Every year, I take a look at my classroom curriculum and see what I can add to it the following school year to help prepare my second graders for life in third grade. I am a big believer that the academic jump from second to third is one of the most challenging transitions in school. In TN, Science and Social Students are not tested skills for second grade, but we do have standards that we need to cover. I really wanted to amp up these two content areas this year, but I was unsure of exactly how to do it. I finally decided that the only way that I was going to be able to make it work was by combining my Reading and Social Studies/Science into one block. We are switching between S and SS in biweekly rotations. Our first unit was all about Life Science-living vs. nonliving, plant and animal needs, parts of a plant, and plant life cycles. My students LOVE Science(which is sadly not my favorite subject), but I have really enjoyed teaching it over the last two ...
Blog Post
Understanding September 11th
In a few short days, Americans across the United States and individuals all over the world will be remembering September 11th and the horrific events that occurred on that tragic day. I was in 6th grade during 1st period when my teacher got a call to turn on the TV. It took me a while to understand what was going on. I knew that it was bad, but I specifically remember not knowing and comprehending anything about terrorism, terrorists, or tragedy on such a large scale. Even now, I find myself thinking about to how I felt on that day. It is hard for us to relay what deep emotions are found within us when we reflect on 9/11. It is even more difficult for us to share and teach those feelings to young children who should not be exposed to such raw tragedy. Eventually the events of this world will catch up with our youth, but for now they are very much naive and unable to make connections to such a heavy day. However, I feel that it is still important for us to share ...
Vocabulary Lanyards
I got really excited last night when I was typing this post that I put "publish" instead of "schedule" so you are getting some Monday Made It a little early! Thanks to Tara for the link up! I am a data fanatic. Data reports can help me create a pretty good picture of what type of learning and teaching needs to occur in my classroom. Last year, our SAT10 results showed that my students needed to be more proficient in vocabulary. So, I began to research and did you know that research shows that students who have a rich and expansive vocabulary are better, stronger readers? Not only do they read more fluently, but they actually better comprehend the text that they are reading. So guess what is going to be a much larger focus in my classroom curriculum this year? Yup! You guessed it! Vocabulary! Vocabulary is essentially the knowledge of words and their definitions. However, student understanding of vocabulary should go beyond just knowing what a word means. ...
