shrivel up and waste away.

So, on a day when I'm tired and worn out, I'm going to remember these words.  Hopefully, they'll encourage you as we finish out this week.

"As you begin this school year, remember Ana Grace. Walk with courage, with faith, and with love. And don’t let them suck your fun circuits dry."

Let's always remember to replenish our fun circuits.  

Spelling and Phonics for English Learners

Exciting title, right?  But, if you're like me, you probably have students in your room who are really poor spellers.  My class is made up almost entirely of English Learners, so they naturally struggle with spelling and phonics.  I started the year using the word study book provided by our district, but it only took two weeks for me to discover that it wasn't the best fit for my students.  I got my hands on a copy of Words Their Way, a book I had been introduced to a couple of years ago and read most of it in one weekend.  While I understood the premise of the book, with  24 students and only one of me, I wasn't sure how I was going to fit in time to meet with my five reading groups and an unknown number of spelling groups.  I didn't know what my next step was going to be.

So, I did what every person in the Western world does when they have a question.  I Googled!  (Seriously, what did we do before Google?)  I searched for "words their way for second grade", and this post from Second Story Window came up first!  What a life saver!  It describes how to use "chunk spelling" to help students generalize spelling patterns and use them in their everyday writing.  Every week, the students work with a different chunk.  We started with the -at family.  On the blog page, there's a link to a Beginning Sound Board the students use to make words.  We did this on Friday.  (And I forgot to take pics.  Darn.)  It was fabulous to watch my kids.  My higher kids were able to put the words together mentally, while my lower readers were having an extended practice time in sounding out words.  (Something they really struggle with.)  Then, we tried to create some big words.  While that didn't work as well as I hoped, I think we'll get better as we go on.  (I was trying to come up with big words with -at in them, and all I could come up with was catastrophe.)  I let the students pick the ten words for their lists, and I was so impressed with how good their choices were.  The students who were my better spellers chose the more difficult words, and my weaker spellers chose the easier words.  I'm hoping that when we test on Friday, I'll see a lot of improvement!

I'm also going to start doing some making words lessons from Pat Cunningham this week.  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'll have my students plus about five other EL students in my class for 45 minutes along with our lead ESOL teacher.  I've been debating what to do with those students, since it's during my writing time, and I think this is the best plan.  While the other students are there, we'll do about 20 minutes of writing and then another 20 minutes of word study.  On Tuesdays, we'll do a making words lesson, and then, hopefully, on Thursdays, we'll be able to do a Rounding Up the Rhymes lesson or a Guess the Covered Word lesson.

I'm excited about my new plan!  While I'm sure it will need some tweaking, I can't wait to see how my students improve this year!  I'll be sure to let you know how it goes!